What's wrong with my speaker?

How loud? The beethovens with those smaller drivers in a small box will sound stressed above 96db

I measured the, ahem 7” woofers in my beethovens and I think actual cone size is 5.5”. I love them and will probably always have them but they aint head bangin speakers 

@steve59 I'm not exactly sure how loud. I don't have a decibel meter on hand. It's not enough to hurt the ears, but I tend to like my music a bit on the loud side. I do know that I do not experience the same thing on the other speaker, so it appears that the midrange composite on that one is definitely able to take the stress. I suppose a replacement purchase is in my future.

You could try rotating the driver 90 degrees so that the problem area is at 12:00, and MAYBE gravity will help. If that doesn’t work, you could also try it with the problem area at 6:00. This is a long shot.

More than likely the voice coil is no longer perfectly round because heat has softened the glue, and then when it cooled down again, it had deformed a little. The deformed section is probably at the end closest to the dust cap, and on long excursions it rubs against the walls of the magnetic gap.

" I suppose a replacement purchase is in my future. " 

Probably so.

Duke

@audiokinesis You're probably right about the overheating hypothesis. I think I may have damaged it via clipping. These are 4 ohm speakers, and I had been driving them with a Marantz PM7000. Marantz says to not drive speakers with impedances less than 8 ohms with the PM7000. I recently upgraded to a Peachtree Nova 300 which seems to be driving them better, although I think I like the sound quality of the class AB amplifier better than the class D which is the Nova.