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B&W 805 distortion question

Hi folks,
Tonight, listening to some music, my right B&W 805 tweeter distorted on some high-notes; never had that happen before. I didn't notice anything out of the left channel.

I was playing a CD from my Arcam Alpha MCD source; it''s a good player; my amplification was my Arcam Alpha 9 integrated and power amps, which I bi-amp with my B&W's. Sounds great. Volume was set well-within normal limits.

I could chalk this up to a bad CD recording; I had no other problems with any other CD's I played tonight.

Any thoughts? Any suggestions on if and how I should troubleshoot this?

Jeff
arcamguy
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
The previous troubleshooting suggestions are valid and you should do so.

I had a similar problem the other day with a hi-res Steely Dan recording - the tweeter output sounded horrible for a few seconds. At first I suspected a blown tweeter. But I know that the Gallo CDT tweeter is virtually indestructible so I did the cable swap routine. It turns out it was the recording and not my gear - whew!!

But I must admit that I was quite surprised that a Steely Dan album would have sketchy sonics, they are usually 100% *perfect*.

So, let's cross our fingers and hope that your CD is at fault and not your gear...

-RW-
zenblaster
504 posts
 
ZD542 has given you the logical first step.
zenblaster
504 posts
 
If the problem travels after swapping speaker cables you can ONLY eliminate the speaker as the source of the distortion. The problem could be anything from the speaker cable to the source cd and everything in between.
arcamguy OP
83 posts
 
Group,
Thanks for the input; I will switch speakers to see if this follows the speaker, or if remains in the right channel.

It was more of a static-type-sound that came out of the tweeter...during a stretch of high-pitched vocals at an elevated, but not irresponsible volume level....again, well within the Arcam's (and B&W's) capabilities. I never abuse my amp, or speakers.

If anything did happen to that speaker, I think I know what could have damaged it: there's a particular order I need to power off my system, and several weeks ago, by mistake, I powered off my CD player before my amps were off. I heard a loud pop in the right tweeter; nothing happened, and it played fine after that.

The speaker sounds great tonight: Joshua Bell is playing Mendelssohn and Beethoven: the violins sound very good, and there are high string notes which would test a tweeter.

Again, I will switch to see what happens.

Jeff
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