Infinity Cascade Tweeters

Tweeters are easy to blow. Just turn the volume up past 2 o'clock and see. If you turn the treble up AT ALL you are guaranteed to blow tweeters. I've always liked Infinity, and I sold them at retail over twenty years ago, but the Infinity Emit tweeter was absolutely the easiest tweeter to blow on the planet. If you listen like you have been, you'll continue to blow them. Sorry, I know it's a bummer.

Gain structures in the preamp section, level of the recording, calibration of the attenuater (volume control), etc. are so random that there's no way to estimate. A hot recording could be driving the receiver into clipping at 11 o'clock, but you could play some New Age recordings at 4 o'clock and not use 50 watts. A Dream Theater CD, with oceans of cymbals and lots of synthesizer, would potentially damage a tweeter with prolonged high-volume listening. And a volume control at 12 o'clock on one receiver might have the same output as a volume control at 3 o'clock on another due to the gain structure.

The bottom line is, you'll know when you're playing it too loud. Some tweeters get a bit harsh when you're approaching their death, but others sound fine right up until when they fail. I've blown a dozen tweeters, blown up three car engines, broken three titanium bicycle frames, cracked a dozen Zildjian cymbals, and broken ten bones in my body. Some of us just break stuff.

Blown, or smashed due to someone pressing on them? Over powering a metal dome tweeter does not cause them to implode.


As opposed to starting with the volume at "11" and turning it down? Who does that?

Nigel Tufnel.

That design uses an unusually low crossover point to the tweeter, so the problem may be endemic to the model.

I think kids fingers are endemic to tweeter damage.

That's clearly physical damage and not electrical damage. Pinching a tweeter doesn't usually do it a lot of good.

Agree - I've owned a pair of Interlude IL40s for about 9 years - they use the same tweeter as whats in the Cascades - and a 5.0 Beta setup using the same tweeter - and I now have the Cascade 5.1 setup. I've played all of them LOUD and they play loud very well - that damage was done by fingers not by over driving them.

As soon as HK gets a look at them they likely will be sent back in the same condition as sent.

Note that the 'grilles' on the Cascade model speakers isn't what you might think of when thinking about grilles. It is a thin fabric stretched over the face of the speaker and held in place by magnets which are adjusted to pull the cloth cover tight. This leaves a gap between the face and cloth that would trigger curiosity in owners of small fingers - fingers that would have no problem getting in there and doing the damage pictured. Looks like an investigation is in order.

And allow me to quote myself from earlier.


I've blown a few speaker drivers while playing with amps much too powerful (crown CE4000) and even caught one on fire. I repeat, hard domed tweeters do not implode when "blown". Someone/something poked them.


What Knuckle is saying is when HK sees that the tweeters are damaged physically, and of no fault to their design, they will not repair them under warranty. It's like hitting a deer in your car and claiming the smashed front end was due to a flaulty bumper.

Why is the dust button physically crushed on the tweeter? It's directly connected to the voice coil, and once out of round, a voice coil will usually fail.

Damn Paul...maybe you should just stay in bed!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Scarpelli
I've blown a dozen tweeters, blown up three car engines, broken three titanium bicycle frames, cracked a dozen Zildjian cymbals, and broken ten bones in my body. Some of us just break stuff.

Damn Paul...maybe you should just stay in bed!

==============================

And I know people who could break a crow bar in a sand box.

I've had a couple of tweeters blow on me too - and never seen physical damage. This was on a pair of JBL speakers (thanks to my son) with titanium dome tweeters. The tweeters looked just fine from the outside - electrically they were toast.

They are a very good sounding speaker --- I remain unimpressed with the 'grille' - they are more of an afterthought.
Hopefully I won't have any problems with my Cascades - but I do have over 4 years of warranty left. I use a pair of Three Vs in the bedroom in a 2 channel setup with a sub - and a pair of Fives for surrounds to accompany the 3 Interlude fronts.

Good luck with the rebuilt Nines.