Can my tweeters be damaged?

[kpeter11]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a beginner in the Hi-Fi world and I'm a bit worried, as I'm not sure if I've damaged my speakers or not.
I have a pair of Revel Concerta2 F35 speakers, being driven by a Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 amp.
The amplifier's maximum output power is 60W into 8 ohms, the sensitivity of the speakers is 91db, the impedance of the speakers is 6 ohms I believe.

Basically a couple of times I turned up the volume a little bit to around -5 and one time by accident my finger slipped on the remote app and I got into the red section. Then I quickly realized my mistake and turned down the volume.

Since then I'm listening to my system in a very worried way, analyzing every possible distortion that may be present. Usually I'm listening around -20 sometimes around -15 (the maximum volume level is +12, since the accident I've set a limiter for -5) and when I'm close to around -10 the high frequencies with some songs sound quite harsh and unpleasant to my ears. Especially the higher range of vocals. I'm not really sure If I have damaged my tweeters or It's just my room acoustics or my ears are sensitive.

So my question is: Is it possible, that I have damaged my tweeters with that accidental nearly max volume and that occasional rather loud listening level? By the way I haven't heard distortions other than the hars high frequencies.

 

[podknocker]

I don't think you've damaged them. I managed to switch inputs, while at full volume and it was very painful for the 3 seconds, until I finally turned it down. I was worried about my speakers, but they sound fine. I think modern speakers are able to produce deafening levels, without actually hurting themselves. Excessive volume, beyond their design threshold for extended periods and distortion would probably kill them.

 

[abacus]

Too much power can burn out the tweeter (Or any drive unit), however put your ears by the tweeters and see if you can hear sound coming from them, if so then they should be fine, if not then they will probably need to be replaced.

Bill

 

[kpeter11]

Thank you!

 

[My2Cents]

Possible but unlikely. Was the harshness there before?
The only definitive way to overcome your anxiety would be to take them back to the store (if that's an option) and A/B them with another pair.
The F35's have aluminum dome tweeters (I personally don't care for aluminum dome tweeters as they can sound harsh at high volume levels with certain types of source material, silk tends to keep things a little smoother).
Hopefully, a $1,600 pair of speakers would have some kind of momentary overload protection on the crossover board.
What tends to damage a tweeter for sure is feedback. I've witnessed a high end pair of studio monitors damaged by accidental feedback caused by a hot microphone not being muted on the mixing board... but that creates a sudden ear piercingly loud level that increases rapidly before you can hit the mute button. But even in this case, only one of the tweeters was damaged and the other one was fine.