How can you tell if speakers are damaged?

[admin_exported]

I have my sony home theater receiver and connect it to my cyrus amp and b&w cm9 loudspeakers using the cyrus home theatre bypass function. I also have a girlfriend ;-)

Last night she comes home, and although trained in how to use this system she turns on television to find no volume. She then keeps her hand on the remote until the sony volume is up at max, like +25DB... still no volume. This is because the cyrus amp is turned off.

I am in the other room, and get the call... "Its not working!" so in I go and say, hey no problem remember you need to switch the cyrus amp on. So I do this but of course I am unaware that the sony receiver is set so loud so suddenly we are getting attacked by the loudest version of eastenders ever heard in our living room. I scrabble to turn it off and i figure out the problem. I turn down the volume on the receiver and all is seemingly good... I can hear sound coming from the bass drivers, mids, and tweeters.

My question is, could something still be damaged by doing what we did, or are speakers likely to be able to withstand this sort of behaviour....?

 

[Frank Harvey]

If it was a few seconds they'll probably be ok - it wouldn't have been long enough for the voice coils to heat up, let alone overheat. If they sound ok then they should be fine. Play some clean sounding music through them so you're able to ehar if there's anything odd going on. Sometimes damage to bass drivers only shows itself at certain frequencies, so also playing some music with a nice bass range will confirm everything is ok too.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Frank, your advice much appreciated.

 

[Frank Harvey]

David