Good Ole' Shiva

it's hard to see in the pic....did they snap....or did they actually burn off?...the only way i know how to burn tinsle's is overpowering

 

a loose connection will burn them as well, but I also want to know if they are burned or snapped?

I have seen the terminal plate get loose and shift to 1 side. What this does is limits the tinsels travel and causes it to snap. I personally did this with 1 of mine. I accidentally bumped the plate while dropping it into the enclosure and never even knew I did it. I was fortunate that it snapped right at the plate. I added a small piece of tinsel from an old sub to the existing tinsel and reafixed it to the plate.

 

While the Brahma is thermally limited, the Shiva is suspension limited. This means that mechanical parts will break if you push it too far, rather than voice coils melting. We have a customer that did this with a Tempest. But contact your dealer to get it straightened out. You might be surprised at how it is taken care of.

 

sweet..... they'll say "wow, you're putting too much power to that thing...
you must need a Brahma!" so they send u a free replacement Brahma?

 

I wonder?

 

if that do that, I am going to buy two shiva's and hook them up to my Mtx 1501D lol

 

LOL.. no doubt!

Picture isn't too clear, but it looks to me like it might have broken right at the joint where the tinsel goes into the cone... as opposed to melting, where the tinsel lead is soldered to the actual insulated magnet wire.
I say that, because that connection is made under the dustcap, and is generally glued down to the cone with a glue that is black in color [so it doesn't rattle around in there.. pretty critical ]...
And I don't see anything but clean silver color on that lead, all the way down to where it is broken. If it really melted, I'd expect either discoloration from that, or at least (due to the massive strand count and rough texture of that stuff) discoloration from the dark colored glue inside there.

But anyway.. what's the power on that amp? What were you feeding it in terms of power?

Where it broke, regardless of the cause, there's nothing to do about it but recone it.

No real damage done though, a recone will have that baby being brand new again. B)

Nice now recones can do that 99% of the time.

 

It is a 3 year warranty.

I am at a loss as to why it failed Chris. Everything seems to be within the acceptable windows, and for my part, I trust when you say you know the user and he was not clipping the amp. My Shivas took mad abuse (especially when I lent one of them to Cort for a month untill he got his new sub a while back, that boy was MERCILOUS with my sub ) and I had no issues except for what I mentioned above, and that was TOTALLY my fault.

Get in touch with the man, you will get handled right!!!

 

So it was burnt? That's really odd. If something was going to melt, I would expect the voice coil wire to go before the tinsel leads. But it's unlikely to burn a voice coil in a Shiva from what I understand. I'm starting to think it was some sort of flaw in it, that took a long time to show up. But I would call Adire tomorrow and tell Chris about this.

 

The voice coil wire is solid wire... small gauge, but solid. The glue melts and gives up the ghost before the wire melts.

But, consider that tinsel wire...
The freaking stuff is amazing, seriously, when you look at it close.
It consists of multiple threads of the finest wire you've ever seen.. the gauge of a human hair each.

So at any rate, if for whatever reason - maybe the way it was soldered, maybe some were broken from motion - if for any reason, all the current was routed through just some of the strands, they could melt very easily... and then current would be routed elsewhere, melting them.. sort of a chain reaction.
But, you'd expect normally this not to be the case, by nature, due to their contact with each other, they would be all energized.
So honestly I don't know... but it is feasible, damage like this, simply due to the ultra-fine nature of those strands.

 

Thanks for posting this message, Chris and thanks to all who have replied. If I didn't know better I'd swear that I logged on to CAF seeing some of these names .

Anyhow, Chris was correct: one lead on each coil of one of my Shivas appears to be burnt precisely at the junction of the coil lead wire. Again, I say APPEARS but it may actually be glue as somebody already suggested. Just to give a bit of background, by bottom end consisted of (2) Shivas in separate sealed chambers with 1.25 Ft^3 net volume after displacement and 12oz. of poly dampening per side. The coils on each driver were paralleled and the two drivers again were paralelled presenting a 2 Ohm nominal load. Amplification was provided by an Autotek SX-2300 which is rated at 800x1@2 Ohms. Gains were set by myself to achieve no audible clipping. Source signal was sent to the amp through an Audiocontrol EQX II with a low pass of 80Hz @ 24dB/octave and a high pass of 31.5 @ 18dB/octave and a final output of 2 volts constant as tested with pink noise and a DMM. The enclosure was custom built to follow vehicle contours and fit snugly in the jump seat area of my '98 S Series P/U (which is for sale if anyone is interested ). I was extremely pleased with my Shivas for more than a year but my system's output just dropped off from one day to the next. To clarify, I wasn't playing my system when I noticed the problem; one evening it sounded great, the next morning terrible. Likewise, there was never any smoke apparent at any time.

My setup demonstrates that thermal limits were never exceded which simply baffels me. Likewise, why did the leads, on opposite coils mind you, on only ONE of my drivers fail?

Any further input would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks for the info. You are correct that everything looks fine. I don't think anyone can give a reason for this becides Adire physically seeing it. They have ways of telling whether it was abuse (which I highly doubt) or a defect. But either way you need to contact them.

BTW, if you read my other post about fixing my amplifier, you will see I had tinsel leads break due to a faulty amplifier. That remains a possibility in your case as well. But if you bought it directly from Adire, you need to contact them about this.

Their phone number is 1-425-778-9663.

 

Holy cow!!! Remulac, now theres a blast from the past...

It seems to me as if everything is in order in the install. I really see no reason for the failure with the described set-up.

I think Steven is about dead on. Being that you are still under warranty, I suggest giving the folks at Adire (or your Dealer) a call. I think that an inspection of the failed driver will help determine the cause for failure. Customer service with Adire is top notch, and I am sure they will be fair with you.

Good luck Doc, and come back and fill us in on what was found

 

E-mail warranty@adireaudio.com and include the name used on the original purchase, so we can look up your records. They'll get back to you with directions on what to do.

FWIW, 400W per Shiva in 1.5 cubic feet each will slam the suspension from ~35 Hz and down - back off the gains on the remaining unit. You're already well past linear operation, and basically can push past the full mechanical limits of the driver. In that size box, 200-250W is all that's needed per driver.

Dan Wiggins
Adire Audio

 

I appreciate the reply, Dan, and I have a great deal of respect for both yourself and your products but I'm affraid that I am a bit confused.

The first thing that would spring to mind would be your Pmax rating of the Shiva. With 400 watts being delivered as previously described why am a exceeding the driver's limits when it is rated at 650W/unit? Again, it wasn't the voice coil that appears burnt, it's the tinsel leads. Before I get jumped on over this I do realize that Pmax is technicaly a measure of thermal dynamic capability of the motor structure. Since I didn't exceede the power rating of the driver it should not be physically possible to burn the leads off, would it? I am affraid that I must quote the Shiva White Paper here: "The 600W rating is intended to allow for those who enjoy musical peaks up to and beyond 120 dB SPL in-room." Reading your reply, however, you imply failure due to surpassing the driver's mechanical limits. Adire's White Paper on the Shiva has a particular passage that states the tinsel leads were designed to provide 22mm of travel to each side of center. With an additional 6mm worth of travel on the leads it seems that the coil would either slam the back plate or jump clear out of the gap and jam itself on other pieces of the motor structure. I could be wrong there... I really don't know. Furthermore, Adire's one-page tech summary concludes thusly for a 2 Ft^3 sealed enclosure with 24oz. of poly-fill: "Results assume 80Hz 2nd order crossover, 650W applied." That, for me, is the clincher. Again, if I was applying 250 watts less in a substantially smaller enclosure why did I exceed the driver's limits?

Please don't take this post as a flame. As stated before, I have a great deal of respect for you and Adire in general. I am just trying to understand exactly why the failure occured and if it is a warranty coverable malfunction.

 

As Geo Eluded to, and I am inclinded to Believe, Mechnical Damge Weakend the Lead, enabling Far less power to "burn" it where a normal lead would not have

But this is all assumptions, Until the unit is in the hands of people trained to see what failed all we can do it guess,

 

I'm not quite sure that weather the failure was thermodynamic or mechanical is really the issue here. Given my setup previously described and Adire's own technical writings, the only conclusion that I can arrive upon is that the drivers were properly loaded and utilized and the leads should not have failed in either case.

http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/ShivaWhitePaper-V2.PDF
http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/ShivaTechSummary.PDF

At any rate, worst case scenario is that I loose a great 12" driver for the system in my new Silverado and gain the world's strongest refirgerator magnet and a new home theater sub through my remaining good Shiva (after the purchase of Parts Express' 250W class D plate amp of course). On the other hand, it sure would be great if I have my damaged unit repaired under warranty and slip both of those bad boys under the rear seat in my new ride.