A couple of weeks ago my driver-side door speaker stopped working. I swapped the speakers in both doors to determine if it was a speaker problem or a wiring/radio problem. Both speakers work in the passanger side door which leads me to believe the problem is something other than the speakers. A few weeks later, the driverside rear speaker quit working. The only connection the two speakers have is at the back of the radio (difficult to access). I checked the wires and the connection at the back of the radio seems firm. Both speakers on the passanger side of the car work fine. Any ideas what could be causing my audio problems?
Stereo/Speaker Geniuses
- Thread starter ryansride2017
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do you have an aftermarket deck or a factory deck?
if its afermarket, run new lines from the back of the deck to the speakers, cause maybe u have a short somewhere.
if its afermarket, run new lines from the back of the deck to the speakers, cause maybe u have a short somewhere.
It's a factory set. Running new speaker wires sounds like a good idea until you see how the factory wires are bundled together into one connector. For the time being, would there be any harm "piggy-backing" off of the one working signal in the trunk and running a wire off of that speaker to the speaker that isn't working? The car has 123,000 on it so I don't mind cutting a few corners to get sound out of the speakers until the car dies.
well the only problem with that is if both speakers are say 4 ohms and you paralell them like youre talking about then you present a 2 ohm load and you might fry the head unit cause it will allow it to push more power from one channel.if you must do it like this then youll want to series them meaning you run the positive form 1 speaker to the negitive of the other and the remaining wires go to the headunit
What kind of car is this?
you would have to run the wire together by hooking up positive and negitive together on one wire, and the same to the other wire
if u run paralell its going to stress the deck.
what kind of car and is it some type of amplified system like infinity or bose?
<----installer at circuit city =)
if u run paralell its going to stress the deck.
what kind of car and is it some type of amplified system like infinity or bose?
<----installer at circuit city =)
If both speakers on the driver's side cut out and the speakers are known to be good, I'd suspect the radio, not the wiring. To test it, you can try to rig up something temporarily to run new wires from the radio to the speaker, but why would you have a wiring problem on both driver's side speakers, but neither of the passenger's side ones? I think your radio is kicking the bucket.
2003 Nissan Sentra. Base, stock unit. Thanks for the replies. I decided I'm not going to wire them together. Maybe more investigation or put in a new radio (but that's an expensive test).
Find out which wires are the speaker wires and use a multimeter to test them (from the connector at the rear of the radio) for shorts/opens. You should measure about 3 ohms or so, but the exact value is unimportant--just as long as it's not zero ohms or an open circuit.
Brian,
I used a voltmeter to measure the ohms at both speakers that are not working. Here's the strange part: The driverside door speaker reads approximately 25 ohms (as does the passanger side door speaker that works) when the radio is turned on and decreases slighly as the volume is turned up (as it should). The speaker in the trunk (that does not work) does not behave in the same manner. I always read approximately 5 ohms regardless of how loud the radio is turned up. It's hard to believe I'm chasing two seperate problems but the two speakers that are not working are acting differently (when I read ohms) while the radio is on. Hopefully that made sense. It's virtually impossible for me to take the readings from the back of the radio because I have no room to operate. I also looked into removing the radio from the deck, but after examining it, I wouldn't even know where to begin.
It would make sense if the radio was bad.....and it would also make my life easier where I could have them just re-install the new one.
I used a voltmeter to measure the ohms at both speakers that are not working. Here's the strange part: The driverside door speaker reads approximately 25 ohms (as does the passanger side door speaker that works) when the radio is turned on and decreases slighly as the volume is turned up (as it should). The speaker in the trunk (that does not work) does not behave in the same manner. I always read approximately 5 ohms regardless of how loud the radio is turned up. It's hard to believe I'm chasing two seperate problems but the two speakers that are not working are acting differently (when I read ohms) while the radio is on. Hopefully that made sense. It's virtually impossible for me to take the readings from the back of the radio because I have no room to operate. I also looked into removing the radio from the deck, but after examining it, I wouldn't even know where to begin.
It would make sense if the radio was bad.....and it would also make my life easier where I could have them just re-install the new one.
I can't begin to interpret the readings you got measuring resistance on a live speaker because, well, you're not supposed to do it that way. (Rule #1 of multimeter usage is never to take resistance readings on a powered/live circuit).
Measure the resistance on the speaker with the radio completely disconnected from the speaker. Also measure the resistance between the speaker terminals and the speaker frame--it's possible that the speaker shorted out this way. You should read infinite resistance that way.
Then, with the speaker still disconnected, set the multimeter to DC volts. Turn the radio on with the volume all the way down. You should measure about 6-7V from each of the two speaker wires from the radio and ground if the speaker wires are good, and it's a radio with a bridged output (they almost all are these days). Also measure between the two wires. You should have a very low, if not zero, reading.
Now you want to try to find an audio source that is more or a lest at a constant level. Radio static could work, but a test tone CD is best (you can probably make one with a wav editor). Now put the multimeter into AC volts mode. Set the volume to a reasonable level. Measure the voltage between the two speaker wires with the speaker disconnected. Check all of the speakers this way. The measured voltage should be the same at all of the speakers if the balance and fader controls are set correctly. It's possible that it might not if the radio has some crossover or equalization built into it, but the readings should still be the same from front left to front right and rear left to rear right.
If the readings are different from one side to the other, the problem isn't the speaker.
The last thing you want to check is for a short between any of the speaker wires and ground, or between the two speaker wires for each channel. Turn the radio off. Set the multimeter to measure ohms. Now measure the resistance between each of the speaker wires and ground. Also measure the resistance between each set of speaker wires.
Measure the resistance on the speaker with the radio completely disconnected from the speaker. Also measure the resistance between the speaker terminals and the speaker frame--it's possible that the speaker shorted out this way. You should read infinite resistance that way.
Then, with the speaker still disconnected, set the multimeter to DC volts. Turn the radio on with the volume all the way down. You should measure about 6-7V from each of the two speaker wires from the radio and ground if the speaker wires are good, and it's a radio with a bridged output (they almost all are these days). Also measure between the two wires. You should have a very low, if not zero, reading.
Now you want to try to find an audio source that is more or a lest at a constant level. Radio static could work, but a test tone CD is best (you can probably make one with a wav editor). Now put the multimeter into AC volts mode. Set the volume to a reasonable level. Measure the voltage between the two speaker wires with the speaker disconnected. Check all of the speakers this way. The measured voltage should be the same at all of the speakers if the balance and fader controls are set correctly. It's possible that it might not if the radio has some crossover or equalization built into it, but the readings should still be the same from front left to front right and rear left to rear right.
If the readings are different from one side to the other, the problem isn't the speaker.
The last thing you want to check is for a short between any of the speaker wires and ground, or between the two speaker wires for each channel. Turn the radio off. Set the multimeter to measure ohms. Now measure the resistance between each of the speaker wires and ground. Also measure the resistance between each set of speaker wires.
...what he said =)
I ran into a problem like this on my wife's old CRX. The connector on the back of the radio hung off a circuit board and the solder connections became bad with time. Resoldering the board solved the problem. I'd check resistance at the connector off the back or the radio and, if the speakers measure the same, that was the problem.
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