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Author Topic: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing  (Read 7052 times)

Adam Squibb

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DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« on: November 29, 2015, 08:41:42 AM »

Can you help us on a problem we have with our DAS 215 speakers? We bought them second hand but as new condition and after several months we noticed the horn not working on one so we took it apart and found the clips to the fuse bulbs had broken so we replaced them but also noticed that the previous owners had foiled the bulbs to stop them blowing so we took the foil off them and the other speaker that was the same. Trouble is every couple of gigs the bulbs were blowing and we believe our amps are ok so we ended up putting foil back on the bulbs and the speakers have been fine for about 8 months until last nights gig when we noticed one horn wasn't working and then by the end of the night the other stopped too. Upon checking them this morning I've discovered its the M-44 diaphragms have blown obviovsly becuase we have bypassed the fuse bulb protection. The question is why do we have a problem with them and the previous owner did to because he had foiled them . We use a Peavey PV2800 amp the drive our subs with the crossover set to 150hz and that then goes to our other Peavey amp a CS2000 to drive the DAS Action  215's.

Regards

Adam
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Rob Spence

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2015, 11:16:06 AM »

Can you help us on a problem we have with our DAS 215 speakers? We bought them second hand but as new condition and after several months we noticed the horn not working on one so we took it apart and found the clips to the fuse bulbs had broken so we replaced them but also noticed that the previous owners had foiled the bulbs to stop them blowing so we took the foil off them and the other speaker that was the same. Trouble is every couple of gigs the bulbs were blowing and we believe our amps are ok so we ended up putting foil back on the bulbs and the speakers have been fine for about 8 months until last nights gig when we noticed one horn wasn't working and then by the end of the night the other stopped too. Upon checking them this morning I've discovered its the M-44 diaphragms have blown obviovsly becuase we have bypassed the fuse bulb protection. The question is why do we have a problem with them and the previous owner did to because he had foiled them . We use a Peavey PV2800 amp the drive our subs with the crossover set to 150hz and that then goes to our other Peavey amp a CS2000 to drive the DAS Action  215's.

Regards

Adam

So, not only were the speakers not in as new condition, they had been modified 😳

Did you inspect the failed diaphragm to see why it failed? Did you replace it with an OEM unit?

What are you using for crossovers or processors?

You may simply be driving them too hard. Perhaps they are not designed to go as loud as you would like?


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Adam Squibb

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #2 on: November 29, 2015, 11:44:28 AM »

Ok let me rephrase that.  The speakers were as new but previous owner had put foil around the fuse bulbs because they were obviously blowing the same like we are having when we took the foil off. No diaphragm or drivers have been replaced yet. Last night was the first time the horn diaphragm has actually blown because the fuse bulbs were bridged with foil so defeating the object of having them. I have ordered two new OEM Das drivers today as replacements and we intend to take the foil off the fuses again to protect the speakers and horn again but we are then back to the scenario where the fuse bulbs will keep blowing every other gig

Hope this helps
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Mac Kerr

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« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2015, 01:11:39 PM »

Can you help us on a problem we have

Please go to your profile and change the "Name" field to your real first and last name as required by the posting rules displayed in the header at the top of the section, and in the Site Rules and Suggestions in the Forum Announcements section, and on the registration page when you registered.

Mac
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Mark Cadwallader

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2015, 09:48:16 AM »

Adam, it would be helpful if you describe exactly how you have hooked up the amps and speakers.  If you are melting fuses, you obviously have too much current flowing through the fuse. 

Mac (or another mod or admin) - Might this topic be better addressed in the Lab Lounge subforum?
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Luke Geis

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #5 on: December 02, 2015, 08:20:18 PM »

These speakers are pretty nice, but are not powerhouses. The compression driver is a 1" model. It is likely crossed over pretty high and more than likely can only handle up to about 80 watts. The speaker is rated for 700 watts continuous and 1400 watts program power. So you are powering them pretty well in theory. I would shoot to power them with closer to 1400 watts myself. I think you may have exposed a potential reason for failure though? You are crossing them over at around 150hz? This is pretty high honestly. The lack of energy being used in the amp to produce low end content is now free to power the mid range and highs a bit more. So that 700 watts is very well utilized and will have a bit of headroom available to push sound. So while the wattage is still the same 700 or so watts, that wattage is being focused into a smaller sonic region. This means that the tweeter is working that much harder all the time. This is only part of the equation.

The speakers peak SPL is calculated. A 99db sensitivity with 2800 watts produces a theoretical 134db. You cannot do that in reality. I usually reduce the peak SPL by 6db to factor real world peak SPL ( essentially RMS power ). That puts this speaker at about 128db peak SPL. Now you also have crest factor to consider. I usually say a 10db crest factor is reasonable. So you lose another 10db for peaks that are not directly translated into perceived level. This means that the speaker is only really good to about 118db peak SPL ( what you could actually expect to get ). So this 118db is at 1m or roughly 3'. So now we play the distance game where the inverse square law eats the remainder of any potential SPL. So at 24' you would be acquiring a theoretical peak SPL of about 100db and that is with the clip lights on your amp flickering away. This assumes that your actually able to get a crest factor of 10db and of course having the energy in the speaker being utilized by all the drivers to diffuse heat. I will say that the inverse square law is not truly applicable in short distances with larger sound sources. So the theoretical SPL would be 100db at 24', but in actuality it will be slightly higher ( perhaps by a few db ? ). How much is dependent upon several factors as well. In an open field or indoors, how large the speakers and or system are and to a small degree the atmosphere ( heat and humidity ).

About that heat. A watt is still a watt, but if you spread that watt out over the whole sonic range, or focus it into a small sonic range, the difference will be SPL output. This means more heat in that smaller region. So instead of 700 watts being distributed among all the speakers evenly, it is now putting more energy into the area above the crossover point. The speaker is rated for 700 watts continuous you ask? Yes it is, assuming all the speakers are seeing that 700 watts of energy in which it will convert that into heat and acoustic output.

The speaker has a passive crossover in it which cannot load balance; that is, it will not take from one to give to the other actively, it is a fixed ratio of power distribution. If you disconnect the two low drivers the crossover in the speaker does not care and will simply send the fixed ratio of incoming power to each driver ( existent or not ). The compression driver would work as normal in this case. Now if you use a crossover before the amp that powers the speaker, the amp will have more headroom, but the energy that the speaker gets is now different. The internal crossover of the speaker does not load balance the incoming wattage. It will not bleed off energy into the low drivers that is in excess of what the highs can handle. This is where that incandescent bulb comes in. It converts the excess power into heat by lighting the bulb.

Lets do this. If you take an amp and feed it a sine wave and send that signal to the speaker, you will get only reproduction in the speaker of that tone. Now imagine sending the tone to the speaker until the amp starts to clip. That is sure a lot of energy now isn't it? Imagine sending a 10khz tone to the speaker at 700 watts! Remember the internal crossover of the speaker doesn't have load balancing. That 700 watts of energy is going to the speaker at only 10khz and the speakers crossover will pass that wattage straight to the compression driver via the incandescent bulb/fuse which hopefully blows before the compression driver does. The crossover will not take the extra incoming power and send it into another driver or into space, it must get converted into heat.

I think the reason for the popped compression driver was power induced heat that exceeded its thermal limits. You may not have been clipping the amps, but if you increase headroom by 6db at the amps, you can in essence get 6db closer to the max rating of the speaker even though the actual wattage produced is the same.  It's the 700 watts of everything vs. 700 watts of just a few things. The 700 watts of a few things will be much louder than the 700 watts of everything. That 700 watts of energy will be turned into heat and if that heat exceeds the limitations of the speaker design, then you will blow drivers. We didn't even touch power compression yet. This is another factor that can have bad implications.

If it were me, I would allow the tops to do a little more work. I would cross them over closer to 80hz or lower and keep a close eye on the amps levels. If you clip the amps you can send up to twice the wattage to the speakers or more. This speaker design is meant to be ran full range and have extension into the lows enough to reduce need for a sub. You could in essence run the subs crossover point even lower than normal and let the tops run down to 60hz. What you would find is that the amps for the tops would clip sooner than they used to and you would have less overall SPL, but my bet is that as long as you didn't allow amp clipping, the speaker would blow less parts; namely the compression driver.
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Craig Hauber

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #6 on: December 02, 2015, 10:06:09 PM »

Wow Luke, you really like typing (guess your not on a mobile!)

Used speakers with foil over the bulbs tells me they've been abused.  Abuse can mean some cooked components in the passive network, which in simplistic terms could mean it's not "crossing-over at the right spot" anymore. (or it's only 6dB/oct instead of 12 or 18)
If there's significant energy hitting the driver below 1K -or it's operating near full-range- the bulbs will blow quickly and if they're defeated then the driver's getting all that energy.  One way to tell is disconnect the cones and run normal program into the tweeter-only speaker in a darkened room and see how much the bulbs are lighting-up  -as well as hearing what exactly the driver is putting-out (there should be a considerable amount of 300-500Hz in a wide-open 1") -comparison to a known-working equivalent will also reveal this.

This is something I encounter often in abused speakers and now check it quickly first before going off on other goose-chases.
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Luke Geis

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2015, 05:14:12 PM »

Hey your still alive! How ya been Craig?

At this point new drivers are in order. And then as mentioned by Craig, do the crossover test and then I would look into how your actually running these things. I believe that anything capable of about 135db should be plenty loud enough to do just about any club, medium sized wedding reception ( 150 people in a 100' X 100' room ), or outdoor show for a crowd of several hundred in the immediate area around the stage. DAS makes some pretty good stuff and while this is their affordable line, it is still a good performer. Get the new drivers, do that test and report back.

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Ivan Beaver

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #8 on: December 03, 2015, 06:55:54 PM »

I think we need some clarification.

You keep saying "fuse bulb".

What is it? A fuse or a light bulb?

They are different and act different.

Do you have a photo?

Are you SURE you are using the correct value for "whatever it is"?
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Paul G. OBrien

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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #9 on: December 03, 2015, 08:03:56 PM »

We use a Peavey PV2800 amp the drive our subs with the crossover set to 150hz
Why 150hz, those 215s should be just fine at 80hz and that may help your problem by reducing the average power level these boxes see, but if you then find you don't have enough mid-highs and find you want to boost them with EQ you will be back to blown HF drivers again.
What is this system being used for, band or DJ? It's possible these 215s would be sufficient for DJ use but a 1" CD won't cut it for live sound and some more demanding canned music types with stronger mid/high content, a double 15 + 1" box is a crippled design to begin with so it's entirely possible you simple don't have enough rig for the gig and nothing you can do with settings will prevent the light bulbs and/or compression drivers from blowing.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2015, 10:02:12 PM by Paul G. OBrien »
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Re: DAS Action 215 speakers fuse bulbs blowing
« Reply #9 on: December 03, 2015, 08:03:56 PM »


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