When you’re trying to listen to an amazing song or enjoy a movie on your home theater projector, nothing can ruin your fun as thoroughly as a blown speaker. The audio will either completely shut off or continue playing with the ever-present hissing accentuating every tone. Honestly, I’m not sure which option would be worse — having lackluster audio or not having any sound at all. With that in mind, I’ve decided to explain how to fix a blown speaker so none of us ever have to deal with these kinds of disruptions again.

Eventually, most speakers will malfunction in one way or another. Will it be
less likely if you buy an expensive set from a reliable manufacturer? Sure. But
even those kinds of products will deteriorate with time.

At that point, you’ll have two options. You
can have a back-and-forth with the
company to get them to replace your speakers. That may be the right choice
to make if you paid an obscene amount of money for them only to have them blow
out immediately. But if you consider yourself a bit of a handyman, you could easily fix the problem yourself.

How Do You Know If One of Your Speakers Is Blown?

Before we discuss the potential symptoms of having a blown speaker, let’s briefly
talk about the anatomy of a speaker. Most speakers have a metal basket that holds the rest of its parts
together. At the bottom of the whole thing, there’s a magnet with a voice coil suspended above it. The voice coil is, in turn, held by the spider, a circular disk that allows it
to move up and down as it receives positive and negative charges.

On top of all that, we have all the external parts of the speaker, which
include:

• A dust cap, which doesn’t have any effect on the sound of the
  speaker. Instead, the primary function of the protruding bubble in the center of the speaker is to prevent dust
  from entering the voice coil.
• A diaphragm, which is usually made of a stiff material, such as paper, plastic, metal, or fiber. The
  angled cone is the part that surrounds the dust cap and is affixed to the coil
  below. So it also moves up and down when the speakers are on.
• A rubber foam suspension surrounding the cone. The flexible ring that
  connects the cone to the top of the basket is otherwise known as the surround. It’s soft, allowing the cone
  to vibrate.

Generally, when people are talking about blown speakers, they’re referring to
physical damage on one of these parts. It could be a rip in the soft foam
surround or a more serious tear in the stiff cone. However, this damage can be accompanied by
malfunctions in one of the hidden parts of the speaker as well.

So how can you tell the difference between
a harmless rip and a more serious problem?

Symptoms of a Blown Speaker

There are different kinds of sound distortions you might hear if you really are dealing with a blown speaker. If the speaker is still playing audio, but you start hearing a hissing or buzzing noise underneath the sound, you may be dealing with a loose voice coil.

If you’re present at the moment when the speaker blows, you might hear a distinct popping noise. And if something has come loose, you might hear a rattling sound, not unlike the one the bass in your vehicle might produce.

As I have explained in the article I’ve
linked to, sometimes inconsistent power
surges can cause your bass to blow your speakers. That can make the voice coil overheat, which can
physically damage the wires. If that happens, you can pretty much say goodbye
to your speakers and start saving up for a new set or at least a replacement
driver.

Another surefire way to tell if you have a
blown speaker would be to gently touch
the cone. If it’s not vibrating as
it should, it may have gotten detached from the coil. Furthermore, if other sound dimensions are missing,
e.g. a certain frequency range is completely gone, the damage may be more
extensive than you originally thought.

Most of the time, you’ll be able to tell at a glance if your speakers are blown, at
least if nothing is blocking your line of sight. More importantly, it shouldn’t
take you long to fix them once you order the tools and replacement parts you
need.

Step-By-Step Guide to Fixing a Blown Speaker

Fixing
a blown speaker isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. Everyone does it in their own way. Some inexplicably do it with
needle and thread, which seems a bit implausible to me. But hey, if it works,
it works!

However, if you’ve never fiddled with your
speakers, you may not even know where to begin. Well, you’ll find a
comprehensive guide right here.

1. Find the Blown Speaker

The first step, as always, is determining which of your speakers is
causing the noise. If you’re dealing with a regular home speaker set,
you’ll be able to see which of the speakers needs repairs. However, if the speakers have a cover or a grille
you don’t want to take off unnecessarily, there are other ways to find the
malfunctioning one.

For example, you can simply disconnect each of the individual speakers
from the subwoofer one at a time. Eventually, you’ll find the black sheep
by listening for the symptoms of blown speakers I’ve mentioned above.

On the other hand, if you’re working with a
speaker set that’s not as easy to disconnect, you could use the equalizer. More
specifically, you’ll need to find the
balance control feature. So if you suspect that one of the speakers in your
vehicle has blown, try to shift the
balance from the left-side speakers to the right to see where the noise is
coming from.

You could also turn up the volume slightly to hear if the noise will worsen. Don’t
overdo it — that could blow one of the other speakers.

And, of course, you’ll have to play something while you run this test.
I recommend sticking to tunes you know by heart. That will allow you to hear
any discrepancies caused by the speaker’s damages.

2. Find the Problem

Once you have a viable suspect, you’ll want
to double-check if that’s the one you’re looking for. If you can’t examine the surround and the cone because of a faceplate,
carefully unscrew it. Some speakers have fabric covers, which you’ll have
to loosen without tearing them. After you get it off, you should be able to see
rips or at least feel that something isn’t right by gently touching the cone.

If your suspicions were correct, it’s time
to take the speaker out of its case,
whether that’s a simple box or the car door. But first: remember to turn the car completely off or unplug the speaker from the
electrical outlet.

Before you get the driver out of its case,
you’ll have to detach two wires.
They’ll probably be red and black and similarly labeled on the driver itself.
If they’re not, make sure to mark which
wire went where. If you cross them later, the speaker will sound really
strange, to say the least.

Once
you have the driver in the palm of your hand, the first thing you should do is
sniff it. You read that right! If the coil is overheated or melted, you
should be able to smell it. If you detect a burnt odor, you may have to order a new driver or at least recone
the speaker.

3. Prep the Area and Order Replacements

After taking a quick look at the speaker
you just took out, you’ll have to clean it. It’ll probably have months if not
years of dust on it. But a quick
wipe-down with alcohol-soaked pads and cotton swabs should do the trick.

When you have the speaker squeaky clean, you can finally check out the damage. If the surround is torn, you’ll have to order a new one. Speakers generally come in standard sizes so you should be able to find the part you need easily. Before you look anywhere else, check if the manufacturer of your speakers sells replacement parts.

If you buy a foam surround repair kit, it may include an adhesive and a brush as well. You’re going to use those to attach the foam to the cone after cutting and scraping away the previous surround.

But if
the cone is torn, you’ll have to patch
it up somehow or buy a new one. And that can be more expensive than you’d
think. Since the cone is connected to the voice coil, you’ll essentially have
to buy a whole new driver.

4. Install the New Surround

When your new surround arrives, you’ll have to remove the previous one completely before you stick it on. You can scrape off the foam residue with a scalpel or a razor before soaking the cone and the basket edges with 70% isopropyl alcohol to get rid of those last traces of glue. Once everything is clean, you can smear your adhesive on the inner lip of your new surround and attach it to the flat outer edge of the cone.

Once that cures, you’ll have to attach the outer lip of the surround to the basket without moving the voice coil. There are two ways to make sure that the voice coil stays put while you do your thing. If you get a dust cap replacement as well, you can do the shim method like the guy in this video.

You’ll need to take the existing dust cap
off without damaging the cone, then slide thin plastic shims on all sides of
the coil. When the outer lip of the surround cures, you can take the shims out
and put in the new dust cap.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to go to the trouble of putting in a new dust cap, you can play a low-frequency tone through the speakers while you center the outer lip of the surround as demonstrated in this video.

5. Patch the Cone

If you have a rip in your paper cone, you
can just use paper to repair it. It’s a great quick-fix for tears of all sizes, but not really a permanent solution if
you’re looking for peak performance.

In any case, if you want to try it out, you’ll need a paper tissue and Elmer’s glue. Separate a layer of the tissue and rip it to your desired dimension. As you’ll see in this video, ripping is better than cutting because it allows the paper to blend into the cone.

Holding the paper in your hand, soak it with the glue until it’s nice and
mushy. Then, apply to the tear in
the cone. If possible, do the same thing on the bottom side of the cone. After
it dries, you can hit it with a flat or
matte black spray or leave it as is, if you don’t mind the haphazard
appearance.

I’ve also seen people use a similar method
but without the tissue. They dilute glue
with warm water and use a painter’s brush to apply the mixture directly to the
cone. When it dries, the cone should
be a bit stiffer, and any small tears should be fused. However, that
probably won’t do the trick if you’re dealing with larger tears.

6. Recone Your Driver

The
most invasive thing you can do to fix your speaker would
be to recone it. That means that you’ll need to cut out the cone, coil, and spider before implanting new ones and
topping it all off with a new surround. It’s a great solution if more than
one of those parts are damaged. But before you order all those parts, you
should consider the cost.

If you’re trying to salvage expensive Hi-Fi speakers, sending it to a repair
shop or installing new parts yourself may be more cost-effective than buying
new speakers. It allows you to skirt the
cost of the metal basket, magnet, and speaker box. But if the replacement
is more expensive than the speakers were, just buy a new set instead.

7. Do a Speaker Test and Reinstall the Driver

Finally, before you put the driver back
into the speaker box or your vehicle, you’ll want to do one final test. It’ll
essentially be the same frequency test we saw in one of the videos I’ve linked
to above. After making sure that the
driver is fully functional, you can reinstall it, making sure to hook the wires
into the proper connectors.

Get Back to Blasting Your Tunes

As you can see, there are different ways to
fix your speaker, even if it appears to be beyond repair. Now, you just need to make sure they don’t blow again any time
soon by:

• Not maxing out the volume. Remember, overpowering your speakers can lead to anything from surround tears to coil damage.
• Getting a subwoofer. Don’t put all the pressure on your regular drivers when a subwoofer can provide a much richer sound.
• Soundproof the room or your vehicle, so you have an easier time hearing the speakers in the first place.

But even
regular use can eventually lead to this kind of wear and tear. Fortunately,
you now have all the tools you need to deal with the next blown speaker you
encounter.