FI Sp4 On Fire.. Warranty?

[jonbearsmt 919]

i hear ya  im just telling you what i know...  he has had all those subs and more, and the SP4 is the only one that went up in flames.... and this guy did not run sundown amps.

[NDMstang65 403]

Not sure what else to do..it's not a problem with the SP4, there's thousands of speakers out there with that exact same setup.

 

Too much power? Leaned on something a little too long? Some new music could have had some funky stuff in it that's notched out that pissed something off..it's hard to tell.

 

If it were a manufacturing or design issue they'd all fail. We're talking 7 subs here, out of thousands, 6 all have one family of amplifiers in common, and 1 outlier.

[Godsmack 361]

I just fail to understand no matter how well its been explained that the area of the leads seems to be the ignition area, the coil looks fine, and the amp has has no issues on other subwoofers.

Again man, just curious. Topics like these are how we as car audio nuts learn.

J

[djjdnap 78]

I think i saw this on an American bass sub a while back dont remember.

 

But y not put heat shrink around the sand-witched leads?

 

What is the flame retardent chemical rated at vs heat shrink?

[NDMstang65 403]

They are not sandwiched on the 4" stuff, it is round lead that is sewn on top of the spider with completely flame resistant materials..

 

You can not heat shrink the entire lead, If you did that then the heat shrink would melt becauase of the insane amounts of heat and then it would have a pool of melted heat shrink tube that I am sure will burn. The problem is the lead is getting so hot that it is making materials that don't burn..smolder then when it flops about and moves it creates flames. You have to make the tinsel lead turn orange and glow to get it to do it. The lead is significantly larger than the wire on the coil...

 

[Godsmack 361]

How are the spiders held together? Is the adhesive fire retardent too? The stitching on the leads as well?

I just have never seen leads get that hot to glow orange in my life.

J

[NDMstang65 403]

The only time anything will burn on that assembly is if you hold an open flame on it, or get it so hot that it glows. They will glow if you inductively heat them via RF noise from the mosfets that aren't filtered out of these amplifiers..the coil doesn't care, as it is outside of the resonant frequency of the coil. The lead wire is another story though.

 

Thread, everything is flame resistant.

[nem 2,019]

I saw this on an audiopipe 1500 and a gcon. Those leads were red and I was dumb enough to touch them and yes I got a nice burn like a dumbass. I call it toaster elementing.

[Godsmack 361]

Any update on this?

Just curious.

J

[KyleBrown 121]

The stitching on the leads could have come loose and touched a few times. Then bam! fire!

[djjdnap 78]

heat shrink-  -55 to 220 °C ----428 degrees Fahrenheit

solder- solders needs at least 217 degree C to melt.

 

i cant find any flame retardant specs, other than it being a heat to duration specification.

 

That is pretty dam hot, im still curious as to the flame retardant specs

[NDMstang65 403]

We don't use any heat shrink on them..if they are glowing the tinsel leads it's going to do nothing but melt off of the lead as is and cause more isses, aside from that the special thread that is used can not bite the lead as well with heat shrink put on it..so then you'll have loose tinsel leads flapping about because they will work their way out of the thread that holds it on the spider.

 

I can put a soldering iron that's 950 degrees on a spider and it will not burn..same with every other part that is on there.

[rizzo30 4]

You mentioned that you used a scope to set your gains.  What type of test done did you use?  Meaning what frequency and what db level was it?  In example, I use a  tone -6 db 40 HZ tone to set the gains on my T2500-1bdcp amps which are connected to my FI Qs.  I'm just curious about that since I had some FI Qs start on fire myself once.  A friend of mine also had some RE Audio XXXs start on fire one time.  We started to think that it was just an FI/RE thing, but them I bought an oscilloscope and it told me otherwise   If you use too loud of a tone, it can either push the amp too far into clipping, or just simply over power the sub.  Usually its much easier to send the amp into clipping with an amplifier thats just too small than it is to just smoke a sub with too much power.  Let us know the loudness of that tone and it could possibly explain what was going on.

[benbenondatrack 2]

it was a 50 hz test tone at -6 db if i recall..but here is the kicker. since this incident i have not changed any settings and have been running a hdc4 15 with no issues..also a dd 9515 for some time. this whole situation left a sour taste in my mouth but its what i expected..working in customer care my self, most companies dont take ownership of sitations but its the way it is. Maybe i can afford another sp4 or team fi sub one day..i do however believe this was not my fault, and if you guys are saying that there are only 6 cases of this issue, isnt it possible that out of the thousands of subs produced, it is bound to be a few that have defects?i think this sitation could have been handled betterq

[benbenondatrack 2]

it was a 50 hz test tone at -6 db if i recall..but here is the kicker. since this incident i have not changed any settings and have been running a hdc4 15 with no issues..also a dd 9515 for some time. this whole situation left a sour taste in my mouth but its what i expected..working in customer care my self, most companies dont take ownership of sitations but its the way it is. Maybe i can afford another sp4 or team fi sub one day..i do however believe this was not my fault, and if you guys are saying that there are only 6 cases of this issue, isnt it possible that out of the thousands of subs produced, it is bound to be a few that have defects?i think this sitation could have been handled better by fi, but it is what it is.

[shizzzon 461]

I'm not the electrical guru of electronics here but i've messed around with some AQ's and DD's in the past and know they have very high, i believe it's called inductance.

 

Basically, it takes a lot of power amp-wise to get a decent amount of power to these types of subs.  They share high impedance curves which are still the highest i've ever seen before from anything else i've messed with in the past.

 

This alone can be the reason why the soft parts on those subs are not failing.  I am willing to bet(although impossible to prove now) that a direct sub swap, the SP4 would be receiving, measurably, more power than the DDs or AQs are.

[benbenondatrack 2]

well now i am running a AB VFL 500.1 on the hdc4 so im doing fine. i just miss the fi. its my fav. brand

[rizzo30 4]

it was a 50 hz test tone at -6 db if i recall..but here is the kicker. since this incident i have not changed any settings and have been running a hdc4 15 with no issues..also a dd 9515 for some time. this whole situation left a sour taste in my mouth but its what i expected..working in customer care my self, most companies dont take ownership of sitations but its the way it is. Maybe i can afford another sp4 or team fi sub one day..i do however believe this was not my fault, and if you guys are saying that there are only 6 cases of this issue, isnt it possible that out of the thousands of subs produced, it is bound to be a few that have defects?i think this sitation could have been handled better by fi, but it is what it is.

I looked at your very first post and you mentioned that you had set your gains with a scope and had no clipping. By setting your amp with a -6 db tone, you are asking your amp to produce 4x its output. By doing that, that actually does mean that you are clipping during the peaks unfortunately. I hate to say this, but you have actually over powered your sub. Your sub sould be powered with 7500 watts RMS so that way you can properly reach your peaks wthout the amps going into clipping. By using a -6 db tone, you have accually tried to give your sub 12,000 watts RMS at its highest peak while it should be powered with only 7500 watts RMS at its highest peak. What I mean is is that by setting that 3000 watt amp at -6, you tried to output 12,000 watts RMS which is too much power. You should have actually had the amp set closer to - 3 or -4 db and then the amp would have been properly set for how the sub is rated. At -3 db we should get double the output which is roughly 6000 watts RMS at its highest peak which is pretty close to the target of 7500 watts RMS. Hope this makes sense. The gain was just turned a tad too high and thats why the sub blew.

By the way, to find the max power of your sub during its peak, you want to take its RMS power which is 3000 watts and multiply that by 2.5 which is roughly how much higher a peak is compared to the non peak. By taking 3000 x 2.5 is how I got 7500 which should be the max power applied to the sub in order to fully power it.

Edited July 17, 2013 by rizzo30

[ramteid 17]

it was a 50 hz test tone at -6 db if i recall..but here is the kicker. since this incident i have not changed any settings and have been running a hdc4 15 with no issues..also a dd 9515 for some time. this whole situation left a sour taste in my mouth but its what i expected..working in customer care my self, most companies dont take ownership of sitations but its the way it is. Maybe i can afford another sp4 or team fi sub one day..i do however believe this was not my fault, and if you guys are saying that there are only 6 cases of this issue, isnt it possible that out of the thousands of subs produced, it is bound to be a few that have defects?i think this sitation could have been handled better by fi, but it is what it is.

I looked at your very first post and you mentioned that you had set your gains with a scope and had no clipping. By setting your amp with a -6 db tone, you are asking your amp to produce 4x its output. By doing that, that actually does mean that you are clipping during the peaks unfortunately. I hate to say this, but you have actually over powered your sub. Your sub sould be powered with 7500 watts RMS so that way you can properly reach your peaks wthout the amps going into clipping. By using a -6 db tone, you have accually tried to give your sub 12,000 watts RMS at its highest peak while it should be powered with only 7500 watts RMS at its highest peak. What I mean is is that by setting that 3000 watt amp at -6, you tried to output 12,000 watts RMS which is too much power. You should have actually had the amp set closer to - 3 or -4 db and then the amp would have been properly set for how the sub is rated. At -3 db we should get double the output which is roughly 6000 watts RMS at its highest peak which is pretty close to the target of 7500 watts RMS. Hope this makes sense. The gain was just turned a tad too high and thats why the sub blew.

By the way, to find the max power of your sub during its peak, you want to take its RMS power which is 3000 watts and multiply that by 2.5 which is roughly how much higher a peak is compared to the non peak. By taking 3000 x 2.5 is how I got 7500 which should be the max power applied to the sub in order to fully power it.

Why do you think that using a -6db tone is asking the amp to produce 4x its power?

[rizzo30 4]

 

it was a 50 hz test tone at -6 db if i recall..but here is the kicker. since this incident i have not changed any settings and have been running a hdc4 15 with no issues..also a dd 9515 for some time. this whole situation left a sour taste in my mouth but its what i expected..working in customer care my self, most companies dont take ownership of sitations but its the way it is. Maybe i can afford another sp4 or team fi sub one day..i do however believe this was not my fault, and if you guys are saying that there are only 6 cases of this issue, isnt it possible that out of the thousands of subs produced, it is bound to be a few that have defects?i think this sitation could have been handled better by fi, but it is what it is.

I looked at your very first post and you mentioned that you had set your gains with a scope and had no clipping. By setting your amp with a -6 db tone, you are asking your amp to produce 4x its output. By doing that, that actually does mean that you are clipping during the peaks unfortunately. I hate to say this, but you have actually over powered your sub. Your sub sould be powered with 7500 watts RMS so that way you can properly reach your peaks wthout the amps going into clipping. By using a -6 db tone, you have accually tried to give your sub 12,000 watts RMS at its highest peak while it should be powered with only 7500 watts RMS at its highest peak. What I mean is is that by setting that 3000 watt amp at -6, you tried to output 12,000 watts RMS which is too much power. You should have actually had the amp set closer to - 3 or -4 db and then the amp would have been properly set for how the sub is rated. At -3 db we should get double the output which is roughly 6000 watts RMS at its highest peak which is pretty close to the target of 7500 watts RMS. Hope this makes sense. The gain was just turned a tad too high and thats why the sub blew.

By the way, to find the max power of your sub during its peak, you want to take its RMS power which is 3000 watts and multiply that by 2.5 which is roughly how much higher a peak is compared to the non peak. By taking 3000 x 2.5 is how I got 7500 which should be the max power applied to the sub in order to fully power it.

Why do you think that using a -6db tone is asking the amp to produce 4x its power?

 

I don't "think" that its causing the amp to put out 4x of its power, but I know for a fact that it does because 6db equals 4x.  If you set a 1000 watt RMS amp at -6 db, it will try to put out 4000 watts RMS at its highest peak.  Its not what I think, thats just how amps work.  If you set a 1000 watt amp at -3 db it will try to put out 2000 watts.  For every 3 db of increase power doubles.  You start at 3000, and it goes to 6000 at 3db.  At 6 db we double once again which brings 6000 to 12,000.  Just how it works my friend.

[shizzzon 461]

um no...

 

You are providing information based on paper.

 

The real world is different.

 

Peaks in music are so fast that it doesn't effect a speaker whatsoever.

 

You are implying every 3db gain, power doubles.. Nope.

 

Typically it takes more than double the power to increase 3db.  

 

Go out and test yourself, -6 -3 and 0db tones and measure power output on same volume level of a SONG

Do NOT use peak hold or your results will be void.

 

And yes i will allow clamp tests since it's the same technique used to measure all tests.

[ramteid 17]

it was a 50 hz test tone at -6 db if i recall..but here is the kicker. since this incident i have not changed any settings and have been running a hdc4 15 with no issues..also a dd 9515 for some time. this whole situation left a sour taste in my mouth but its what i expected..working in customer care my self, most companies dont take ownership of sitations but its the way it is. Maybe i can afford another sp4 or team fi sub one day..i do however believe this was not my fault, and if you guys are saying that there are only 6 cases of this issue, isnt it possible that out of the thousands of subs produced, it is bound to be a few that have defects?i think this sitation could have been handled better by fi, but it is what it is.

I looked at your very first post and you mentioned that you had set your gains with a scope and had no clipping. By setting your amp with a -6 db tone, you are asking your amp to produce 4x its output. By doing that, that actually does mean that you are clipping during the peaks unfortunately. I hate to say this, but you have actually over powered your sub. Your sub sould be powered with 7500 watts RMS so that way you can properly reach your peaks wthout the amps going into clipping. By using a -6 db tone, you have accually tried to give your sub 12,000 watts RMS at its highest peak while it should be powered with only 7500 watts RMS at its highest peak. What I mean is is that by setting that 3000 watt amp at -6, you tried to output 12,000 watts RMS which is too much power. You should have actually had the amp set closer to - 3 or -4 db and then the amp would have been properly set for how the sub is rated. At -3 db we should get double the output which is roughly 6000 watts RMS at its highest peak which is pretty close to the target of 7500 watts RMS. Hope this makes sense. The gain was just turned a tad too high and thats why the sub blew.

By the way, to find the max power of your sub during its peak, you want to take its RMS power which is 3000 watts and multiply that by 2.5 which is roughly how much higher a peak is compared to the non peak. By taking 3000 x 2.5 is how I got 7500 which should be the max power applied to the sub in order to fully power it.

Why do you think that using a -6db tone is asking the amp to produce 4x its power?

I don't "think" that its causing the amp to put out 4x of its power, but I know for a fact that it does because 6db equals 4x. If you set a 1000 watt RMS amp at -6 db, it will try to put out 4000 watts RMS at its highest peak. Its not what I think, thats just how amps work. If you set a 1000 watt amp at -3 db it will try to put out 2000 watts. For every 3 db of increase power doubles. You start at 3000, and it goes to 6000 at 3db. At 6 db we double once again which brings 6000 to 12,000. Just how it works my friend.

Just because a song has a peak a -1 does not mean that the average or "rms" of the song is -1, it will usually be -7 to -12 usually, while the average of that -6 tone is most likely -9. It all depends on how much compression and etc... I have songs that peak higher than others but are not allowed. Anyway, go try out what shizzon posted.

[rizzo30 4]

um no...

 

You are providing information based on paper.

 

The real world is different.

 

Peaks in music are so fast that it doesn't effect a speaker whatsoever.

 

You are implying every 3db gain, power doubles.. Nope.

 

Typically it takes more than double the power to increase 3db.  

 

Go out and test yourself, -6 -3 and 0db tones and measure power output on same volume level of a SONG

Do NOT use peak hold or your results will be void.

 

And yes i will allow clamp tests since it's the same technique used to measure all tests.

 

I already have tested it.  If you want to agree or not, 6db equals 4x.  This is not a warranty issue.  This is abuse.  He turned his gain up too high.  Its as simple as that.  If he would have had it turned down lower such as by using a -3 or -4 db tone such as I already mentioned, then the sub would not have blown.  However, he gave it too much power by turning the gain up a bit more so therefor it blew.  It doesn't really matter if you want to agree or not.  The sub blew from getting more power than what it was made to handle.  Scott said that it was damaged from abuse and he is right.  So therefor like Scott said, this is not a warranty issue but its a customer abuse issue.  The sub just needs to be reconed which actually is not all that difficult, and then from there on the user just needs to set the gains at the proper setting so that this does not happen again.

[rizzo30 4]

Here is some info for you guys.

Notice where he says that a -6 db tone will cause a 1000 watt amp to put out 4000 watts.

 

http://www.caraudio.com/forums/amplifiers/476748-what-difference-between-0db-3db-6db-etc-test-tones-2.html#post7116863

 

"lol a 0db test tone means it's recorded at reference level, 0 decibels
below the peak level capable of being recorded onto a cd. a -6 tone is
6db's quieter than that. If a tone at 0db's puts out 1000 watts from
the amp, a -6 tone will put out 4000. So yes, a 0db tone is louder than
a -6, so gains will be lower with a 0db for the same output. If you
set gains with a 0db tone, your gains will be very low and you wont' see
much power out of the amp on any tone other than a 0db peak on a
recording. setting at -3 or -6 means you'll get close to RMS power at
the normal parts of the song. SPL guys set gains with tones because
they are pushing things to the absolute limits and will be burping with
that exact tone. Granted I come from more of a SQ oriented mindset,
where people know how to properly use their equipment and dont' tend to
overdrive things constantly. If your that scared, use a 0db tone, just
dont' wonder why that that tone got loud but as soon as you pop in a cd,
everything is quiet. Techically anythign other than a 0db tone will
probably clip part of the time, but that also guarantees you'l never see
alot of the power from the amp either. If you don't trust your ears
and find 0db is really quiet try a -3."

[shizzzon 461]

in the real world, it doesnt.

 

Also, because he turned the gain up doesn't mean that's why it got damaged.

 

I agree it was killed thermally but i dont care if he had a 2000w or a 10000w amp.

 

That doesnt matter.

Thermal ability is based on current, time and heat.

 

If you know how to monitor\control them, then gain settings and setting your amp to such and such db reference is irrelevant.