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simplyAl

DJ
Aug 9, 2006
2,367
8
51
Phoenix, AZ
Satuday Night a fellow DJ had some Issues with
his Sound. For about an Hour durring his event
one of his Mackie 450 Speakers kept dropping in
volume & coming back up within seconds, No stactic,
muffled or change in sound, just a drop in volume.

There was a definite audible difference with the
one speaker, as backup that night the only option
he had was to switch out consoles. (No backup speakers)

Does anyone know what could make this happen??
 
Hey Al.

I don't know a whole lot about powered speakers but my first guess would be a power problem of some sort. With no change in sound aside from the drop in volume I would also guess the issue was in the speaker transformer or something else would show the problem also.
 
Have a power conditioner w/meter for my console, speakers were plugged into the
same 110 outlet, never saw a dip in power on the Meter. Inly one speaker was
having the Issue
 
Brother Al,

Did swapping consoles make a difference?

Reason I ask... with active cabs, a faulty input signal could cause faulty output.

Just a thought. :)
 
The 450s have a limiter built in that will send it into protection mode... Was the protection light lit? Was the grill hot? Mackie 450s are notoriously known to overhead in certain conditions.

Of course as already mentioned, did you check sufficient power? As for volume difference could be limiter or gain setting on back of Mackie 450
 
The speaker may have been engaging a protection circuit. These can be triggered by several things, including "thermal", which has been known to malfunction from time to time on various units. Does the unit function normally now? Did it run normally for a few hours before it began the dropouts? Can you duplicate the problem?

Ben
 
Started to drop in & out at the start of the night (for about one hour)
After Dinner all was fine
switching Consoles didn't make a difference

Could it possible be an issue with the XLR Cable
I'm gonna hve to run more tests
 
eklondon said:
... Could it possibly be an issue with the XLR Cable?
Click to expand...
From what I'm reading, that's not likely. A line cable wouldn't cause the issue you describe. Cables either work or they don't.

Since you've already ruled out the console, I would suspect the speaker cabinet.
 
Travis,

This is true. However, in the case of an intermittent short or loose connection, the condition as described would be highly unlikely.

Remember, the volume dipped then came back. An intermittent cable issue would more likely cause humming or no sound at all. And it wouldn't likely have gone away later.

Just some thoughts. :)
 
wasn't power as the other speaker was in the same outlet
and no drops in Power conditioner readings on console
 
Okay, this might be the solution here, took me a while to pull this outta my memory bank...

Question: When did you get these mackies?
If you read on over at the mackie boards you can see some other users occasionally have these problems, the issue, the temperature sensor goes haywire and causes the unit to shut down at times. It may stop, it may continue, it may continually get worse.

This problem has been reported on some models (and batches/runs) of mackie's products. However I'd call mackie (warning: long wait time may occur) to find out exactly if this is the problem.

Question: Did it seem as if the speakers were ducking (ie lowering volume intentionally) as if it was lowering during certain notes, frequencies?

Try this, have that speaker on and turn the gain all the way up, and try what you did to get it to clip or limit. Be sure to play the music at performance level when you do. Also experiment with the low-cut feature, on and off. This could revel some explanations.
 
eklondon said:
wasn't power as the other speaker was in the same outlet
and no drops in Power conditioner readings on console
Click to expand...

Al it might not show on the conditioner if the power problem was inside the speaker. The power would be going in but not being recieved at the transformer
 
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