HELP, Laptop Speakers

[naulgo]

Replaced fried laptop speakers on a Dell Inspiron E1505 Laptop, 2 days later they fried again..speakers don't sound well, barely hear anything and they have fried circuit odor smell. No sign of burn or any damage on speakers, speaker wires and motherboard. Could the motherboard fry the speakers ? Should i try another set of speakers ?
Any suggestion are much appreciate and thank you in advance.

 

[mr m]

I guess we can rule out the driver since the speakers smell burnt but I'd try a set of external speakers or headphones to see how they sound.

Were the replacement speakers new or used? If used I'd buy another speaker assembly. If new they could be defective but I've never seen that or a mobo fry the speakers.

Perhaps the user over-cranked the volume and blew them up.

 

[katz]

speakers don't sound well, barely hear anything and they have fried circuit odor smell

Aside from the burnt smell, I would at least try updating sound drivers. I had a Toshiba in once that had awful sounding speakers, would cut in & out, distorted. You would have sworn they were "fried"/ blown. Turned out to be a driver issue - it's worth a shot.

 

[BuRaK]

Been fixing computers for 15 years and never seen such a thing. Speakers got real hot and burned. They smelly burnt. We got the speakers brand new and their cable does not seem to have any markings that would indicate a short. Super puzzling.

 

[Altster]

Do you still have the speakers? If so, consider opening them up to see if something is amiss in them.

 

[naulgo]

the BIOS and the sound drivers are the first i have updated since i have first changed the speakers.
i opened one of the speakers and doesn't look anything out of the ordinary, no burn marks or damaged wires. the fried smell still persist and is stronger once opened.

 

[NYJimbo]

Hooking up a meter to the wires coming from the mobo to the speakers and watching for voltage spikes or just overall voltage might give you some idea. Most speakers are just two wires so it cant be that tricky.

 

[brandonkick]

Most often what happens is the wire was "shorted" by a screw that nicked one o the wires and the wire was making contact with the screw directly.

Look very carefully at the wiring on the speakers to make sure they weren't nicked and have wire exposed.

Also as jimbo said check the voltage at the pins on the board

 

[MauiTechGuy]

User keeping the volume maxed for extended periods of time playing music (as a "shop radio") perhaps. I have repaired a few laptops that were used in this manner before. One client finally listened and got some external speakers after replacing the built in ones twice (same symptoms, horrible sound with burnt smell).

 

[frederick]

Can the speakers "fry"? YES! oh god yes, done it on purpose multiple times...

The motherboard is covered in voltage regulators, resistors, amplifiers, etc to control signal/electrical noise, regulate voltage, amperage and power, and much more. The things you can do to manipulate electricity. I've see these components go bad, and in the wake cause a little damage to system wide catastrophic failure. But this is so easy to test for, as mentioned before.

New, fresh speakers require a break-in period. Like a car, keep the RPMs low and don't use cruise control for the first 500 miles. If you neglect this break-in period, you will get a burnt smell come strictly from the speaker itself. Has to do with all the glue and things getting really hot and the friction of rigid material. Nothing bad really happens, unless the speakers start some kind scratching noise or some other noise distortion, but this can be caused by blowing the speakers as well.

Thank you degree in electronic and electrical engineering...