Hi folks.
Is anyone on this forum using ElectroVoice ZXA1 8” 800W speakers?
What's your experience of those speakers, and the suppliers?

I can tell a short story. We in our band did save money to by more professional sound gear, instead of the cheap, close to ”no-name” things we have use since long. We bought two of these 8” as stage monitors and two EV ELX112P powered speakers on top of our powered sub's in our FOH kit. In that way we no longer had to carry the heavy ampracks and speaker cabinets anymore. Nice!

These stagemonitors are used in the front row of our stage setup and are connected via balanced XLRcables to the monitor output on our mixer. It's a line level signal at +12 dBu.

The second time we used this gear on stage one of the monitors suddenly got a 'muddy' sound. Afterwards we found out that it had lost the output from the tweeter.
We took the speaker - bought in February this year, i.e. still under warranty - back to the vendor, JAM, here in Sweden. They confirmed the warranty and wanted some days to take a closer look. Some weeks later we called them and they told us that the speaker had been send to Germany ? for repair.

This week we asked again and got the information that the speaker is now repaired BUT WE HAVE TO PAY SEK 1 500 plus VAT for the repair, as the damage is not covered by warranty!? The workorder say that the amp had been damaged because the speaker has been played too loud?!?!

How is that possible, this speaker has an inbuilt amp and both the linelevel input and the mastervol potis were set at 75%?? ElectroVoice has designed their own power amplifier inside the speaker so it must be capable to run at 100% setting, or maybe I'm wrong.
The stage monitor signal we sent into these are ways below the level to get any amp to be fried!

We are a 4 man band with a tight budget so we now have to admit we made a mistake to choose ElectroVoice, and the music store - JAM - here in Sweden is no longer our preferred supplier!

I must say we had more customer oriented support from the webshops and others selling the other brands we've been using before!

Has anyone else here in this forum had a similar experience?

Based on this expensive experience I can recommend members in this forum from Sweden to doublecheck the warranty terms if you buy from JAM!

Warm regards
Aulis G

You are indeed wrong in making such an assumption.

There can be TRANSIENTS in the audio signal that easily exceed the amplifier and/or driver ratings, there can also be a condition where the input signal is CLIPPING -- a condition that means more "ON" time for the soundwave -- and this can blow drivers and even amplifiers, especially tweeters because the clipped wave looks like DC to the voice coils, which means that the extra time the coil is ON means the coil will have to dissipate more heat and heat can take its toll, eventually damaging the driver. If the Voice Coil shorts from this heat damage, rather than fail as an open circuit, that can create a condition where the amplifier is now having to drive a lower Impedance than it is designed to handle, which means that the amplifier will try to deliver more Current than its output devices can handle and they will eventually be destroyed.

The power ratings for such systems are not to be viewed as absolute values due to the nature of sound. There are average values, but along with the average values there are also Peaks inherent in reproducing audio and those peaks must be accounted for as well.

On top of all that, audio power in Watts is not a linear translation. In other words, a few more Watts, or even twice as many watts, does not directly translate as being "twice as loud". The Decibel scale shows us mathematically that small differences in amplifier power are meaningless in the real world. Thus a 200 Watt amplifier is not going to be able to be twice as loud as a 100 Watt amplifier. Matter of fact, it would be very hard for the human ear to detect any difference in loudness between the two if both are operated properly. Makes no difference if the amplifier is built into the speaker cabinet or separate, the situation remains the same.

A good analogy would be your automobile.

Just because you CAN put your foot onto the accelerator of your automobile when in Neutral and hold it down to the floor does not mean that you SHOULD do such a thing, for it would be a recipe for mechanical disaster.


--Mac

What Mac said.And also one of the reasons I don't really care for powered speakers and why ,contrary to popular belief,I also say more dame is likely to happen from too little power then too much power.I run a 1000 watts into a pair of 10" tops that I believe are rated at 100 watts RMS.Those speakers will never see clipped signals or transients. Heck I don't even think the amps run hard enough for the fans to come on.Just back off the amps control by 10dB.

My strong reaction in this case is that the signal from the monitor output on the mixer was low, as we only send the vocals to these stage monitors. The second 8” speaker is connected to the master out on the first (daisychained). We dont play on huge stages and we keep all volumes low, as we play mostly for older people, in rest homes, afternoon dances, sometimes weddings, etc.

I agree with both of you that a too strong signal into the amp could cause clipping, with DC to the tweeter coil. But this tweeter or tweeter amp just died silently reproducing the singers voice.

Btw, both of our old power amps (Crown 600W) has a DC protection circuit cutting the output to protect the speakers. I think that the latest technology in these EV also has such system.

Aulis G

Well it doesn't sound like you were over working them. I would contact EV directly on this.

The EVs have DC protection circuitry as well.

A clipped waveform cannot always be detected by the DC protection circuitry though, because it is not in the ON state long enough to be detected as DC. If we design the protection stage such that it is that sensitive, it would be kicking in during the music performance and thus cutting out the sound.

I think you should contact EV directly on this as an unsatisfied customer, politely, without accusation, explain concisely the situation and ask them what they can do to alleviate your situation, perhaps reimbursement, of course, these issues also depend upon the laws concerning warranty and those do differ from country to country. I am really only familiar with the US warranty regulations.

There can indeed be circuit fault situations that could lead to the observation of a burned tweeter coil and a technician could make the erroneous assumption that the situation could be due to abuse when it in reality was due to circuit fault.

Here in the US, working at the test bench for various mfr's, we typically have to give the customer the benefit of the doubt, replacing components under warranty regardless of what we lowly repair technicians think may have been the reason for failure. That is in large part due to the Moss-Magnuson Act, which is a Federal Law situation, passed back in the 70s as Consumer Protection. Check the legal situation in your country about such things before contacting manufacturers for redress possibilities.


--Mac

I love EV speakers.

We used them in our PA system and they were excellent performers and rarely gave us problems.

NO.... you should NEVER run any audio gear at 100% ...never.

If you select the gear so that you only push it 70% or so, it will last forever and you will rarely blow amps, speakers, or horns.

I have played in many loud bands and I can count on one hand all the speakers that were ever blown because we only ran the gear at 70% of what it could do.

EV and JBL are 2 excellent choices and we used both.

Very likely they opened the tweeter and found the coil to be burned indicating it was fried.

BTW: one day you will regret playing that loud.... trust me on this one.

I think the OP has clarified the situation and stated that they were NOT playing loud when the fault happened, they were actually playing at a senior citizen's gig, not likely a pressure-cooker situation at all.

Faults that blow drivers, amps and other compnonents can indeed happen and it does not necessarily have to be something that the user did wrong.


--Mac

EV have recently made some claims that one of their lines is now the most popular in sound reinforcement (Facebook page), perhaps the demand has overwhelmed their customer support.

Here's an interesting news article from EV on outfitting a huge arena in Sweden: http://www.electrovoice.com/pressrelease.php?id=1533

Gardemark, here is the contact information (i svensk) for the distributor in Sverige: http://www.standardaudio.se/

As others have mentioned, speak with them. It does look like service for EV products in Europe is carried out in Germany. Bosch is the parent company now for EV products, and of course you are aware that they are Germany's largest privately held company - at least that was the case when I worked for them from 85-93 (Prior to their purchase of EV).

-Scott

I hung a white single EV unpowered passive 15" plus horn cabinet as a single-point-source in a church installation back in the late 80s.

It is still going strong.


--Mac

I like some EV gear very much. My fave mic in my tiny mic locker is a dynamic EV PL80a microphone. Pretty dang hot microphone for a dynamic, with a relatively low noise floor to my ear.

-Scott

When the factory service person declares it WAS the user's fault that equipment blew, how do they know? In an Apple iPhone, if it falls in the water, there is an indicator, so there is proof. But here, what (besides ethics) is to prevent EV from blaming the problem on the customer to avoid having to cover the repair? Just curious.

I can only put forth a guess, likely observations such as voice coil and surround that are discolored from heat that exceeds what could supposedly happen in normal operation. Still, at some point that sounds to me like a judgement call when the speaker is brand new and the warranty should apply IMO.


--Mac

I missed the part in the post where they were on the second gig and mostly play for older folks in retirement centers.

Nothing should blow up or burn out on the second gig at lower volume.

There is a possibility however, that someone perhaps plugged something in improperly resulting in a loud pop through the system, or turned something on in the wrong sequence....

In our PA, it was always amps on last, off first.... then the board and the FX rack. One time the roadies turned the amp rack on first then flipped the switch on the board and FX rack..... Whoomp.... some roadies got their butts chewed that day. Fastest way to bust a cone or a tweeter known to man.

Very likely something just went wrong... a factory defect or something like that, and the company didn't want to honor the warrantee. That doesn't sound like something EV would do but it didn't appear to be a factory repair, but rather from an independently owned "authorized" repair shop. The dealer didn't want to, or didn't have the ability to repair it so they sent it to the closest shop as opposed to returning it to the factory. Shipping to the factory would likely have been more expensive so they chose the non-factory repair route.

An inexperienced tech or a lazy tech simply denied the claim and sold a new part claiming it was not covered by the warrantee.

I would certainly contact the factory/HQ and raise this issue with them describing in detail what happened and how you, as a "valuable and loyal" customer was treated. When you take it to the top, things will happen because they don't want bad street cred and people talking bad about their service and gear.

Just a thought..... follow up with the HQ/ customer service folks. Tell them your story and send copies of the repair bill and purchase invoice.

And another thing: there were two speakers, and only one failed. Had Gardemark sent some signal loud enough to blow one tweeter, why wasn't the other one fried as well?

There is no way to investigate properly via an internet forum.


--Mac

yep

Of course. But it's a question Gardemark should ask the tech.

Not necessarily...... I've had plenty of speakers blow over the years hooked up to the same level of power.....as in 4 speakers in a guitar cab and one blows while 3 keep on trucking..... just the weakest link theory.

This story ended in a deal with the local ElectroVoice rep.
We had to pay for a new tweeter, as the coil had turned blue due to ??? and that ??? caused an open circuit. The amp was OK.
We also found out that the unit was sent to Germany for repair because it was cheaper to have it done down there.

We still have no idea what has caused this. We have not experienced any pops, scrunch or screeching feedback - but we will for sure live with the rule “amps on last” and “off first” because it’s the only thing we aren’t sure we have followed. Maybe a mic or line cable has been connected or disconnected to the mixer while the monitors were turned on?

Well, it's the end of this story, the thread is now closed.

Best regards
Aulis G