wet sounds - help - please

[cguse13]

I have a pair of REV 10 tower speakers/syn 4 amp/ws420/bluetooth/ factory head unit on a 05 210

the set up has worked great for years but this weekend for some reason the tower speakers will only go up to about half of there normal volume.

the sub/ and boat speakers all work great however, they are both on different amps.

Can anyone tell me where or how to start investigating why the tower speakers will not get louder. i can turn the REV 10's up and down they just will not go to max volume you can barely hear them 10 foot behind the boat.

I checked the fuses they look good
I checked the gain still at about 70 percent.
I checked connectors at the tower/speakers/ ws 420 and amp all look good.

Any advice would be a major help

Thanks,
Caleb

[core-rider]

First start at from the speakers and work your way back... Check wiring, check VDC at the battery and amps to make sure you have good voltage, remove the RCAs from the amp and plug an iPod/phone/etc. directly into the amp. It will not be as loud as normal, but should be louder than what you are saying it is now. If that checks out, then move to the RCAs that go from the 420 to the amps to see if there is any change. Work your way back through all components to try and find the potential problem. Call the guys at WS tech support and they might be able to help with testing as well. Good luck!

[MLA]

Do they still sound normal, as in playing full range, just lack of volume? Do the in-boats still seem to play at the same volume they had before? Try swapping the in-boat and tower RCA cables @ the EQ. Any chance at all that a switch or setting, other then the gain, got changed inadvertently?

[cguse13]

they do seem to play full range just lacking the volume, i crawled in and all the amp settings looked the same and the EQ settings looked the same. I will try both of the posted options tonight. Trying to figure out where to start and what to do. I know that it all seams straight forward but sound systems have never been my thing.

I bet the system could be a lot better if someone that knew something looked at it.

[David Analog]

You begin at the end of the signal path when you have noise. For an inoperable problem or a signal problem you begin at the beginning of the signal path and with what is known. You already know that the source unit and RCA leading to the EQ is fine. You already know that the other two EQ zones are fine. So switch the RCAs between the in-boat and tower zone at the EQ. Either the issue stays the same or corrects itself. That result determines whether the problem lies with the EQ or downstream. It's likely that you would have an identical issue with both sides of the RCA cables. If these steps bring your focus to the amplifier, tower speaker harness, or tower speakers then you must isolate each to confirm the problem. It's possible that both tower L & R harness or both L & R tower speakers have the same issue but unlikely. At some point you may need substitutes for the tower amplifier, harness and speakers in order to complete your diagnosis.
Verify with certainty that both channels are misbehaving identically.
Check the amplifier supply voltage at the amplifier primary (+ & -) loaded. An unloaded measurement is useless.
Re-check all the amplifier settings and bridged wiring configuration per the manual.
You are down to testing speakers on a known in-boat amplifier channel.

[David Analog]

Btw, 70% gain for a bridged amplifier into a 4-ohm load with 4 or 5 volts of input gain seems inordinately high. So get in close for a smell check for evidence of burnt voice coils. Try to determine if the horn tweeters are playing at all. Check the DCR of the Rev10 speakers looking for something in the area of 4-ohms and consistency between the two.

[cguse13]

Ok well looks like it was a bad RCA backed the gain off the syn a full turn. Now it hurts to stand in front of them again. Thank you for the help.

[David Analog]

Ok well looks like it was a bad RCA backed the gain off the syn a full turn. Now it hurts to stand in front of them again. Thank you for the help.

So a bad RCA cable that impacted both L & R channels identically?

[cguse13]

It doesn't make much sense to me either. But I swapped them from one amp to the other amp running the boat speakers and then the towers worked fine but the boat speakers did not. Then I replaced the RCA from the amp to the wet sound 420. Then hooked back up the boat speaker RCA to the boat speaker amp and all rocked out like it was supposed to.

I actually think I could back the amp gain down more but it was hard to tell in the storage unit. Is there a trick to setting the gain properly? Your comments about needing to turn it down scares me. it's more important to me for it to run properly / safely than loud.

To be fair some earlier details where missing. I towed the boat 300 miles to bull shoals this weekend and one way it rained like mad. So maybe water did something to the wires? I would not think it would because this has happened to me more than once and never had an issue. Also when we surf it is not uncommon to watch the new drivers drown the front of the boat.


On a side rant I hate getting rained on just spent the last 6 hours cleaning and still need to vacuum and clean windshield.