I keep blowing subs! help!

phredman, If you smelled an electrical burn and your amp did not go into protection your subs over heated.  There could be many factors that could cause this to happen.  Orion amps are very under rated in some cases.  If you remove your sub from the box and it smells like it burnt than you are either over powering your sub or sending massive amounts of distortion to it.  But since you said the amp is turned down it is possible that you are over powering the subs.  The easiest way to resolve this is to get a sub that handles more power or upgrade to a dual sub system.

Another reason that your sub could have burnt out is because of the break in period.  Most subs require hours of play at above average levels but not to be pushed to the max for hours before they actually achieve there best performance.  Can't answer why is this but after talking to varoius sub makers this seems to be a reality.  

Hope that this helps