front component caught on fire

i have focal components up front, the driver side door mid woofer caught fire and the tweet is ruined also. they are ran off of a kicker zx650.4 amp, i noticed thier was some moisture in the door. crossovers are in the door also, can my amp send dc voltage to the speaker or does it have proctection circuitry???? what are the possilble causes of this, i know its impossible for anyone to tell me exactly what happend in my situtaion,. but how could this even be possible to being with???? thats where i need to start,, i was told to send the amp into kicker . im trying to decide if the amp caused this or the focal components,,, the amp and other speakers work fine now , i disconnected the driver side door and all other speakers and subs work fine. the fire on the speaker was very hard to put out also, at first i noticed something smelling burning, then i saw flames under the door panel. the fire did not want to go out easily!!!!!

I would expect DC offset protection circuitry DOES exist in that amp, but there is always the possibility of failure.

DC is a good choice, and if this IS what dinged your Focals, a trip for your amp into the Kicker Repair Center is all you're left with.

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

the amp works fine now , and so does all the other speakers, how do i know if it was the amp or not??????? kicker has already given me a RMA number to return the amp , i need focal to replace theese speakers .

1: Focal will likely not replace them. "Caught on fire" is a sure sign of abuse, no matter what you tell them to try to convince them. And even if they did buy the "low powered" scenario, a malfunctioning amplifier is NOT a warrantable situation, from ANY manufacturer.

2: Do you really want to risk destroying ANOTHER set of speakers? If you have an RMA, and they'll at least check it out under warranty, let 'em do it. :)

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

I do not think DC would have gotten to the tweeter. Chances are it was too much AC voltage. Did the speaker quit playing audio before this happened? If so, then yes it could have been a DC problem. If the speaker continued to play all the way up to the time it caught fire, then chances are it was just too much AC voltage that caused the problem.

Wasn't the tweeter that flamed out... It was the woofer. Read OP again. :)

Just because there's DC in the audio signal, if the DC Protection Circuitry quit or otherwise failed, then the amp could STILL provide an audio output, albeit biased toward one rail or the other. No?

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

Woofer caught fire and the tweeter is ruined also.

It can't be AC since the current and voltage aren't in phase - speakers are inductive.

(Jest kidding guys... Like that "changing impedance" for amplifier inputs because voltage and current changes all the time....)

Were these legit Focal speaker bought from a authorized Focal dealer or were they bought on line and are quite possibly knock offs?

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Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.

Last time I set a speaker on fire, I had it wired to a 120 v outlet, real loud at 60 hz till smoke escaped.

The only way you could get warrenty on it is if you can prove a mechanical defect that limited cone movement resulting exesive heat.  More likely something in grill or door mounting was preventing full cone movement.  I am assumimg the otherside was not damaged, and the tweeter damage was a result of the fire. 

lspker wrote:

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... wired to a 120 v outlet, real loud at 60 hz till smoke escaped.

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Was it distorted?

I don't care about clipping - I'm just wondering how dirty your SMPS-affected AC supplies are.


ok - I'll cease... It's the power-factor getting to my head, but I think I have crested.

lspker wrote:

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The only way you could get warrenty on it is if you can prove a mechanical defect that limited cone movement resulting exesive heat.

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Nope. I can hold a cone all day long, and run RMS power into it for as long as the sun shines, and it'll NEVER, EVER blow, (did I say that it would NEVER blow...?) just because the cone is held in place.

Mechanical movement has SO little to do with the power capacity of a driver, (meaning it doesn't have much at all to do with it...) that it can scarcely even be considered when modeling.

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."

Still going with counterfeit speakers.

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Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.

i think i did see smoke comming from the tweeter, not 100 percent sure though,,, yes the music stoped for a second or two made a bump type noise or a light pop, then it flamed up,,,the amp was sent into kicker last week, i will know more this week, hopefully they can find something wrong!!! so i will know wherer this trouble has been comming from!!! i have had to replace theese focal speakers before because they would simply stop working, i sent them into orka (focal) and they sent me new ones out, theese are deffinitly real, theese were sent to me straight from orca, i have had theese k2p woofers go out on me 3 times now, but they never caught on fire before they simply stoped working , i was under the impression i was playing them to loud, so when i go theese i made sure to adjust my gains and hpf's so i was extra easy on them, now they catch fire!!!!!!!!!!!!! focal does not want to send me anything eles.

sorry people, should have told you EVERYTHING up front, looks like thier is alot of knowledge to help me, hopefully it will return !!! lololol

another question i have is,,,, do you think this damaged my crossover??? it LOOKS ok, have not tested it yet.

i also want to add the volume was very low when this happend,