Presonus Monitor Repair

[Billy Budapest]

 

[Timcognito]

 

[1066]

View attachment 484289

Thank you.

Does the energy get stored in the dielectric?

Sorry if this is basic. I don’t know electronics.

 

[TurtlePaul]

My learning is that not to buy active loudspeakers since you don't know the quality of the hidden inside amplifiers. Maybe one can trust the companies providing professional speakers.

That is painting an awfully wide brush. These are $100/pair active speakers which cut a lot of corners to get to their price. You can also find passive 2-way speakers which have a crossover that consists of a single low quality capacitor on the tweeter.

 

[TurtlePaul]

Thank you.

Does the energy get stored in the dielectric?

Sorry if this is basic. I don’t know electronics.

No. The purpose of the dielectric is to act as an insulator and hold the two plates still at a certain set distance but never touching and without electricity arcing between them.

The charge is stored via an electric field (protons being attracted to electrons in close proximity) and this can be done even across a vacuum.

 

[egellings]

There are capacitors and there are crapacitors

Also, cowpasitures

 

[johnnyx]

The chemical constituents of the electrolyte is important in electrolytics, this determines the ESR of the capacitor since it conducts current, and its longevity.
Then there's the etching of the foils, which determines the size, and the oxide layer which is the dielectric, this determines the voltage and capacitance,.
Deceptively simple, like everything.

 

[solawind]

Well, a "professional speaker" can be 500 $ per pair or >5000 per piece...
I would not expect the same parts quality from both.

idk how much it really depends on the speakers price. Capacitor in my Neumann speaker died a year after the warranty ended. I have no idea what happenned, I took it to local repair technician and he said that schematic is unknown and there was no visible damage, so he suggested replacing all capacitors one by one. At some point it started working again. Neumann is definitely not a cheap brand but idk where their amp boards are made , maybe outsourced to china as well

 

[solawind]

BTW I paid about 1/4 of the speaker’s price for the repair, but everything on neumann board was glued and covered with some kind of hardened foam or thermal compound, which made removing the capacitors very difficult

 

[respice finem]

idk how much it really depends on the speakers price. Capacitor in my Neumann speaker died a year after the warranty ended. I have no idea what happenned, I took it to local repair technician and he said that schematic is unknown and there was no visible damage, so he suggested replacing all capacitors one by one. At some point it started working again. Neumann is definitely not a cheap brand but idk where their amp boards are made , maybe outsourced to china as well

It depends at least so much on the price, that no cheap product can have many expensive "innards", and might have subpar circuit design too.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Granted, expensive speakers can also contain cheap capacitors, I have Neumann too and am slightly worried...
Neumann themselves are confident that their implementation makes it a non-issue, well, time will tell.

 

[solawind]

It depends at least so much on the price, that no cheap product can have expensive "innards", and might have subpar circuit design too.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Granted, expensive speakers can also contain cheap capacitors, I have Neumann too and am slightly worried...
Neumann themselves are confident that their implementation makes it a non-issue, well, time will tell.

Maybe it was just one defective part, who knows. There’s a forum thread here on ASR about Neumann capacitors and some suspicions about their quality, with a response from a Neumann representative who said, “They’re not cheap; they’re good enough.” . Well not enough in my case i guess.

Anyway, I use the MA 1, and except for that case, the overall product experience has been excellent, so I still use Neumann monitors — KH 120 II now.

 

[respice finem]

Maybe it was just one defective part, who knows. There’s a forum thread here on ASR about Neumann capacitors and some suspicions about their quality, with a response from a Neumann representative who said, “They’re not cheap; they’re good enough.” . Well not enough in my case i guess.

Anything will fail at some time, but yours was quite early...
The "gunk" around the capacitors can be a factor when it's too much, by isolating thermally. If there are more failures than usual, they would lose many pro customers, so let's hope they are largely right in what they claim. While I'm absolutely confident they would competently repair my speakers in case of failure, I'm wary of two factors: 1. Should I then send the defective one in, or both? (preventive parts swap), 2. Will they arrive undamaged?
That's why I am a fan of modular construction - sending in an electronics module is far less risky.

 

[Roland68]

idk how much it really depends on the speakers price. Capacitor in my Neumann speaker died a year after the warranty ended. I have no idea what happenned, I took it to local repair technician and he said that schematic is unknown and there was no visible damage, so he suggested replacing all capacitors one by one. At some point it started working again. Neumann is definitely not a cheap brand but idk where their amp boards are made , maybe outsourced to china as well

It's definitely not important where something is manufactured, because high quality is possible anywhere in the world, as well as really poor quality. It has nothing to do with the components used anyway. For example, Japan, the largest producer of high-quality capacitors, shipped most of its production 2024 to China, three times as much as to the USA, which was in fourth place.

Often, cheap capacitors are used in places where they are exposed to high switching frequencies, e.g., switching power supplies, Class D amplifiers, switching regulators, etc. This has been a known problem for over 25 years, and yet it still happens far too often. The failure of many devices from all sectors in the first 1-2 years can be traced back to such capacitors, or to too cheap and too small SMD components (resistors, non-electrolytic capacitors, etc.).
This, of course, is evidence of development errors and a lack of long-term testing, which is now mostly done by the buyer.

However, no manufacturer can protect itself from a single or multiple defective components in a batch. It's not for nothing that components or component groups/assembled circuit boards are burned in/pre-aged in critical areas to prevent such a situation. However, such a speaker would then be 5-10 times more expensive.

 

[respice finem]

Wo etwas hergestellt wird, ist definitiv nicht wichtig, denn hohe Qualität ist überall auf der Welt möglich, aber auch richtig schlechte. Mit den verwendeten Komponenten hat es ohnehin nichts zu tun. Japan beispielsweise, der größte Produzent hochwertiger Kondensatoren, lieferte den Großteil seiner Produktion nach China, dreimal so viel wie in die USA, die auf Platz vier lagen.

Oft werden billige Kondensatoren dort eingesetzt, wo sie hohen Schaltfrequenzen ausgesetzt sind, z.B. in Schaltnetzteilen, Class-D-Verstärkern, Schaltreglern etc. Dieses Problem ist seit über 25 Jahren bekannt und dennoch kommt es immer noch viel zu häufig vor. Der Ausfall vieler Geräte aus allen Bereichen in den ersten 1-2 Jahren ist auf solche Kondensatoren oder auf zu billige und zu kleine SMD-Bauteile (Widerstände, Nicht-Elektrolytkondensatoren etc.) zurückzuführen.
Dies zeugt natürlich von Entwicklungsfehlern und fehlenden Langzeittests, die heute meist vom Käufer durchgeführt werden.

Allerdings kann sich kein Hersteller vor einem oder mehreren defekten Bauteilen in einer Charge schützen. Nicht umsonst werden Bauteile bzw. Bauteilgruppen/bestückte Platinen an kritischen Stellen eingebrannt/vorgealtert, um so etwas zu verhindern. Allerdings wäre ein solcher Lautsprecher dann 5-10 mal teurer.

Leuchtet ein.

 

[totti1965]

Nice video from Dave Jones repairing these ERIS 5 speakers:

Immediately subscribed!

 

[respice finem]

Immediately subscribed!

Me too - but I had to use my RME remote to "mitigate" his voice

 

[amirm]

Dave Jones is by far the #1 and the "OG" audio electronics youtuber. He really knows his stuff. Only a few of his videos are audio related though.

 

[DavidM1]

Me too - but I had to use my RME remote to "mitigate" his voice

Not a voice for radio but I enjoyed the patter.

 

[Billy Budapest]

Not a voice for radio but I enjoyed the patter.

I don’t mind his voice at all, but when he was talking over himself during the phone playback, it was extremely annoying.

 

[EERecordist]

I enjoy EEVblog and the differences between Australian and US English language. He does have some good evaluations and teardowns of new test equipment. And he makes the topic interesting for people just starting, including young people developing an interest in electronics. There is a lot of unfilled need for electronic technicians in audio, as well as all the control systems for buildings and factories. Someone has to fix the robots!