u/hapanpappa

Got a pair of these as surrounds (odd choice, I know) a while back and only now did I realize that certain frequencies/type of music distorts pretty badly. The setup is these speakers connected to a Marantz NR1510 with different active front speakers.

I have tried:

-Fixing the cable connection & using banana plugs and without

-Purchasing better cables (upgraded to 1.5 mm² OFC speaker wire, the length is around 10 meters per speaker)

-Trying different speaker ports on the AVR

-Fiddling with ohm settings & other speaker settings on the AVR

But no luck so far. As you can hear, it's especially this type of hollow mid-high sound like piano or classical guitar that distorts. I watched plenty of movies and never noticed anything with these as surrounds, and you can listen to regular pop and not necessarily notice any distortion, which is why it took me a while to realize this.

Here's the weird part: I would obviously assume that the speaker/driver etc. is broken somehow, but both speakers distort in exactly the same way, and are otherwise in perfect shape and pretty new as well. I feel like that indicates the problem is elsewhere.

Any ideas? What could I do to try and isolate the issue without other AVR's or speakers at hand?

Edit: Not sure if this does implicate the speakers themselves, but the distortion audibly changes if I gently press on the cone.