I have a 97 Chevy Cavalier z24. Recently I had an aftermarket radio installed in it. All of the stock speakers worked until now. I have had the radio for about 3 weeks now. Now when I play songs the music only comes out of the front left speaker. Recently the right speaker sounded distorted and fizzy. Now the right side speaker plays no music at all. I was wondering did I blow out my speaker with music that had to much bass or did something come loose? Even now my rear speaker is starting to sound distorted and fizzy. Should I get new speakers?
It could be anything from bad connections behind the dash to blown speakers. In most cases, it is better to upgrade the speakers from the stock ones, especially as the car ages as the speakers are worn. I would suggest taking it back to where you had it installed and see if they will diagnose the problem for free since it is a recent install. I personally would likely go ahead and get the speakers as well either way. If they will not help you out by diagnosing the problem, tack that up to a shop to not visit in the future. Plenty of places out there that will take care of you as a customer.
I would say yes factory radios have about 5-10watts RMS per speaker and aftermarket speakers usually need about 25-50watts RMS depending on the speaker so the factory radio does not have enough RMS wattage to properly power the speakers and that makes the radio's internal amp clip Clipping occurs when an amplifier is asked to deliver more current to a speaker than the amp is capable of doing. When an amplifier clips, it literally cuts off the tops and bottoms of the musical waveforms that it's trying to reproduce, thus the term. This introduces a huge amount of distortion into the output signal. Clipping can be heard as a crunching sound on musical peaks. that causes distorted sound which will damage your speakers so when you buy your new speakers don't get ones that require too much wattage because you will have the same problem and if they cant handle the wattage from the radio you will fry the voice coils too
