Quote:
Originally Posted by michiganjfrog";p="
As a speaker designer, you must have a lot of speakers on hand. Try it on throwaway speakers if you are curious to see what effect it might have, and whether it will damage the drivers.
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As a speaker transducer / driver designer, I work with materials & their properties.
Exposing a plastic such as PP to temperatures way below freezing will & do cause hardening or brittleness of the material at room temperatures. (a study of the material's behaviour over temperatures will tell you so). This in turn will harshen the sound above the cone's break-up point. (the break-up is more harsh due to lower damping). This is one of the reasons why some of the best speakers do not use plastic based cones, as they tend to sound different over time.
Secondly, a large driver, with a 3" voice coil will on an average have a coil with the wire length exceeding 50 meters. As a part of the curing process of some of the high-end coils, we heat them to a temperature above 500F while ensuring that the coil is in a fixture and not allowed to change shape.
Besides, the metal (copper / aluminum) in the coil will again heat up quickly the next time you feed real power into the speaker, thus neutralizing any positive effect the freezing might have had on it.
As I said before - this stands more true for the larger high power drivers & those using plastic / PP parts.