Elk-73: Muffled sound

[homejones]

Hi, I just installed an Elk-73 in the main living area of our house. The notifications have a muffled sound - is this normal? The SP12 behind one of my keypads sounds better.

I installed the SP73 near the ceiling by the HVAC register, but I could only make out the voices if I am listening closely. Has anyone tried filling the inside of the SP73 with sound deadening material or something else to make the sound clearer (not even sure this would work)?

 

[tmbrown97]

Make sure that inside, the wires aren't in any way touching the cone or close enough to touch it when the cone moves. Those are not high fidelity speakers though, so don't expect miracles!

 

[homejones]

Those are not high fidelity speakers though, so don't expect miracles!

Ha! Definitely not expecting miracles, but I just want a clear sound.

 

[Superjer2000]

The sound is very muffled from that speaker. I agree the SP-12s are way better. I ended up giving up and moving my announcements (text to speech) to Elve which plays back on SP-12s and with a 3rd party commercial voice it sounds 100x better than the Elk voice and supports speaking any word. I am now only using the ELK-73 for alarm announcements.

 

[Del91574]

I think the issue with the 73 is the voice coil is facing the mounting surface. They do tend to rattle at higher volumes and aren't high fidelity by a stretch.

I've gone the SPF12 route and just installed more of them to get down to 8 ohms, typically 4 in a normal house and had good volume and dispersion/inteligibility within the limits of the M1.