Help. I've got some weird distortion going on and nobody so far can figure it out.

[PAinV]

I'm guessing this is an electrical/ground short issue and I uploaded a video so people can see and hear for themselves.



When I tighten the speaker against the door, the speaker starts to distort. When I back the screw off, the sounds goes back to normal. BUT there's no wiring behind the screw, so it's no making contact with anything inside the door. And I've had other odd problems with the stereo system so I'm wondering if there's some kind of electrical/ground problem that is causing this.
Background:

• 2007 Acura with "ELS" component speakers
• generally sounded fine but had fairly bad distortion that was only noticeable during certain songs at certain times when the problem was obvious to anyone not deaf. Particularly noticeable in front passenger door woofer. Speakers for this car are notorious for blowing out so I planned to replace the four front door speakers (tweeters and woofers).
• installed bluetooth kit with intention of replacing speakers thinking the problem was in the speakers.
• However, the front door speaker problem didn't go away if I swapped out speakers from other doors so the initial problem can't be with the speaker itself.
• around this time, and before speaker install, the distortion became 100 times worse throughout system and it was literally unbearable/unusable.
• replaced amp thinking the amp was fried, no difference
• replaced head unit - immediate improvement and basically back to how it sounded before installing bluetooth.
• BUT the front passenger door speaker again has static/distortion. With the music playing, I was removing the speaker by backing out the one metal screw holding it in place and suddenly the speaker sounded fine. Tightened it, sounds bad. I did this a few times. Same result every time: screw tight = bad; screw backed out a bit = good

I'm not big into car audio so this is way beyond my pay grade. Any thoughts?

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[GTSQ]

Your warping the cone causing the voice coil to come out of alignment. Try using a ring to mount your speaker.

 

[PAinV]

Your warping the cone causing the voice coil to come out of alignment. Try using a ring to mount your speaker.

Thanks for weighing in, I'll check that out. The lingering issue in my mind is the cause of such extreme, intermittent distortion throughout the whole system. Would the voice coil issue also explain that?

 

[YourNameHere 10+ year member]

you prolly got some speaker wires touching each other somewhere or speaker wires grounding out on some bare metal somewhere....also take a look at the speaker terminal when tightening that screw, it could be pulling the terminal into contact with the door or something when you tighten it

 

[hispls 5,000+ posts]

extreme, intermittent distortion throughout the whole system.

Sounds like it may be a separate issue. What I saw is exactly as described, you're warping the frame of that speaker which is pulling the coil out of alignment in the gap and it's rubbing. Perhaps you have already bent the coil former and it'll always rub?

 

[GTSQ]

Thanks for weighing in, I'll check that out. The lingering issue in my mind is the cause of such extreme, intermittent distortion throughout the whole system. Would the voice coil issue also explain that?

Get yourself a headphone jack to RCA adapter. Use the headphones to listen to your signal at every point to try and find the source of the problem.

 

[PAinV]

Get yourself a headphone jack to RCA adapter. Use the headphones to listen to your signal at every point to try and find the source of the problem.

Unfortunately there are no RCA jacks - it's all OEM harness clips. There's dozens of little OEM wires clipped into the head unit (I was going to upgrade the speakers but there's no crossovers to replace, so I'm not even sure it's possible).

 

[PAinV]

My car battery died this weekend so I had to replace it. Would a failing battery possibly explain the intermittent, system-wide distortion? FWIW, the night before I had my iPhone connected to the head unit via an aux cable and suddenly the volume dropped by 95% with some speakers going completely dead. But the minute I plugged the charging cable into the phone, the problem went away. I repeated this a few times: as soon as the phone was charging the sounds was fine, when the charging cable was remove, the sound dropped again.
Does this sound like weak battery issues, or anything else?
thanks.