Constant Speaker Cracking/Crackling Sound?

Question

In an attempt to hook up another amp to run my high’s and mid’s I have encountered a problem. I spliced into the two front speaker wires coming out of the PAC (OS2). Now my Front Right works fine however my Front Left emits a cracking sound (only comes from the negative wire.) I have checked and the speaker is not blown.

The wires I connected are properly matched up. So then I disconnected everything and hooked it up to how it was before I spliced. The cracking sound is still there.

So now I ran a jumper wire from where I spliced on the Left Front Negative (output of the PAC OS2) to the Left Front Negative output of my Head Unit (bypassing the PAC OS2) and the cracking sound stopped.

Now for the fun part – the volume was very loud –way louder than the right side. I could not turn the volume up a quarter of the way because it was way too loud. I removed the jumper wire and hooked everything back up to spec and the cracking is still there?

What is the cause/origin of this problem

Answer 1

It's either a damaged speaker cone, or a short to ground in the speaker lead.