Will a dirty signal burn up a subwoofer?

[dville_gt]

I bought a 12 inch Pioneer sub, beat the hell out of it, it took it for two or three weeks, but then I started smelling the coils burning and it popped. I figured I'd lower the gain on the amp and try again, this time I replaced the head unit with a Clairon with a iPod harness. Well, something is wrong with the interface cable for the iPod and is introducing some high frequency sound into the cable as well as messing with the video feed from it. Anyways, I have noticed that even with the gain lowered and me not pushing it nearly as hard, it is already (after not even a week) making some interesting smells (just like the last one before it let go).

Is there any way this is caused by the interface cable giving a dirty signal and causing the amp to give a bad signal to the sub?

[ram57ta]

Distortion can damage the voice coils quickly on any speaker quickly. Ive seen high dollar subs ruined by insufficient power (clipping distortion) as well as from low end rumble (a lot of larger sub amps have subsonic filters for this), or from a poor/incorrect crossover.

[LS1Goat]

If there is not enough separation between your amp power supply wire and the speaker wire/cable, there can be cross talk/EMF. The odor means it's overheating and you need to troubleshoot that further before continuing to use it. Also, electrical brownouts can be just as destructive as spikes. That's why some people with big amps will use capacitors. You may be crossed over too high as well. Are all the speakers impedance matched? All the same Ohms?

[dville_gt]

It is just one 12 inch 4 ohm single voice coil sub and a 500watt x 1 rms bridged amp @ 4ohm