One of my speakers is playing up, when the bass kicks in more it goes crackly. If I softly touch the cone when the speaker is on the cone stops getting any audio fed to it entirely. The other one doesn’t do this…

Any thoughts or is it as simple as the main speaker is just goosed?

Have you tried swapping the speakers? Could be the amp

Sounds like the voice coil is damaged. If you push it lightly square in the middle (powered off) with the room as quiet as possible, can you hear a scraping noise?

Either way, if music stops and bass makes it crackle there is either damage to the windings (voice coil) or something stuck in the air gap (unlikely).

Taking the drive unit out will help with the investigation and may also give you a part number to look up from somewhere like Europe Audio as it will likely be cheaper than going back to B&W.

I tried the cables first but made no difference sadly. You can hear a noise when you tap it when the rooms quiet , I took it out to see if I could eyeball anything but was none the wiser as it all looked ok so I figured it was something internal in the speaker. It is from 99 apparently so they’ve served their time!

Thanks for the Europe audio tip

B&W make their own drivers no?

Can you get a meter on it?

Hey yep I can – a multimeter? are you thinking of checking the current when its playing and cutting out?

I tried the cables first but made no difference sadly. You can hear a noise when you tap it when the rooms quiet , I took it out to see if I could eyeball anything but was none the wiser as it all looked ok so I figured it was something internal in the speaker. It is from 99 apparently so they’ve served their time!

This won’t tell you much, you need to do what twonks suggests, and gently push the centre of the speaker cone in and out, with a finger either side of the centre dome. If it makes a scratchy noise, and you can feel it as well, then the voice coil is burned out, comparing each speaker should show a difference.
Playing music with too much bass causing the amp to ‘clip’, ie distort badly will frequently cause this problem.

Nope it doesnt have any noise or resistance – they both feel the same.

So after feeling the speaker like that the cone stopped even making any noise so I tapped it a couple of times around the outside and it started playing again and cutting in and out.

It sounds ok when its actually playing but seems to be able to cut itself out… when I had it apart the wires connecting into the cone looked good and the wire that come from that connection into the magnetic bit in the cone looked solid too…

The weak connection is most likely in that part of the speaker though right? rather than the back of the speaker where the wire comes in as tapping the cone is stopping the music?

weird