What could cause a speaker to just stop?

[epalla]

I have some outdoor speakers that have stopped working. They're not blown, the crossovers are fine - the drivers simply don't work. No matter what source I hook them to they just don't make any noise. It's so weird - like the magnet was demagnetized or something.

I've broken drivers in lots of ways before, but I've never had one just do nothing for me. Speakers are relatively mechanical things, I just can't really wrap my mind around how this would happen.

Any ideas?

[SY]

Did you check voice coil continuity?

[marsupialx]

Or a fuse?
Or a broken wire internally?
Will the woofer move if gently pressed?

[epalla]

I thought about the voice coil getting split somehow - how do I check continuity?

The cone moves just fine.

There's not much internally to a speaker, I mean it's the magnet and the voice coil that are in play here really. I'm not sure how to tell if one were broken though anyway.

[BHTX]

Get a multimeter and check the VC resistance. However, you said there's a xover, so I'm assuming they're at least 2-ways? The tweeter isn't working at all either? And you say the xovers are fine. Are you absolutely sure about that? Just out of curiosity, are these outdoor speakers actually being used outdoors? How old are they? How long had it been since you last used them until you recently discovered that they're not working? What kind of speakers are these anyway?

Any recent lightning bolts since you last used them?

[Lord_Humongous]

Disconnect the speaker from the cross-over and measure resistance over the voicecoil.