LOL

Or the smell is your sub getting ready to seize up

Or the possibility of a sub-par amp maxed out, while running on a poor ground. I'm assuming this was in the trunk of a car? If so you have amp that is getting hot due to maxed out settings and with insufficient air circulation. I'm surprised your amp lasted as long as it did.

things get hot and stinky when u play them too hard

I agree with all of this but the bass boost part. I had a Rockford 600.1bs for 5 years with bass boost maxed and never had 1 problem with the amp or sub it still works to this day but I needed some additional power at 4 ohm final resistance so I currently have a Kenwood Kac-9105d which has been at max bass boost for 2 years without a problem. Excessive gains causing clipping is the problem.

This post was edited by cyrusthegreat on Sep 23 2014 06:29pm

and a arbitrarily set bass boost causes clipping.

you have to set gain then bass boost and even then it's going to cause clipping because all music isn't the same.

bass boost with a country song is far less risky than bass boost with a rap song for example.

personally i see no point in having a 32hz tuned port and then making the amplifier boost@45hz

not to mention the fact it ruins sound quality. much better to do a proper install rather than relying on a setting known for causing premature failure.

so like with everything else in car audio...if its setup correctly its fine but people do exactly what you did and set it incorrectly and ruin shit and listen to distorted bass thinking it sounds good.

Burn it with fire!!