I haven't posted about it, but I've been working to troubleshoot a problem that cropped up in my system in the last week or so.
A little background: I run a Klipsch Reference setup combined with an Onkyo TX-SR707 receiver. To protect the system (and my ears), I set the maximum volume to -5dB from reference in the receiver's setup, so theoretically at least, it shouldn't really run into problems with clipping. Also, all my speakers except the center are crossed at 80Hz (center is at 100Hz).
Well in the last week, I've noticed some crackling on my left surround speaker when watching movies. I checked the wiring, and everything was in place as it should be. I ran some music through the system in all channel stereo mode at fairly high levels, which should stress the speaker and the receiver much more than a movie soundtrack with no problems. I even turned up that channel in the receivers trim level, again with no problems at all.
So Friday night, I'm watching the new(ish) Star Trek movie, and in the opening scene as the camera pans over the Kelvin, there's the crackling again. I rewind, repeat, and get the same result. So next I switch the wiring for the left and right surround channels at the wall jack by the receiver, and what do you know, the crackling switches to the right surround speaker.
At this point, I'm suspecting the player, given that the cable box and the airport express I use to stream music have given me flawless performance. First setting I decide to change was the upsampling. After I turned that off, no more crackling!! Yay. So of course the next day, the wife and I are watching another movie; we rewind because she wants to hear an explosion again (yes, I'm a lucky man), and the audio drops out. OK, that happens... We restart the receiver, no dice. Restarted the player, and we get audio again. We skip to the scene we want and have to rewind like 10 seconds to get to the boom...and the audio dies... Well, now I've got a new blu ray player, and I'm praying that the demons have been exorcised from my system. It's funny, I've had a lot of players die on me, but none in quite this fashion....
