crackling speakers

[mysteray]

hi. i'm new to the forum, so bare with me.

first off, let me give everyone a little background. i'm not sure on model numbers (i'll post that at a later time), but i have an old sony dvd player, old sony receiver, and a not as old sony home theatre speaker set. all cables are monster brand, and i believe the speaker wire is monster as well. i had been experiencing a rather loud crackling sound in my speakers while watching dvd's. last weekend i finally decided to troubleshoot.

the dvd is hooked up to the 5.1/mutli-channel on the receiver. i started out switching out the cables. still heard the crackling. next i tried using the regular rca output on the dvd instead of 5.1. hey, no crackling. just to verify, i hooked up my ps2 to the 5.1 (only the rear channel, because obviously the ps2 doesn't have full 5.1 output). guess what, i heard crackling. and as an added bonus, i had left the receiver on with 5.1 selected with nothing hooked up to the 5.1 jacks. after a little bit, i heard some crackles. bingo, it has to be the receiver.

after a few days of shopping, i decided to get a new sony str-dg800. i hooked up the speakers and hooked the dvd player up using a brand new monster coaxial audio cable. i popped in a dvd and guess what, i still heard crackling, although, this time it wasn't nearly as loud (you could barely hear it actually), and it didn't happen as frequently.

so, now i'm stumped. i'm thinking i might be getting some interference somewhere. all of my cables are a big jumbled mess. i also noticed when plugging in the new receiver that the lighted switch on my surge protector was flickering a little. i certainly hope my brand new receiver isn't defective. i'm going to try hooking the dvd player up different ways. i'll also clean up my cabling.

does anyone here have any suggestions as to what might be causing the faint crackling sound?

-adam

 

[mysteray]

update

as promised, here's a list of my components:
receiver - sony str-dg800 (brand new)
dvd player - sony dvp-ns400d
speakers - sony sa-ve325 (home theatre system)

i did some further testing this evening. the first thing i did was untangle my mess of wires. to tell you the truth, i think this may have done the trick, but i want to make sure. i seperated all the speaker wires and twisty-tied them together. i also twisty'd the two power cords so they stayed away from the speaker wire. i had initially tied all the speaker wire and the sub-woofer power cord (going to the switched outlet on the receiver) together, and i think this might have been causing the faint crackling sound i was experiencing.

to test if it was the coaxial input on the receiver, i hooked up my cable box to it. after watching some high-def tv for a while, i hadn't heard any crackles. whew, that eliminates the receiver (hopefully).

my next test was to see if it was the dvd player. i hooked it up to the multi-channel inputs (this is the configuration i was using with the old sony str-de625 receiver since it didn't have a coax input). actually, that's where i'm at right now. so far, no crackles.

i have a few other configurations to test yet. any other input from you guys is still welcome of course.

-adam

 

[ARRAY]

Crackling speakers on an open fire....

 

[Joe Schmoe]

The flickering light on your surge protector suggests noisy power. You could try a power conditioner. Loose connections can also cause crackling, and many receivers crackle when adjusting volume.

 

[tdamocles]

How do you exactly have the speaker cable connected to the speaker?

 

[billy p]

Just a thought? If your stereo is plugged into a outlet which is in-line with other lights and receptacles using other electronics on that same breaker then that could be a cause. I was also was going to mention if your first receiver was dusty it might of only needed a cleaning inside. I had that problem every time I turned it up static or a surge would occur and a simple cleaning fixed that issue.