Help with Elite

[Stripes]

I have a vsx92thx and it keeps locking up on me, it locks up and becomes completely unresponsive. I cant turn it off or anything I end up having to unplug it and it takes a while to get it back on. I looked at the troubleshooting and cant find anything on it. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Adam]

Stripes, that is listed in the troubleshooting section (third entry under the "Power" section, at least in the online manual). It says to do exactly what you are doing (unplugging it), but it doesn't give advice on how to keep it from happening.

It could be that a controller chip is getting too hot and locking up. Try blowing a fan over it and see if the problem goes away. That unit does have a thermal protection circuit that would cause the unit to shut down if it overheats, but I would guess that the temperature sensors that control it are near the amps and not the processors. So, if I'm correct, a processor could overheat without causing the unit to shut down.

If no one here can help out, I suggest that you contact Pioneer. They might give you some good info on how to troubleshoot your issue.

 

[Stripes]

Ok thanks, Its odd that it is doing that because I dont even have the volume very high, and I know the D5's are not super hard to drive, not with a 130wpc amp, maybe I just got a bad unit. When I received it the unit was not even double boxed just the factory box so who knows it could have something broken inside of it.

 

[Adam]

How hard you are driving the amps doesn't necessarily equate to an overheating of the processor(s). It might just be a function of how much ventilation you have around the unit. If you were getting the amps really hot, the unit's thermal protection circuit should kick in - but that's not what is happening. The processor(s) could still overheat even if the amps are fairly cool.

If the fan (or just giving the unit more room to "breathe") doesn't work, would you still be able to exchange it? This might have come up in another thread, so I apologize if I've forgotten already.

 

[Stripes]

Im not sure I got it from a vendor on audiogon about a month ago, I tested it once when I got just to make sure it worked but didnt mess with it long enough to see this happening. I will call them tomorrow and ask them if this keeps happening, it seems that if I keep it at a super low volume it doesnt lock up. The unit is totally ventilated on top of the rack there is nothing above it.

 

[itschris]

There's been a lot of talk about lock up over at AVS (the "Official Pioneer Elite VSX 9X) thread. I haven't had any of these problems so I actually decided not to read about all the headaches people were having. There's a tendancy to post only the bad stuff about equipment in a lot of the threads and just didn't want to get down about it and feel like I was waiting for something to go wrong.

Anyway, read through the thread or just do a search for lockup

 

[fmw]

I think you have something defective in the unit and it needs to go for repair. I'm a 92 user myself for over a year and I've had flawless results with mine so it isn't anything caused by a flaw in the design of the unit.

Before you do anything, however, you should try to isolate a section of the unit that is causing the problems. Set it up with just two speakers and a single audio source and see if it stops having the issue. If so, then add things one at time until you add the straw that "breaks the camel's back." That may lead you to some external cause for the failure.

 

[itschris]

Here's part of the thread...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13275723&highlight=locking#post13275723