Help with Sony STR-DE545 "Protect"

[bens0472]

Hi,

I'm new to Audioholics and, admittedly, I'm not all that well-versed in audio technologies, but I have a problem that I'm thinking someone here might be able to give me a little advice on.

I have a Sony STR-DE545 receiver that I bought about 6 or 7 years ago. Slowly, I added new speakers until, about 3 years ago, I completed a 5.1 surround system with Polk R40s in the front, the PSW250 sub, R10s in the rear and, frankly, I can't remember the center, but it's one of their smaller ones and it's about 5 years old.

I'm also running two Bose Interaudio XLs that I got way back when I was a senior in HS in 1989 on the B channel.

For DVD, I'm using the Pioneer DV-333, if that information is helpful.

Ok - about 8 months ago, I started getting strange things happening. One day while my daughter was watching one of her Dora the Explorer DVDs, we heard some really lound static followed by kind of a real low frequency buzz. Then everything went silent and the receiver was flashing "Protect". Not knowing what had happened, I turned everything off and let everything cool for a few hours. The first thing I noticed was that the receiver had gotten pretty warm, likely because I hadn't allowed enough room on top between it and the (DOH!) CD player I'd set on top of it.

So, after a while, this goes away and them comes back and repeats. Unfortunatetly I can't pinpoint it to any of the devices because similar things happen when I'm playing CDs (with my kenwood CD changer) or when just using the Tuner. One thing I did notice was that my Polk speakers all say they are 8ohm speakers while the Bose jobbies say 4-8 ohms.

So, first of all, I had the Bose speakers, in channel B, wired with some very thin speaker cable, running about 25-30 feet to each speaker in a room adjacent to the one in which I have the receiver (supplying music to our sitting room).

With this setup, as I understand it, I think I should (A) keep the impedance selector on my receiver set at 8 ohms and (B) never run both sets of speakers simultaneously. I'm pretty sure A is right, but I'm not sure of B. Can anyone help? Has anyone seen this or similar stuff before?

Thanks,

Ben

 

[j_garcia]

Sony is well known for less than stellar amps, and this is not one of the higher models we are talking about. Having the additional Bose speaekrs hooked up is likely pushing this receiver within inches of its life if you run them simultaneously. Add to that the lack of ventilation and you have a recipe for bad things. NEVER put another component directly above the receiver, a few inches at the very least is a must. Yes, I would say both A and B are correct.