Need Help: Sounds Cuts In and Out in Multi-Room Set-Up

[cderrick14]

I run a small winemaking shop up in Canada and am having problems with our audio. Specifically, the speakers in the back of the store continue to cut in and out. There is no static sound, no hum, or anything like that. Just sound loss.

I will explain the audio set-up, keep in mind we aren't trying to deliver sensational sound, just competent, even sound.

We have been having issues for well over a year and I keep thinking I have found the solution, only for the same problem to crop up again. We have a PC at the front of the store that plays all our music locally from its hard drive. It is connected by a regular 3.5mm stereo cable to a Onkyo SR 503 receiver. From the receiver, we have it connected via speakerwire to 4 different speakers. The first two, at the front of the store are small little speakers that are nothing special at all. They are about 20-30 feet of speakerwire away from the receiver. The other two speakers are much larger tower speakers. These are at the back of the store and go about 40-60 feet away from the receiver.

Potential trouble spots I have identified:

Speaker wire: We are using fairly low grade stuff, and in some cases we have multiple wires spliced together to get the full distance. I believe that getting proper cable would probably fix the issue, but I am not 100% sure.

Speakers: Are the back speakers taking too much power for the receiver? Before, we had small, very bad speakers in our back area and we had the same problems. We originally thought the speakers were blown and swapped them with the tower speakers. So I do not think speakers are the issue here.

Receiver: This is the second receiver we have had. Our original receiver was an old Yamaha, that I had figured was done. I swapped it out with the Onyko, and originally the problems were fixed, but the sound cut out soon after that. Is the receiver not powerful enough to handle four separate speakers? The speakers are set up in a A, B way as well.

One last thing we did, that seemed to fix the problem for a while was to go mono only. We put two speakers into the same output on A, and did the same for B. So everything is running mono at the moment. We only did this because we could not get the speakers to work at all if they were put in stereo.

I apologize for the very long post, but I am at wits end trying to figure this out, and am hoping an audio expert can help me find the solution. We don't mind spending money to replace something, we just want to be sure it is the right thing to replace.

 

[TLS Guy]

I run a small winemaking shop up in Canada and am having problems with our audio. Specifically, the speakers in the back of the store continue to cut in and out. There is no static sound, no hum, or anything like that. Just sound loss.

I will explain the audio set-up, keep in mind we aren't trying to deliver sensational sound, just competent, even sound.

We have been having issues for well over a year and I keep thinking I have found the solution, only for the same problem to crop up again. We have a PC at the front of the store that plays all our music locally from its hard drive. It is connected by a regular 3.5mm stereo cable to a Onkyo SR 503 receiver. From the receiver, we have it connected via speakerwire to 4 different speakers. The first two, at the front of the store are small little speakers that are nothing special at all. They are about 20-30 feet of speakerwire away from the receiver. The other two speakers are much larger tower speakers. These are at the back of the store and go about 40-60 feet away from the receiver.

Potential trouble spots I have identified:

Speaker wire: We are using fairly low grade stuff, and in some cases we have multiple wires spliced together to get the full distance. I believe that getting proper cable would probably fix the issue, but I am not 100% sure.

Speakers: Are the back speakers taking too much power for the receiver? Before, we had small, very bad speakers in our back area and we had the same problems. We originally thought the speakers were blown and swapped them with the tower speakers. So I do not think speakers are the issue here.

Receiver: This is the second receiver we have had. Our original receiver was an old Yamaha, that I had figured was done. I swapped it out with the Onyko, and originally the problems were fixed, but the sound cut out soon after that. Is the receiver not powerful enough to handle four separate speakers? The speakers are set up in a A, B way as well.

One last thing we did, that seemed to fix the problem for a while was to go mono only. We put two speakers into the same output on A, and did the same for B. So everything is running mono at the moment. We only did this because we could not get the speakers to work at all if they were put in stereo.

I apologize for the very long post, but I am at wits end trying to figure this out, and am hoping an audio expert can help me find the solution. We don't mind spending money to replace something, we just want to be sure it is the right thing to replace.

Your problem is that those speakers present too low an impedance for a receiver. A & B is just a switch that uses the same amps for A & B. A & B speakers are not supposed to be run at the same time as the loads are put in parallel. If you do what you are doing you will burn a lot of receivers.

In commercial properties I generally recommend 70 Volt PA amps and speakers with the associated transformer. This makes it easy to balance loads.

Your simplest solution is to use impedance matching volume controls in the area where your speakers are. That will limit available power significantly. If it is just very low back ground you want that will work, otherwise I don't advise it.

Your other solution is to get a receiver with preouts and use a distribution amp form the left and right preouts.

The other solution is to run your computer to a DAC and feed the DAC to a two channel pre amp and then to a distribution amp.

Get rid of the bad wiring. It is not the problem but needs fixing, otherwise you will have problems.

The 70 volt solution is best as you can use bell wire to the speakers. With domestic low impedance systems you need robust thick gauge wire for long speaker runs.

Commercial spaces are a totally different ball game to home audio. Equipment for home audio used commercially often leads to a host of problems as you are finding out the hard way.