Noise in new speakers? Help.

P

practal

Audiophyte
I've been using:
Marazant SR5600
Old Sony Dual 15" Tower Speakers
BIC H100 Subwoofer
HTPC with audio being sent to receiver through Toslink

I recently purchased a pair of PSB G-Series GT1 and a GC1 center channel (GC1 has not arrived yet). I have just the two GT1s and H100 hooked up to the Marazant. I have used MP3s, FLAC, Audio CDs, and a couple of master recoding Audio CDs. HTPC handles all audio output and is done through a toslink.

I am new to higher end audio and I absolutely love the speakers, most of the time. I am noticing very harsh treble at moderate volumes. I tried replacing speaker cables and interconnects. I switched to cords from Blue Jean cable and it made a big improvement but the noise is still present. I know a lot of people say cords don't make a differnce but they did in this situation.

I am not a fan of load music at all. The Marazant starts at -60 and the loudest I have taken the speakers is -20. I begin noticing the harsh treble around -35 which is very quiet, easy to have a normal conversation over.

The treble becomes full of static while the rest of the music sounds absolutely fantastic. It is very sharp, harsh static that only affects treble, cannot be heard without vocals or high tones. It happens on both speakers and seems to be worse on the left channel. I have swapped the cords around and whatever is hooked up to the left sounds worse.

I also get a noise that reminds me of the noises associated with vinyl. Kind of a faint noise that sounds very similar to the needle of a vinyl. This only happens during music playback, it is dead silent between songs.

Obviously I have an issue, $2k speakers should not sound like this. I think it maybe clipping but the SR5600 is rated for 110w@6ohms per channel. Would clipping start at such a low volume when my avr is rated at 110w@6ohms and the speakers are rated at 150w@6ohms?

I'm think its an issue with the SR5600 but I'm not a pro. I have tried everything I can think of and I highly doubt I received 2 bad speakers with the exact same problem. I am open to any suggestions on getting this fixed.
 
J

jostenmeat

Audioholic Spartan
I would try new electronics, ie receiver/processor/amplification. If you don't have other equipment, see if there is any possibility of borrowing something from somebody. Sorry, I'm not a pro either, but that is the first thing I think of.

Also, try both digital and analog connections with any given source to your present unit. They both sound identically bad?
 
GranteedEV

GranteedEV

Audioholic Ninja
Is the receiver in pure direct? Is the room very reflective?

I really doubt it's clipping... at -20 you're probably barely using 10w of power at peaks.
 
XEagleDriver

XEagleDriver

Audioholic Chief
1) Please size the room (H x W x D) and describe the surfaces (std walls, large windows, tile floors, etc.)

2) Have you run Audessy EQ to see if it detects/tames the high freq emphasis you are hearing?

XEagleDriver
 
S

sparky77

Full Audioholic
Try using Winamp to play your music files and set the volume in the program to max, and set your sound card to max and adjust the volume only with the receiver. What your hearing could very well be the "digital distortion" caused by the software attempting to recode the volume information, which according to a lot of reviews I've read winamp does the best job. The reason why your hearing it now could very well be the new speakers reproduce sound much more accurately than your old ones, so any flaw in the music is much more noticeable. You should also try playing a cd through a dedicated player connected directly to your receiver, if there's an improvement you know the problem is in the htpc.
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
With new/different speakers, the receiver's audio settings need to go back to default and you need to start over from the beginning. Any changes to the settings from OEM are now defunct. If you hear static-like noise in the treble, it's usually clipping but you'll need to lower the volume, go up to the speakers and listen for it again. If it's still there, you have a problem with the source material or the source device.

The tracks may be digital but that doesn't mean they can't be distorted. If you recorded them, you need to look at the original- if it was vinyl, it could be that the needle/record were dirty or the cartridge/table needed alignment. If they came from downloads, write them off and do it right- unless the downloads were pristine and you listened to each one with good headphones to make sure there was nothing objectionable coming with them, I would be suspect of anything that you didn't record from a hard copy.

Does i t sound OK when you play a radio station? Are you using the tone controls or equalizer in the receiver? If you jacked the treble up because the Sony speakers needed it, set it flat and start over. Do you hear hissing when the volume is all the way down?
 

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