Receiver and speaker problem - please help!!

[envision22]

So random, my friend threw a new years party which required him to relocate his sound system (Denon AVR-588 running Polk R50 fronts with polk surrrounds and center) and, after we finished moving it upstairs and getting it all hooked up, we turned it on only to find that it sounded really bad, as if the tweeters weren't working! We tried everything, changing all the receiver settings and hooking up the speakers to different outputs, nothing seemed to work. It was really a downer and not something that you would want to happen the night of a new-years party. We found a compromise by hooking up the bookshelf speakers to the surround output and used that for the party because it seemed to be the only configuration that worked.

My question is, have any of you heard of this happening due to moving the system? We were obviously carefull with everything, and we're sure that nothing would have broken in the moving process. We even tried bringing the R50s to my house to see if it was just the amp that was broken or if the speakers were broken too, they sounded the same on my amp which means they were broken. After taking the receiver to a shop and sending the speakers back to polk, the system is not fixed at all. Both components came back with the exact same problems, as if they didn't try to fix them at all! Either that or they didn't test anything before they sent us back with them. It's very frustrating because this system worked perfectly for a year until new years eve when, somehow, both towers and the amp all broke in the same night! The other wierd thing is that we could get the smaller speakers to sound good out of the surround outputs, but they sounded really flat using the front outputs, and they would sound good in stereo, but really bad if we switched it to 5 channel (which is the setting that this system used to sound good with for a year prior)

Sorry for the long post, but this has been a very frustrating, confusing, and time-consuming problem! Has anyone else had a problem similar to this one? I have a feeling that if we send the speakers and receiver back again, we'll still have the same problems

 

[Highbar]

Are you having any problem with the center channel? Did you try hooking up the R50's to the rear channels and seeing how they sounded there? If they still sound bad there or don't work at all then something is wrong with them. If they are fine and sound good then there is something wrong with the amp.

Now when it comes to the amp are you sure that none of the settings got changed in the move or that it didn't reset its self?

If the speakers sound fine on the surround channels then I it sounds like something is wrong with the amp. I'm not sure what would be wrong with it though.

 

[envision22]

We did try to run the R50s through the surround channels and they sounded the same. We tried every configuration and could not get the r50s to sound right even though we could get the other pold surrounds to sound good through only the surround channel. The center channel sounds fine unless the receiver is set to 5 channel, in which everything sounds bad.

We tried what would seem to be every setting on the amp to try and fix the problem but nothing works. We'll probably just end up sending everything in for warranty again, but i hope they actually fix somthing this time!

 

[TLS Guy]

So random, my friend threw a new years party which required him to relocate his sound system (Denon AVR-588 running Polk R50 fronts with polk surrrounds and center) and, after we finished moving it upstairs and getting it all hooked up, we turned it on only to find that it sounded really bad, as if the tweeters weren't working! We tried everything, changing all the receiver settings and hooking up the speakers to different outputs, nothing seemed to work. It was really a downer and not something that you would want to happen the night of a new-years party. We found a compromise by hooking up the bookshelf speakers to the surround output and used that for the party because it seemed to be the only configuration that worked.

My question is, have any of you heard of this happening due to moving the system? We were obviously carefull with everything, and we're sure that nothing would have broken in the moving process. We even tried bringing the R50s to my house to see if it was just the amp that was broken or if the speakers were broken too, they sounded the same on my amp which means they were broken. After taking the receiver to a shop and sending the speakers back to polk, the system is not fixed at all. Both components came back with the exact same problems, as if they didn't try to fix them at all! Either that or they didn't test anything before they sent us back with them. It's very frustrating because this system worked perfectly for a year until new years eve when, somehow, both towers and the amp all broke in the same night! The other wierd thing is that we could get the smaller speakers to sound good out of the surround outputs, but they sounded really flat using the front outputs, and they would sound good in stereo, but really bad if we switched it to 5 channel (which is the setting that this system used to sound good with for a year prior)

Sorry for the long post, but this has been a very frustrating, confusing, and time-consuming problem! Has anyone else had a problem similar to this one? I have a feeling that if we send the speakers and receiver back again, we'll still have the same problems

Yes that is a rambling post, that does not help to guide us much in our response. Please answer these questions.

If those speakers are connected to a known good amp or receiver, can you hear sound coming from the tweeters if you put your ear against them?

Please connect the the right and left fronts of the receiver, to known good speakers. Set the receiver back to default settings. Then set the receiver to pass through and two channel stereo. Play a good CD, in a known working player connected to the CD input. Is the sound satisfactory or not?

If the sound is OK connect the Polk speakers to the receiver. Is the sound OK or not?

This way we will know if you receiver and speakers are OK or not, or if you have some aberrant setting on the receiver.

It would be highly unusual for a receiver AND a pair of speakers to fail at once, so much so that I can't conceive a mechanism to account for it.