|
Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
|
|
|
Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
|
In Reply to: Some Questions posted by pburant on March 18, 2009 at 10:18:37:
"[W]as the same amplifier present every time the problem occurred? Another way of asking this is whether, thru process of elimination, you have determined with 100% certainty that the problem is not confined to any one component?"
...Let's say 99 and 44/100% certain. I've swapped amplification, front-ends, and speakers entirely at least twice over the three years that I've been dealing with all of this, and although the symptoms aren't exactly the same as they were three years ago, they seem similar enough to suggest that I'm still confronting the same root cause. (I'll say more about that in a minute.)
"Were the main (Salk) speakers taken out of the loop at some point (does the problem reproduce when only the Totems are connected)?"
....Yes, indeed the Totems sound (and may even *be*) all the way damaged by all of this. When they're running by themselves during the detection of the problem, they seem to have a rattle in one midrange driver, but it only occurs on some tracks of some recordings, and since they're usually my rear-channel speakers I haven't done anything about it.
"You say the problem goes away when you power everything down, disconnect/reconnect all the cabling before powering up again. How long is the system powered down when you do this?"
....Anywhere from a minute or two, to half an hour, with no predictable pattern in when this "solution" works, and when it doesn't. I once demonstrated the problem and its solution by disconnecting and reconnecting over the span of less than a minute, but the next time I tried the same sequence of steps it didn't seem to work.
"Does the problem not go away if, once the problem manifests, you power down w/o reconnecting everything, leaving the power off for the same amount of time as if you were reconnecting everything?"
....No, powering-down and powering back up later doesn't fix it; the connections on the rear aprons have to be broken to fix it -- what I don't know is *which* connections on the rear aprons have to be broken.
"[I]t sounds as though it could be a bad or cold solder joint that's acting up due to thermal or physical stress...."
...Cold solder has been investigated, but the problem seems robust to swapping-out gear, though not exactly identical. Here's where I want to come back to what I said in an earlier paragraph: I've been grappling with a cocktail of problems for three years, but the problems themselves aren't identical.
The first time I had real trouble (the trouble that got me back into high-end audio in the first place), it was with a pair of Parasound Halo separates that would develop a "whooshing" sound in one channel, almost the sound you'd associate with having water in one ear. If I ignored it, the sound would eventually attenuate all the way to zero in that channel, but as soon as I strolled behind the stack and wiggled the IC between the power amp and the preamp, there'd be a series of loud "pops" and then the sound would come booming back.
Okay, here's the thing about that: In three trips to service -- two local and one to the manufacturer, *NOBODY* could make this very audible, very obviously not listener-fatigue induced problem, recur on their own bench.
It has been suggested, in part based on this piece of information, that the actual trouble could be overwhelming different pieces of equipment in different ways, based on their different designs. For example, why does the current problem recur at a friend's house? Perhaps because the root cause of the problem has already done some damage to a piece of equipment in the current stack.
Follow-up thoughts?
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- Answered in order.... - author@escapeclause.net 13:16:46 03/18/09 (0)
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
