[RoadRashed]

I have a little problem that is about to seriously piss me off. Several months ago, my speakers for my surround sound started popping everytime I turned the living room ceiling fan on/off. It even does it when I turn one of the kitchen lights on. Some days it would pop the subwoofer, now it seems to be just the center speaker, sometimes VERY loud, othertimes just a brief crackle. Thinking I was just pulling too much power through the circuit.....I installed a completely separate outlet into the wall on a completely separate circuit breaker yesterday, for exclusive use on the sound system. I thought for SURE this would fix the problem.......but it did not.

Any ideas on how I can stop this? It's driving me crazy, and it can't be good for the speakers.

 

[~LongRider~]

hook it up to a surge protector, and then into the wall. That might help.

 

[Jim]

I had the same problems way back in my car-audio days. I made sure to use the same gauge wires all over and not have the speaker wires run parallel with anything else (like power lines). I also used a noise suppressor but dunno if they make them for home audio.

 

[RoadRashed]

Everything is hooked up to a very good (at least expensive...) surge protector. I did not think about the speaker wires running parallel to anything though. I will reroute them a bit and see if that changes something. I forgot to mention that the speakers even crackle when the house heater first kicks on too.

 

[xneox]

Sounds like your whole house has a bad ground. Drive a 4 foot steel stake into the ground and run a beefy wire from it to your panel ground. Should fix ya up.

 

[ChrisK]

Sounds like your whole house has a bad ground. Drive a 4 foot steel stake into the ground and run a beefy wire from it to your panel ground. Should fix ya up.

+1

I had a similar problem in my house when i replaced some lights... went to high energy halogen lighting and after I would turn some of them on the powered sub would pop. I fixed the issue by running a whole new circuit to the entertainment system(like is sounds you did). I have a 15amp circuit to just 3 outlets in my house... only one really "used" for the entertaiment system. While I was going to do this anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine who is an electrician and he said it sounded like there was a bad ground somewhere....Also not sure as to what power conditioner/surge protector you are useing, but I have the Moster power HTS3600 Works great.

 

[LeeNetworX]

+1 What they said about the ground. We have this issue in the 2nd bedroom of our apartment; all too common occurence in apartments.

 

[chris_y2k_r1]

Run an extension cord to your neighbor to see if it goes away

 

[Particle Man]

I was gonna say bad ground but it's been said. :shrug

 

[Steel Chicken]

Try the grounding Idea, if that doesn't work, get a 60hz noise filter...doesnot sound like your problem, but ive seen them fix problems that didnot seem related...

 

[RoadRashed]

Thanks for all the replies. I am taking the day off tomorrow and will check on that ground. You all might have saved my sanity (and an Onkyo receiver that was about to fly out a window.......)

 

[theicemancometh]

...You all might have saved my sanity (and an Onkyo receiver that was about to fly out a window.......)

need some help? i dont want you to hurt your back, so send it to me and ill make sure it gets thrown out the window:redflip

 

[RoadRashed]

For those of you interested..... The problem has been solved. I am an idiot.

After installing a separate outlet on it's own breaker, and spending the last 5 hours experimenting with different grounding solutions.....I gave up. I went to unhook everything (I was going to take it to a neighbors house and see if it did the same thing over there) and noticed some cute little arrows on my new sub-woofer cable (high dollar cable I bought not to long ago to relocate the sub-woofer in the room). Next to the cute arrows was some text that said, "signal direction", and other text stating the cable was DIRECTIONAL. AGGGHHH!!!! Of course the arrows were pointing TOWARD my receiver.... I switched directions and everything is perfectly fine..... :shake The sub-woofer was the problem the whole time.....causing all the other speakers to pop during any power flicker.

Up until today, I had never even HEARD of directional cables. I figured the current would flow the same in either direction of a cable and had no reason to even suspect this problem. I DID unplug the sub-woofers power before all of this.......and my center speaker STILL popped, but I had never unplugged the sub-woofer cable from the back of the receiver. I checked all the other cables I have in the entire house and can not find any other "directional" cables. Oh well, I learned something new today.

Sorry for the novel, just thought it would give a few of you a chuckle. :shake :shake