On Nov 20, 4:01*pm, "
wrote:
On Nov 20, 3:55*pm, DerbyDad03 wrote:





On Nov 20, 3:00*pm, Bill wrote:

Action:

*- Unplug the left rear speaker wire from the back the surround sound
system.

Result:

*- Left rear speaker goes dead (of course)
*- Right rear speaker stops crackling

...

Try leaving the first speaker connected and disconnect the
other speaker.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "first" speaker. Right rear, Left
rear, etc. is a better way to refer to them.

In any case, disconnecting speakers one at a time is how I narrowed it
down to the left rear channel as the problem.

Then a test is to run a different wire or wires along the
floor and see if those different wires eliminate
the problem.

That's how I found that the 16g eliminated the problem.

Or try different speakers.

That's one of the very first things I tried by swapping the speakers
that came with the system. The problem stayed with the rear channels
regardless of which speakers I connected.

Or try a different amplifier.

The only other amp I have is too powerful for the small surround sound
speakers and I didn't want to chance blowing them.

You can't blow out speakers regardless of amp size
unless you turn it up loud enough to do so. *It's better
to have a 100W amp on speakers that can only handle
50W, than it is to have a 50W amp on speakers that
can handle 100W and turn the volume all the way up.
*Very often the damage is not done
to the woofers, which take the most power, but to the
tweeters or midrange because when you overload an
amp, it clips. *And the clipping produces harmonics
that are high frequency.





Note: Wires which are run in a house can have nicks or shorts
if they have scraped something metal. Or a wire staple holding
the wire might be shorting it or shorting to a metal object
in the wall (grounding it).

All of that was checked early on in the troubling shooting process.

Wires run close together for a long distance can "induce"
electricity in the other wire. Try using "shielded" wire.

That's one of the things I considered but I didn't know if going from
24g to 16g would eliminate the induction effect. It may have, since
the problem went away when I increased the wire size.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"It's better to have a 100W amp on speakers that can only handle
50W"

From a sound perspective, yes. However, unless you are the only one
that uses the system, you run the danger of kids/neighbors/drunken
buddies cranking the volume without knowing the limitation of the
speakers.