DerbyDad03 wrote in
:

On Nov 20, 9:27*am, "
wrote:
On Nov 20, 4:00*am, harry wrote:





On Nov 19, 8:48*pm, DerbyDad03 wrote:

A few weeks ago I picked up a surround sound system on
Craigslist. It came with some pretty thin speaker wire, (24 gauge
I think) but the guy said it worked fine for him. I had enough of
my own 16g wire to connect the front and center speakers, but not
enough to connect the rears.

With what I had left after wiring the front and center speakers,
I ra
n
2 lengths of 16g down into the basement, across the ceiling and
back up into the living room, where I attached them (securely) to
the 24g for the rear speakers. I'd guess 15' of 24g for the right
rear speake
r
and 25' for the left. The wires ran next to each through the
basement
,
up into the living room, along one wall and then parted ways in a
corner, with one going up to the right rear and the other
continuing along the floor to the other side of the room and then
up to the left rear speaker.

What I found was that both rear speakers would sort of crackel if
I turned the volume up too high. Low volumes were fine, but I
couldn't crank it up. It wasn't really distortion of the sound
itself, as much as a high pitched tick-tick-tick on top of the
sound. I actually narrowed it down to the left rear speaker wire
as the root cause, the one with the longest wire run of 24g wire.
As long as that length of wire was hooked up, both rear speakers
would crackle at high volume. If I plugged one of the 16g wires
to the front speakers into the left rear jack on the system,
there was no crackling. If I unplugged the left rear and ran just
the right rear, there was no crackling. That tells me that the
noise was definitely related to that run of wire.

This weekend I bought enough 16g wire to rewire both rear
speakers, each with it's own single run of wire from the system
to the speaker. No more crackling even when cranked up loud
enough to send the cat running from the room.

So, to all you would be sound engineers, I ask this simple
question:

Why would a small gauge wire running to that one speaker cause
both rear speakers to crackel? Yes, originally there was small
gauge wire running to both rear speakers, but as I said, when I
unplugged the longest length of 24g to the left speaker, the
right speaker stopped crackling.

What would cause that type of problem?

Crackling is usually caused by a loose connection or corrosion
somewhere.
You sometimes get a break inside the insulation of the wire that is
not visible..- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On this rare occasion, I'd have to say I agree.
IMO, something like that, at one of the connection
points is more likely the cause. *I don't see how
the wiring change could cause crackling sounds.
The biggest difference would be in the resistance
of the wire and that would result in less sound.
There are differences in capacitance too, but would
not expect that to be huge, nor would you expect it
to result in cracking type sound.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I'm not doubting anyone's assessment of the situation, but I have to
at least question the loose connection/broken wire as the root cause.

How would a loose connection cause this to happen:

Environment:

- Volume is up high.
- Left rear speaker is crackling
- Right rear speaker is crackling

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

Why would the right rear speaker stop crackling when the left rear
speaker wire is unplugged? Could the loose connection cause feedback
through the system (maybe through the ground?) and back out to the
rear speaker?

If the noise was ending up on the ground, wouldn't it also be present
at the front speakers, center speaker and sub-woofer? It never is.

This sounds like you have(at high volume) a High freq. oscillation,
swithcing on and off with sound level.
The thin wiring just acts as a filter and avoids oscillation.
Removing one speaker removes the feedback path.
Try putting a ferrite filter block around the speaker wires, like
the ones you find on the mains input lead on a lot of computer
equipment.
This HF oscillation can sound like crackeling, when going on/off
on speaker wiring.