Crackling in right channel, what do I do? Help, please.


Sadly, I am experiencing crackling in the right channel of my system. The crackling happens intermittently and has happened on different sources, including my FM tuner, and from my DAC. It seems like the crackling is not related to the source. 

I have a monster of a system, including a Gryphon Colosseum amplifier, and a pair of Gryphon Cantata speakers. 

My system is described in the link below. How should I go about debugging this problem? Do I dare play the system? Should I buy a cheap amp and swap that in to see if the problem persists? Do I buy a cheap preamp as well? Do I start by swapping the speaker cables to the opposite speaker cables to see if the crackle moves to the other speaker? 

My system has been performing flawlessly for a number of years now. I did have to get cheap part replaced on the amplifier about three or four years ago, and used Soundsmith in Peekskill, NY.

I'm pretty brokenhearted about the possibility of having to get my system repaired. I had total hip replacement surgery two months ago and I can't lift anything. Moving the beast of an amp or the heavy speakers is out of the question. I suppose I could find somebody to help me if it comes to that. 

Sigh. 

Larry
 

 

larrykell

@larrykell 

 

If you cant get a loaner amp, may I suggest it almost doesnt matter what you purchase for the short duration of getting your Gryphon serviced. Buy a decent preowned amp that has reasonable demand when it comes time to resell. There will be nothing you drop in to your system that will provide you with the amplification experience you are used to.

It’s true. There is no worthy substitute in my price range. My requirements are, it needs to take my large spades, have XLR inputs, and I have to be able to lift it. 

Larry if you swapped speaker cables you in fact did not rule them out as they are downstream of the amp and thus could still be a source of noise. I'm sorry to belabor that point but how much easier would new speaker cables be vs an amp repair?

And I very much concur with @ghasley you really should get the Gryphon repaired if it's indeed the culprit.

So, you don’t think it means anything when I switched the speaker cables and immediately moved the crackle from the right channel to the left channel? The left channel has never had a crackle until I swapped the speaker cables. It’s hard for me to believe that both speaker cables have somehow gone bad, and that one of them hid its fault. 

Yes, I will get the Gryphon repaired. It will take months, months waiting to drive it to the repair shop, months waiting for the repair to be done, and months to find the time to go back and get it. I have the airline shipping crate but it is expensive to ship the amp by truck and there is a risk that the amp gets damaged.  

I’ll have a month with a new amp and my existing speaker cables to see if the crackle comes back. I can’t take any more chances powering on the monster amp.

Larry if the speaker cable on your left channel had a short and was creating noise and you then moved that cable to the right channel it would make noise there also right? When you swap cables like that you're not bypassing them you need to swap in another cable to rule them out.

I didn’t move the cable, I just swapped what channel on the amp was connected to which cable. Both speakers are still connected with the same cables.

Ah I see what you did apologies Larry and carry on and good luck getting your amp repaired!

@larrykell 

 

you are making this too hard. Almost any amp will do. You seem to be worried about the speaker cable lugs fitting and you can look for a LOOOOONG time before you THINK they might fit. In the meantime you could buy a reasonable amp, you could buy some spade to banana adapters (transparent among many make them) or better yet, buy some cheap cables or even marginal bare wire that will get you by. Once again, you are looking for something temporary and you will dislike to varying degrees virtually everything you might acquire.

Thanks for the suggestion of the spade to banana adaptors. That will help. And, yes, I will dislike anything that I buy, lol. I was trying to minimize the amount of dislike. I’m in the grieving stage. I’ll have to live with the replacement for months. 
 

Getting an amp I can lift is probably the most important requirement. 

I ordered an Son of Ampzilla II from SST. It’s more than I wanted to spend but I can pick it up and move it around. It’s a 40lb brick and not a 75lb or 90lb brick. I’m looking forward to seeing how it does. I ran James Bongiorno’s 90lb Class A Sumo Gold for years. I know this is only A for the first ten watts, I believe, and AB for the rest but it is 220w into 8ohms and 350w into 4ohms.