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

I am happy to hear you found the problem with amp. I had this happened twice with my Mark Levinson 23.5. First time, it was a capacitor gone bad. So I sent the unit to George Meyers AV and they completely replaced all electrolyte capacitors. Then earlier this year, my left channel became barely audible. I sent the unit back to George Meyers and they found the problem and fixed it at no cost to me except shipping & handling.

 

So I had to do this drill to isolate the problem. I have tubes upstream and some tubes can give similar problems you described. I always start from the speaker side and work up the chain to all the way to source. One time, I had a bad tube in my Audio Research PH5 phone and right channel began to fad in and out.

 

You have an excellent system. But have you noticed that impedance of your speaker drops to 3.5 Ohms and your amp is rated at 160 W Class A at 8 Ohms? Since it is an all Gryphon system, it may be working. However, I would recommend you find an amp also rated at 4 ohm and 2 ohm preferably power doubles as impedance is halved. Since you are now looking for an amp, this may be an opportunity to find out if you can breath new life to your speakers. For an example, ML 332 advertised below may be a worth a shot. This unit was recently serviced by George Meyers.

 

The Gryphon Colosseum can produce 1250w at 1ohm and 5400w at 1/2 an ohm. The capacitors are huge. The amp has plenty of power and can handle far larger speakers than the Cantatas.
 

See here: 

 

I think my system sounds good and has life. Here is an iPhone video of one minute of Dame Janet Baker singing Where Corals Lies from Elgar’s Sea Pictures:

Elgar video

I hope this works. It’s hosted on Imgur. You may need to turn the sound on by hitting the speaker icon in the upper right. 

@larrykell 

I didn't see those specs, but I will take your word for it. Are these all power rating Class A? I read the brochure and it only gave 160 W rating at 8 ohms.

 

The specs are here:

Gryphon Colosseum Specs

in the right column. The whole system is on a dedicated 20a line and the amplifier is plugged into a high current plug on an AudioQuest Niagara 5000.