Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Distortion"pop?" from speakers

Hey all,
I have a Harman Kardon AVR 347 running a 5.1 sys (M22's, VP100, QS 8's and an Hsu STF 2). The sound is just GREAT through the Axioms. However, recently I've noticed some sort of distortion "pop" (for lack of better description) while listening to recorded material. The sound is very obvious listening to audio CD's and it happens at the time that one track changes to the next in the moment of silence. It is also noticable while making changes using our DVR. The "pop" comes from all channels regardless of whether the receiver is in stereo mode w/ surround off.
I ran the speakers of our second receiver/dvd mini system and did not notice the sound. After contacting the folks at Harman Kardon they are graciously replacing my receiver, but had no explanations as to the cause. I'm just curious if anyone has experienced this slight, albeit annoying problem, and/or know what the cause could be??
Thanks so much and I'm glad that I fially have an opportunity to post as an Axiom owner and not just a dreamer,
Sips

I think this topic has been covered before and it has to do with using the digital connection. If you are using a digital connection from your cd player you may want to switch to analog cables and it should go away.

Digital works great for me and my Denon.

Proctologists do digital, too.

That deserves a "Ba Domp Pshht!"

I wouldn't know.

You will sooner than me.

Not if I have anything to say about it.

if you ain't gonna get checked when you hit 40, then I guess that's your call. You know, there are plenty of woman proctologists. I hear they have smaller knuckles.

I thought prostate massage was supposed to be pleasurable.

You guys keep this up and we're going to scare off all the new users. Poor guy has a legit question. When he comes back to check on the answer, he may never return again.

Yeah, Peter! GEEZ!

Uh, I mean ... *pipes down*

The colonoscopy isn't as bad as you'd think. I had mine at 40 and they put me to sleep using a mild anesthetic, and I was waking up in the recovery soon after without feeling a thing.

As a bonus, I got to keep some high res photos of the inside of my intestines - that's worth the ride.

The worst thing about it for me was drinking that awful laxative solution the night before to clean out my system. That was tough because you have to drink 8 oz. every 10 minutes until it's all gone. It sounds easy, but after about 6 glasses that 10 minutes arrives way too fast. Once you get it all down though - get ready to turn on the fire hose!

Thanks for sharing

Well, it's a good thing my question wasn't too serious as it didn't take long for this topic to go down the tubes. Literally??
To Haoleb I am running digital connections from both of my CD/DVD sources. An optical for my Audio CD's and HDMI for the Bluray. I don't play audio cd's through the Bluray, it's a Sharp and is lousy decoding audio. However, trying to isolate the problem I did play audio cd's using the bluray as a source and still got the 'pops.'
Does anyone know why running digital connections would introduce noise during track breaks??
As to the "pipes" responses, I'm just over the 4th decade of life and have yet to experience the probing.
Sips

Those pops are frequently caused by the receiver having to decode enough of the signal to determine if it is DTS or regular PCM (DTS is embedded in a regular CD channel).

Back to the original question... Try this page on AVS forum regarding the popping.



I'm afraid it's not good news as I've seen many reports of this in online forums re: HK (247 and 347) and I have a good friend who went through an absolute nightmare with HK on his 247. They promised that a firmware upgrade would fix this problem (and a few others) and after many failed attempts he finally mailed it to them for analysis. They received it and told him that they'd send him a new one within ~6 weeks. (can you believe this!?)

At this point, I told him to raise a huge stink with them and they revised the time down to 3 weeks, but still, an awful experience to be without your HT hub for so long. They ended up upgrading him to a brand new more expensive AVR as a result, but when he got it, it still doesn't pass 1080p/24 and has a few other bugs he just can't work out.

I realize this is a bit of a downer post, but when I hear about such awful customer service I feel like I have to do my part to spread the word when there are great companies like Axiom out there who really do try to do right by their customers...

It sounds like thus far you've had a better experience, my advice based on my friend's experience is to stay on HK until you get it fully resolved and you're happy. Maybe you can even work an upgrade out of the deal. It sounds like they're working out of their "firmware funk," so hopefully you're timing it right to be near the end of the problems.

Good luck!

Jason

Makes me glad I went with Denon

Makes me glad I went with a non HDMI receiver! I can wait an extra year for them to work out all the kinks on HDMI.

Good point Fred, HK is definitely not alone with the problems (though the customer service experience my buddy went through puts them in a class of their own IMHO)

HDMI seems like a very tricky thing to get exactly right in the newer receivers. Like Jason said, the 3808 seems to have it right, but I remember before I got mine that I was expecting more than a few quirks there as well given that almost every other receiver I'd read about had some sort of HDMI or handshake-related problem.

Myrison,
As a matter of fact I have had sort of good customer service, all prior to posting here. The tech rep that I was working with gave me some things to try, all of which made little sense in fixing the problem. After playing the audio cd's through a different receiver and not noticing the "pops" the tech said they would replace the receiver. I have an AVR 347 (lacking true hd/ dts master audio and not able to switch 1080p, only hdmi 1.2) so I thought I'd see if they would upgrade to the newer 354 (new codecs and hdmi 1.3) and he said "no problem,,,,but I'm out of stock until Nov." I could have him generate a RMA, but I'd be out my rig for 2 months, so I am putting up with the annoying 'pops' during the silence between tracks for hopes of a better, more capable receiver.
It's ironic because I partly got an HK due to posts on this forum and in hindsight I wish I had went Denon.

Sorry to hear that powerwindow... Maybe you can call them back in November and start the process over again and get an upgrade out of the deal (at which point they will tell you they're out of stock until January)

Seriously though, it might be worth a try, nothing to lose.