John, I'm proud to announce that I now have all the issues sorted out! I indeed had a ground loop issue along with an issue with the new speaker wire I had purchased. I missed the plastic coating that was still present after I stripped the insulation off the wires. The only reason I found it to be an issue was that my new M80 speakers arrived today. Since I won't receive my ground isolator until Friday, I took the 1000 amp offline and hooked the M80s up to my surround receiver to test them to ensure they were in working order. I had some volume from the left speaker but it was very intermittent and scratchy sounding, but the right was totally dead. I checked my connections and tried it again with the same results. Just out of curiosity I used my flashlight to take a closer look at the speaker wire and found that it still had a plastic coating encapsulating the wire. I was so fixated on other issues that I totally missed the simplest thing it could be (The first law of troubleshooting, start with the simplest component it could be, then work your way up to the most complex). Having been a helicopter mechanic for 28 years, you'd think I would have known better. I stripped the thick plastic coating off on both right and left speaker wires, reconnected and was rewarded by the rich sound of the M80 speakers. I repeated the process for all my other speaker wires, unplugged my cable set top, reconnected my speaker wires and RCA connectors to my amp. I fired the amp back up and the sound blew me away!! It was in fact a brain fart on my behalf. I'd like to thank all who weighed in on my problem. It reaffirms my belief that I made the right decision in choosing to do business with Axiom.