Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions ADA1250-3 : Right Chanel Drops Out

The three ADAs I have are all rock solid. Sure I've driven them all hard to the point where the protection has kicked in but that's to be expected. I've never had to "re-boot" them though.

BTW, I couldn't activate the protection on the 1500 by normal means. It wasn't until I connected two M5s in parallel per channel that the impedance dipped down to 2 Ohms and kicked on the protection. By that time, I was experiencing 112dB peaks at 13 feet away so I'd say that's pretty darned good.

I finally got the ladder, removed the 1 billion screws on the top of the ADA, Spayed Canned Air all over it then reversed the process. There was a layer of fine dust but that was all. Everything else looked brand new.

As before the unit then played fine but after some time the RHC would start dropping out again. These are brief drop outs....

Edit - I swap around a few items (speakers, cables etc) and see if the issue moves or disappears. I hate intermittent things like this.

Swapping speakers did not make a difference.

But I did notice when not playing anything (and increasing the Vol to 0DB), there was a faint and constant background hiss if you put your ear near the speakers... but on the Right Speaker this hiss would be interrupted by a faint Tick Tick Tick ... then silence (drop out) then would return to the hiss and after some time the cycle would repeat.

Listening to it longer, it is mostly Hiss --> Tick --> Silence --> Hiss (but on a variable time interval between Ticks and how long the Silence is).

Also - I can rule out the source (into the AVR) as it happens across all sources.

The ticking sound is the protection kicking in. The root cause of that is unknown.

The hiss is normal. It's a combination of noise in your environment and noise induced by the circuits within the ADA. To know how much of that noise is ADA-induced, you'd have to connect each ADA input to a noise-free ground with a short, shielded cable.

OK - I get the "Hiss --> Tick --> Silence --> Hiss" on the RH channel even when everything is OFF with the exception of the Amp.

The hiss is still normal even when everything is off (except the amp). It appears the tick is due to a fault inside the amp. I'm assuming you've checked the speaker wires and don't have a strand shorting somewhere. Try removing the speaker cables at the amp to see if the ticking stops.

I'm fine with and understand the Hiss. It is well below the soundfloor at normal seating distance.

It's the drops outs.

I'm not sure I get your suggestion. If I remove the speaker cables I will have no idea if it is still dropping out ... as at that point I will not hear anything at all as the speaker will not be connected! I'll check the speaker connections again to double check (they are hard to see, so you never know).

But, I'm now worried I've got a cap going bad in the ADA.

No change after fiddling with cables. Still get the issue. If anything it is become more frequent over time.

Well - that's about it for the next week (travelling).

Dude, send it to Axiom for an exorcism and take a Fukitol pill to chill.