I was listening to U-571 last night and heard loud popping noise coming from the left surround QS-8. It happened twice during heavy action scenes. Once was a quick double pop and the other time was just a single. I found this searching the web "There are two possible causes for the popping noise.
1. During handling and installation the speaker wire was pushed into the basket.
2. During installation excess speaker wire was coiled in the speaker opening and the wires have
pushed against the speaker lead wires."
I have not done any further investigation yet (swap QS-8's, look inside, etc. but will tonight. Has anyone else had this happen? Any ideas? My whole HT setup is less than a month old.

I guess I'm not really sure I understand what your 1. and 2. finding on the net are even saying. I would first check your speaker wire connections on the receiver and speaker terminals to make sure they are correct and secure and no wires are loose.

Your idea of swapping speakers is a good one, but I would just switch the left/right surround wires on the back of the receiver versus moving the speakers. If you still hear the noise on the other speaker it may be a problem with the wiring, or maybe that movie just has this sound artifact in the recording.

Or, possibly you have your surrounds dB levels calibrated to high, but this in unlikely.

If you can't recreate the sound in the other speaker, you might want to unscrew the 4 drivers on the popping Qs8 and make sure the wiring inside looks in tact.

Beyond that you could call Axiom. Does this do it on other movies?

Hi,

I think you may have already sent me an email, to which I replied. In any case, the possibilities of #1 or #2 are extremely unlikely. The woofers in the QS8 should not "pop" even if you happened to inadvertently set them to "Large". They should be set to "Small" with an 80-Hz crossover in your Onkyo 805's speaker setup menu. If you used any Onkyo auto-setup mode, turn it off and do it manually.

By all means exchange the left and right surround wires to see if the "popping" noise remains with the left QS8. If the popping noise moves to the right surround QS8, then that will tell you the problem is likely the Onkyo 805's surround amplifier clipping, or a defective left-channel surround amp.

If, on the other hand, the popping noise stays at the left QS8 even when you exchange the surround channel wires, then there may be a defective driver in your left QS8 surround.

Call Axiom's toll-free number and mention the problem, and our service manager will take it from there.

Regards,

Thanks, Sir Quack,

Your tips to David are also excellent.

Regards,

Thanks Alan, I have to keep my post numbers up, wouldn't want you to catch me.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to work on it now. I did have the popping noise again listening to Blackhawk Down, so don't think it's the movie.
Alan - This was my first post on this topic. I'll let you know what I find.
Thanks!

Okay - never mind. And no, I'm not going to tell you what it was. I will say that I love these Axiom speakers though!

The spirit of Orville Redenbacher? What kind of dark experiments were you performing that you won't admit to?

David, dude, you have to tell us. All of us have done silly things from time to time or even mistaken another noise for being our speakers.

It just happens that my sub sits in the left corner of the room. From my sitting position, the popping sure sounded like it was coming from the QS-8. I was actually able to stop the popping by changing the Onkyo setup from -10db to -15db out to the sub.

So then it sounds like that popping was your sub's driver bottoming out. What sub are you using? I hope you haven't damaged it.