I have had my current setup for a while now and have had no issues until recently. The last few weeks I have been experiencing an issue with one of my M80s. When watching a blu ray the left speaker with produce a thump and then stop working. It does not seem to matter if the sound track is demanding or calm, it seems totally random. It only seems to happen with movies, I can play CDs, MP3s, Xbox and PS3 games though the same system with no issues. Nothing else goes into protection, the AVR and my amps still show they are functioning and all other channels work fine. Any idea where to start? Thanks ahead of time for any help

Hi OmahaBlu,

Very strange. I have lots of questions and want you to try some different things if you have not already.

So is the left M80 "cutting out" randomly and does it come back on randomly or after it "thumps" it stops producing sound for the rest of the movie? Are you hearing any other sounds like "crackling" in the left channel? After the left M80 stops working does adjusting the volume control up or down cause the left channel to start working again? Are you running HDMI or multi-channel analog to your blu-ray player for sound.

What crossover point are you running your M80's, are they set to large? Have you checked each tweeters and woofers if they are working correctly? Check your speaker wire as well for any loose connections at the AVR or speakers and any damage to the wire with left M80.

Good luck.

If you have your M80s set to large and are playing LFE-heavy movies at louder volume, your can have problems.

Also try swapping your left and right speakers around to make sure it's not an amp problem.

Excellent advice Adrian. This should be one of the first things to try.

I agree, Blu-ray movies are the most demanding for sure.

Since you have not had the problem with other sources, I can't help but think it is in the amp or preamp.

I'm thinking amp or AVR, too. There's no way it's the speaker. Try flipping the inputs on the XPA-2 so that the right speaker is playing the left channel. See if the problem follows that.

Yeah it is strange. After the thump it no longer produces any sound for the rest of the viewing. No crackling or any other noises up to the point of the thump and adjusting the volume has no effect on either. I am running HDMI from the blu ray.



I have the corssover point at 80 and they are not set to large. All the drivers appear to be working and have no distortaion. However, after reading some of these response I did check some of my connections and found on the M80 which I am having issues with a very, very loose banana plug. I was not sure if that was the issue because it did not seem to cause problems using other sources. Maybe it only causes issues with the blu ray source because it is so much more demanding. Would that be possible?

All the other sources run through the same amp and preamp. So are you saying that it could be failing at the amp or preamp just based on the demand of the bluray and that the other sources are not demanding enough to push it to fail. When it does happen the amp and the preamp do not seem to go into protect mode. I thought I would see something at least on the amp that that channel was in protect mode. I will try some off the other ideas posted here and see if I can get some more results. I don't think it is the m80s either, since they don't seem to exhibit any othere problems.

Thanks everyone for your repsonses. I know I have the dreaded Onkyo - Axiom - Emotiva combination so maybe it is just finally biting me and my good luck it running out. Here is hoping that is it just the real loose banana plug. Thanks again.

Tighten those speaker wire connections, check your HDMI connection as well that it is secure and try again. How long of a HDMI connection are you running? Now I wonder if this audio drop out is being caused by some sort of HDMI handshake issue?

If it was HDMI the video would go too, and not just one channel of audio.

I'm leaning toward amp protection shutdown, or a decoding error in the audio processor when being fed a bitstream source.

Oh yeah were dealing with Emotiva amps here . There have been reports of a single channel shutting down in the past with the M80's.

I have had the amp go into protection before, but always showing me the red led on the channel meter on the front. With this issue the meter is still blue and bouncing. I don't think it is the amp or the speaker. I think you may be onto something with the decoding. I run all the other devices through the same gear with no issues at all. All the issues have been on newer discs as well. I am updating my oppo now and there is a née firmware I did not have so maybe something there will help

If you're bitstreaming to the Onkyo, try changing the Oppo's output to LPCM. The Onkyo may need a firmware update, but that's harder to do.