Crackling in right channel, what do I do? Help, please.


Sadly, I am experiencing crackling in the right channel of my system. The crackling happens intermittently and has happened on different sources, including my FM tuner, and from my DAC. It seems like the crackling is not related to the source. 

I have a monster of a system, including a Gryphon Colosseum amplifier, and a pair of Gryphon Cantata speakers. 

My system is described in the link below. How should I go about debugging this problem? Do I dare play the system? Should I buy a cheap amp and swap that in to see if the problem persists? Do I buy a cheap preamp as well? Do I start by swapping the speaker cables to the opposite speaker cables to see if the crackle moves to the other speaker? 

My system has been performing flawlessly for a number of years now. I did have to get cheap part replaced on the amplifier about three or four years ago, and used Soundsmith in Peekskill, NY.

I'm pretty brokenhearted about the possibility of having to get my system repaired. I had total hip replacement surgery two months ago and I can't lift anything. Moving the beast of an amp or the heavy speakers is out of the question. I suppose I could find somebody to help me if it comes to that. 

Sigh. 

Larry
 

 

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@larrykell 

 

If you cant get a loaner amp, may I suggest it almost doesnt matter what you purchase for the short duration of getting your Gryphon serviced. Buy a decent preowned amp that has reasonable demand when it comes time to resell. There will be nothing you drop in to your system that will provide you with the amplification experience you are used to.

It’s true. There is no worthy substitute in my price range. My requirements are, it needs to take my large spades, have XLR inputs, and I have to be able to lift it. 

Larry if you swapped speaker cables you in fact did not rule them out as they are downstream of the amp and thus could still be a source of noise. I'm sorry to belabor that point but how much easier would new speaker cables be vs an amp repair?

And I very much concur with @ghasley you really should get the Gryphon repaired if it's indeed the culprit.

So, you don’t think it means anything when I switched the speaker cables and immediately moved the crackle from the right channel to the left channel? The left channel has never had a crackle until I swapped the speaker cables. It’s hard for me to believe that both speaker cables have somehow gone bad, and that one of them hid its fault. 

Yes, I will get the Gryphon repaired. It will take months, months waiting to drive it to the repair shop, months waiting for the repair to be done, and months to find the time to go back and get it. I have the airline shipping crate but it is expensive to ship the amp by truck and there is a risk that the amp gets damaged.