I just finished wiring my apartment for sound, and field-testing it this evening I’ve found it tends to sputter; intermittently, the music stutters/sputters and a few seconds of static noise occurs over the music. This happens especially at higher volumes. Any diagnoses?
Sounds like a cell phone causing interference. Besides moving your phone away from the speaker there isn’t much you can do about it.
What are you using to power the speakers and how many speakers are you running?
I agree that it sounds like an impedance mismatch resulting in clipping. Check for pinched wires (such as wire running under carpet that might have a bookcase sitting on it).
Check the binding posts in the back of the amp for stray wire braid strands that might be almost touching another post. Turn off speakers and see if it happens through the headphones.
Dirty controls: tap or wiggle the knobs (volume & tone) to see if this makes it worse.
Can you remove the speaker grills? Check the cones for any torn spots. Gently push them back and forth and see if you can sense any binding or rubbing (touch the cones, not the convex “bubble” in the middle because it might collapse).
It’s probably one of these things: I wired the thing up myself so there are probably lots of places where the staple holding the wire to the wall is too tight, or the wire got damaged, or when I connected the (fat) speaker wire to the (little) holes on the plugs, it’s almost touching something else. Oh, well. It’s probably next to impossible to figure out where the problem is without taking my entire house apart again.
I agree. Specifically, Nextel cellphone/radios cause this effect. Where I work, our pilots won’t even fly with them onboard (unless they’re turned off); they make their headsets sputter. And in the office, you can usually tell your Nexie is going to ring if you’re near a PC because the PC’s speakers will start sputtering.
Actually it should be quite possible to track down the problem. I do this sort of thing all the time. The description of the problem is vague enough that it could be any of a large number of things, making it rather difficult to diagnose from here. The best way to narrow things down is to swap out various bits, if you can. I’d start by taking a short chunk of speaker wire and hooking the speakers directly to the amp. If the problem vanishes, it’s somewhere in the wires. If not, hook the speakers up to a different amp, and vice versa. Etc. Admittedly, this is trickier when you don’t have a test rack full of equipment…
Yeah, but that only happens when the phone is in use. I’ve also seen this occurr with nearby (like 5ft. from my window) police officers using the their car radios.
Other electrical devices in the house can also cause problems if they’re on the same circuit… I’d unplug the TV, microwave, cable box, clock radio, etc. to see if they’re causing it. The devices don’t have to be plugged into the same outlet to cause a problem… the problem could be emanating from another room.
I have a radio station a couple blocks from my house and sometimes their transmitter causes problems with my stuff, in paticular my guitar amp which picks up the radio signal.
I’d check the speaker wires first though.
Be sure all connections are ‘tight.’