Can speaker cable pick up EMI / RFI and cause the speaker to start buzzing? My center channel tweeter started buzzing (not hum) a few days ago so I rearranged the cables at the back of my AV rack, mainly keeping more distance between IC cables and power cords. It didn't help. Next day, I turned the system on and no buzz so I watched a movie without a problem. Today, turned it on, the buzz came back. :angry-cussingblack: I started to turn off components one by one until everything is turned off including equalizer, active x-over except for the amp feeding the center channel tweeter. The buzz remains. It seems as if the source of this buzz is between amp and speaker driver. Any suggestions?
Buzzing from center channel speaker
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soundhound
Well-Known Member
Welcome to the real world. Depending on the load on the pole transformer from your neighbors, the load in your own house etc mysterious buzzes and hum problems can come and go. I deal with it all the time. The important thing is that if your system can be hum and buzz-free at any one time, then you have done everything you can reasonably do. If the hum and buzz is constant all the time, then you should look for a ground loop somewhere. I have gone to the extreme of using Jensen line level isolation transformers to cure the problem one day, then the next day, the problem comes back. All you can reasonably do is to assure that you can get the hums and buzzes out of your system at least some of the time, and live with it the rest of the time. Some of this is the price you pay for vacuum tube electronics........ :angry-cussingblack:
Update.
I was checking capacitors and resistors to see if any are defective and causing this noise. It turns out that one resistor I soldered in at negative bias supply circuit was wrong value. Don't know how it happened, I thought I read the color banding right but turns out this resistor was 10 times lower value than what was supposed to be there. It may have damaged some parts in chain so I replaced all of them and put the right resistor in place. The problem solved, it's consistently quiet now. It still doesn't explain the time when it didn't buzz though. :think:
I was checking capacitors and resistors to see if any are defective and causing this noise. It turns out that one resistor I soldered in at negative bias supply circuit was wrong value. Don't know how it happened, I thought I read the color banding right but turns out this resistor was 10 times lower value than what was supposed to be there. It may have damaged some parts in chain so I replaced all of them and put the right resistor in place. The problem solved, it's consistently quiet now. It still doesn't explain the time when it didn't buzz though. :think: