B_limo - what signal do you mean? From any source you are playing you have occasional dropouts? Is power being interrupted or dropping in voltage?? |
"Whats going on here? I noticed about a year ago that my signal would drop out when I would walk across a particular part of my listening room."
Stop walking across that spot. |
And stop opening or closing the closet doors? Stop using any light switches throughout the house? Stop using the garage door opener? Uh, ok
I believe the cutouts are occuring through my source, a wadia 170i ipod dock. Could be the dock or the docks or the docks power supply. Haven't pin pointed it yet but still, I think the main source of problem has to do with the homes electrical in some way... |
Whats going on here? I noticed about a year ago that my signal would drop out when I would walk across a particular part of my listening room. I sold my last rig and was not listening to music for awhile. I rebuilt my rig and now my dropouts are worse. My signal will drop now if I'm in the adjoing room walking around, if I open or close my closet doors, if someone turns a light on or off downstairs and if someone opens or closes the garage door. I know I'll probably have to call an electrician in order to fix this, but any ideas whats going on here? Is it possibly a problem with the electrical panels ground? This is pretty dang frustrating...
03-23-15: B_limo
And stop opening or closing the closet doors? Stop using any light switches throughout the house? Stop using the garage door opener? Uh, ok
I believe the cutouts are occuring through my source, a wadia 170i ipod dock. Could be the dock or the docks or the docks power supply. Haven't pin pointed it yet but still, I think the main source of problem has to do with the homes electrical in some way...
B_limo
Sounds like a loose connection with the wadia 170i ipod dock unit. From your posts any physical transmitted vibration in the area of the wadia 170i ipod dock unit causes dropouts. If you tap on the unit with a couple of your fingers while the unit is outputting music does the signal drop out? If so the problem is with the unit. Check all connections. Gently move cables back and forth on the back of the unit. Could be a poor conductivity connections in the docking station connector. As for the the signal drop out problem happening sometimes when a light switch is turned on or off that could be caused by a transient voltage spike. That is not an electrical problem per say, it is more than likely a poor design problem of the piece of audio equipment. For this problem try a power trip with a built in transient voltage surge protector. . http://wwv.crutchfield.com/p_727170I/Wadia-170iTransport-Silver.html . |
Are you absolutely sure its an electronic problem? The reason I ask is that you say it happens when you are walking around the room. It may just be room acoustics. If you walk to different places in a room while music is playing, the sound can change quite a bit depending on where you are. If you stand in one spot, for example, you could loose a lot of bass, but if you stand somewhere else, it could be stronger.
Other than that, you may want to check that cables of any kind, are not running under the carpet. Also swap out any cables that are connected to the Wadia to make sure they're not damaged. |
its a definite total cut out of sound. It happens 90-95 percent of the time when I touch the light swith in my stereo room, walk across the carpet by my closet in my stereo room, and it happens probably 50-75 percent of the time when I touch the light switch in the adjoining room, run the vacuum anywhere in the house, and oddly enough, when I am throwing my blanket around on my bed in order to make my bed.
This leads me to believe that it is an electrical issue within the house. How is my stereo so sensitive to electricity that just making my bed cuts the stereo out?
I should add that it cuts out completely for about one or two seconds, then comes back on. It is a problem that seems to be getting worse, ie more frequent.
Thanks for the input though, guys, you got me thinking on how to isolate the problem and I will be switching from my welbourne power supply for the wadia back to the stock one. I will also check my cables. I only have the umbilical power cord for the wadia and a digital coax cable coming from the wadia.
My room mate is vacuuming downstairs as I type this and the stereo cut out when they initially turned the vacuum on, and then twice while she was vacuuming, leading me to believe that it is static electricity caused by the vacuum transferring through the carpet and into the electrical system through wiring ran through the house... is this even a possibility?
Maybe my power supply for my wadia is on the outs and is super sensitive to slight power fluctuations or something??
Whatever it is, it's driving me nuts.
I'm going to do some testing and I'll get back with you all. |
okay, I just tried the original power supply for the wadia and go no sound. It was silence but every once in awhile I could hear a pop, like a bad electrical issue.
What I did next was disconnect the digital coax cable and umbilical cord and just ran rca's out of the wadia. When running it this way I am just using the dac in the iphone and the wadia doesn't need power in this configuration for some reason. Anyhow, the cutouts stopped completely so it must either be the welbourne power supply or the wadia that is messed up. I'm actually starting to wonder if the welbourne power supply messed up the wadia over time.
Anyhow, I'm not really sure where to go from here... |
One thing you can try is to run an extension cord from a different outlet that may be in better shape. Also, maybe try a pc power supply with a battery backup. Even if its only a temp fix until you figure out what the problem is.
As far as the actual electrical problem goes, it sounds like you may have an issue with one of the legs in your homes ac. Its the kind of thing that makes you think you have all kinds of electrical problems/dropouts with your house, but its a relatively simple, quick part to fix. It can also explain why your Wadia ps may not be bad. Understand, though, I'm not an electrician and this is just a guess on my part. |
Zd, thanks! I appreciate you brainstorming with me on this one. I actually already tried the different outlet solution to no avail. I also tried different power cords on the power supply. Nothing worked. Last thing I did lastnight was change my digital coax connection on my Nova pre from coax 2 to coax 1 and haven't had a dropout yet. Roomate was just running the vacuum again (strangely enough... ) and didn't have a single drop out. I'm stumped...
My online research lastnight left me at a point where I was going to start questioning if I have a bad digital coax cable. I read online that a bad digital cable (or using an rca cable instead of a digital cable, which I'm not doing) can cause dropouts of the signal every few minutes or even a few times every minute...
Well its snowing here today, after being close to 80 degrees out this past week, so I will be staying home listening to music today so I'll report back later as to what I find out today!
Thanks again ZD! |
Last thing I did lastnight was change my digital coax connection on my Nova pre from coax 2 to coax 1 and haven't had a dropout yet. Roomate was just running the vacuum again (strangely enough... ) and didn't have a single drop out. I'm stumped...
03-25-15: B_limo
About 10 or so years ago I had a Marantz 5.1 digital to analog processor that would occasionally make a clicking sound heard through the speakers and sometimes drop outs in sound heard through the speakers. Problem was the digital coax cable I was using at the time. Tried another digital coax cable, no more problems. Why? Beats me.... If Al, Almarg, is following this thread, I would be willing to bet Al could give you possible reasons why. . |
Yeah, I'm thinking digi cable. Still haven't had a dropout today, yet. Im wondering if when switching inputs from coax 1 to coax 2 lastnight happened to position the cable different enough to reconnect a loose connection within the cable.
I'm afraid to do anything to try to recreate the problem in order to just pin point the issue because it seems to be working now.
Most of the time when Al chimes in I don't know what the heck he's talking about anyways. Even "dumbed" up, he's still above my head. |
Ok, I am still able to get cutouts when turning my lightswitch (ceiling fan / dimmer) on and off. Switched out the Digital Cable for an RCA cable and I can't get the signal to dropout no matter what I do now. I think its safe to say that its the digital cable that has gone bad.
I'm going to see if I can get it replaced under warranty :)
Thanks ZD and Jea for helping me figure this out! |
