home theater center channel down for the count

[danger boy]

Tonight.. while watching a movie.. the center channel started to go in and out. It has been happening for about two weeks now.. on and off.. finally I noticed tonight that there was no sound coming from the center speaker.

Thought maybe just a loose wire.. nope. The center channel has a hum in it.

here is how it's wired..

blu ray player to pre amp via 5.1 analog cables for audio.. video is via HDMI to new LCD tv (looks amazing)

pre amp hooked up to amps.. three front mono block amps.. rear is a two channel stereo amp. all work fine except center has a hum and no sound.

so the problem could be the RCA cable from the center mono block to the pre amp..

OR

the center channel pre amp output may be bad

OR

the mono block that runs the center channel is dead.

OR

the cable that runs from the mono block to the pre amp could be bad..

OR

the center channel cable from the blu ray player to the pre map may be bad.

UGH.. so much to check and try and isolate the problem.

so this weekend. I am tearing everything down and doing a total rewire of all the audio and video cables in the home theater.

any ideas on the easiest way to accomplish this?

*listening to movies in 2 ch leaves a lot to be desired.. at least in my set up it does. :( at least the subwoofer still works ;)

[wutadumsn23]

Hire somebody to do it for you? No, j/k sounds like it is going to be a pain in the butt hope you get it fixed up.

[Kex]

... so the problem could be the RCA cable from the center mono block to the pre amp..

OR

the center channel pre amp output may be bad

OR

the mono block that runs the center channel is dead.

OR

the cable that runs from the mono block to the pre amp could be bad..

OR

the center channel cable from the blu ray player to the pre map may be bad.

UGH.. so much to check and try and isolate the problem. ...This doesn't seem so daunting a task to me. I would, first of all, just switch a working channel monobloc connection from front working L or R channels to the non-functional C channel, and see if that mysteriously fixes it. If it does, then replace the cables one at a time with the old C channel cables, and try again after each switch. It won't take you long to figure out if it's a cable, a pre, a monobloc, or a source problem that way. The hardest part might be, if needed, pulling everything forward a foot or two so that you have easy access to all the connections.

[danger boy]

i just swapped out the RCA cable from the pre to the amp.. the hum got worse.. to the point of really loud crackling.. i freaked how loud the pop and crackeling was. I quickly turned everything off.

Must be a short somewhere.. I will check all cables.. but yeah. that would be the easiest thing to do..

but.. i haven't rewired the HT in years.. and it's a big rats nest behind the wrack.. so it needs to be cleaned up.. and rewired.

[wutadumsn23]

Good luck neighbor, if you need any help I'll bring the beer and pizza, lol.

[mantis]

i just swapped out the RCA cable from the pre to the amp.. the hum got worse.. to the point of really loud crackling.. i freaked how loud the pop and crackeling was. I quickly turned everything off.

Must be a short somewhere.. I will check all cables.. but yeah. that would be the easiest thing to do..

but.. i haven't rewired the HT in years.. and it's a big rats nest behind the wrack.. so it needs to be cleaned up.. and rewired.

Shame I don't live closer, I could come over and knock that out for yeah. Wire management is one of my strong points. Hopefully you just have a bad IC, or just a dirty connection.

Dan

[dpowell]

It's amazing how much faster it is to tear down a system than it is to get everything plugged back in just the way you want it. :/ Good luck with the rebuild. Hope you find out what is wrong on the first couple of troubleshooting steps vs it being the very last thing you try. :)

[wutadumsn23]

How did it turn out??