Check SP Cable Problem - Monitor 60 Series II

[jawzishere]

I recently bought two Polk Audio Monitor 60 Series II speakers and hooked them into my Yamaha RX-V361 Receiver. They worked perfectly fine for a month at any volume then one day the receiver just clicked off. I turned it back on and it said 'Check SP Cable'.

After that, any time my receiver was turned past like +10 volume it would click off and display the same message when I turned it back on and click off within a few seconds if I didn't turn the volume down. From +10-13 it would click off in minutes and then +14 and quieter it wouldn't really turn off.

I ruled out all the basic problems that cause the 'Check SP Cable' problem such as the + and - speaker wires touching and messed around with the wires a lot and concluded that it had to be something not working between the new Polk speakers and the receiver.

The receiver still works perfectly fine with my old speakers as well.

Now I have no idea what's wrong. Whether the speakers are faulty and need to be returned New Egg or whether a part in my receiver slowly burned out from pushing more than it could handle (although not completely burned out since it works fine with older speakers). Maybe I need to adjust some setting on my receiver to make it so the speakers don't overpower it.

I'd appreciate any feedback or ideas on how to solve this issue. Thanks.

[Outfitter03]

Will you please give some details on what type of receiver you have: make, model and watts if you know them.

If the receiver you have is not getting an error signal with your other speakers then it wouldn't be in the cables. Are the jumpers still securely in place on the binding posts? Is the receiver getting warm? Is it placed somewhere that has good ventilation?

The Monitor 60's are a very efficient speaker so should not be real hard to drive with any modern avr.

Jawzishere welcome to Club Polk and with a little more information hopefully we can help you out.

[jawzishere]

It's a Yamaha RX-V361 Receiver: 120 Volts, 240 Watts, 320 VA and 60 Hz

Never messed around with the binding posts and jumpers before but found that if I remove the connection between the top binding posts and the jumpers and have the speaker cables just connected in the bottom binding posts the threshold before the speakers click off is greatly increased but they still click off.

(*Note in my previous post referring to volume I meant - not +. So the receiver goes from basically no volume say -100 to max volume +12 and I meant -10 when I refer to +10 and so on)

So to describe the threshold increase when the jumpers are connected to the top binding posts it is just as stated in the previous post (This is how the speakers were when they functioned perfectly for that first month):

"any time my receiver was turned past like -10 volume it would click off and display the same message when I turned it back on and click off within a few seconds if I didn't turn the volume down. From -10-13 it would click off in minutes and then -14 and quieter it wouldn't really turn off."

Now with that connection removed between the top binding posts and the jumpers the system can sustain -2 volume but at -1 to like +3 it only sustains for a minute and then past that they click off in seconds.

How that managed to make a difference is completely beyond me but practically speaking I don't really have any need to make my system louder than -2. Technically speaking though the problem is still there. Not to mention if I ever needed to use the top binding posts I wouldn't be able to.

Oh and the receiver is well ventilated, I added a CPU fan + heat sink on top of it to keep it cool but even before that I never had a problem with overheating, that was just a precaution.

Thoughts?

[Keiko]

I have a 2ch Yamaha RX-797 receiver and had something like this happen once. What I did was disconnect everything from AC power, interconnects and speaker cables. I cleaned all the connections and reinstalled and haven't had the problem since.