Slight "Crackling" noise in right channel of amp


Hello - I just picked up a Musical Fidelity KW500 integrated and it's sounds amazing. However, when I stopped playing the music, I noticed that with the volume dial at about 50% and no source playing, there is a crackle noise that comes from the right speaker. It's not extremely loud, but it's loud enough that I can barely hear the 'crackling' from my listening position (7' away) if I listen for it. The other channel has noise if I get up close, but it's constant and smooth...like it should be.

I have swapped cables and replaced cables to confirm that it is definitely the amp channel that is the culprit, and not the speaker.

Now, the music sounded amazing, but because of this, I can't help but think that this is taking away from it somehow and that it could sound even better.

Does anyone have any idea what might be the cause of this unwanted noise? I plan to call Musical Fidelity on Monday but I'm just fishing for thoughts/ideas in the meantime.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
fatgh0st

Showing 1 response by ryder

If you have another source say a CD or DVD player, connect that source to another input of your Musical Fidelity integrated and see if the crackling or buzzing sound is there. I have experienced this before and the intermittent crackling sound is from one channel of the speaker. The culprit turns out to be the CD player -aging caps. It's more difficult to troubleshoot where the sound comes from if you have more components in your system. I've looked at the power supply, cabling(power cords), tube preamp and CD player before coming to the conclusion that the latter was at fault. If it's not the CD player then most likely it would be the Musical Fidelity.