Reply To: Crackly Sound – solutions?

[evilllama]

THAT is a tough installation. Proximity make diagnosis more of an issue. Should you try the breakout board yet render no change, you may find trying a new set of speakers or (if you did what I think you have here) moving the power supply out of the cabinet. I *think* from what I see, you have the plug inside the cab. The humming sound might be fixed by moving the power supply outside the cabinet. Also, you want to insure that you separate the audio and power lines. For example, if you run power through the right side of the cab, make sure the audio lines are run on the left side. They should never run together side by side, be close to one another, and (as they say in Ghostbusters) never cross the streams! The audio line are likely to pick up distortion (humming) if you touch the two types of lines.

RE crackling, the speakers you are using a VERY small if you are using stock locations (again assuming). Considering the emulator is typically emulating larger cabinets, turning down the volume might be a small step in the right direction. I believe the only speakers that would fit in the stock location would be constructed more like a headphone speaker. The coil is not designed for the type of frequency response that the emulator is trying to force. IE bass sounds of an explosion will sound garbled because there is not enough play in the mini coil to extend and there is not enough cone space nor surround to allow the extension needed to recreate the frequency without “bottoming out” causing distortion (the garble or crackling sounds).

Much like putting a sub-woofer in a car, under-powering the driver would also cause this issue should the cone and coil allow for the necessary movement as there is not enough “juice” to force the extension repeatedly. IE 30 cycles over a 3 second period requires the load of almost double the specs of the driver to CLEANLY produce or continue to produce the vibrations…. or on the most basic level, 100W 4ohm speaker needs almost 200W @ XOhms (depending on bridge and a million other factors) to produce and sustain the sound at full volume (considering the line level provided is not trowing amplified distortion… nor the amplifier). Not a huge issue here, but again… If you have only one gallon of water, you can not fill a 500 gallon pool.

Sorry, was trying not to go technical, but if the new board fails to fix the issue, you may want to consider the above. ;)