little or no sound

Re: little or no sound

I certainly don't know what is wrong, but here's what i'd do.

1 - check all connections. unplug the system and then disconnect all of the speakers and reconnect them. also, assuming the wire aren't in your walls, i'd do a quick visual inspection to make sure there are no visible breaks in the wires or the insulation.

2 - assuming the problem persists, confirm exactly what conditions create the problem. it would be both surprising and very telling (of what i'm not exactly sure) if this problem only happened with CD playback and not dvd or tuner sound.

3 - 3 months is very close to 90 days with is a typical warranty time period for some items. in other words, if your system is still under warranty, let them sort it out. if it's not under warranty, i wouldn't pay to fix this system.

4 - i have no idea what it would cost to fix, especially not knowing what's wrong with it. that said, in my experience, most electronic repairs run $100-$200, that assumes the parts required are not very expensive, which would be a safe assumption with your system.

good luck

Re: little or no sound

Either the speakers are blown or there's something wrong with the HT unit itself - or both. (A problem in the HT unit caused the speakers to blow.)

The quickest and least risky way to find out if the speakers are blown is to take the front right speaker and connect it in place of the front left speaker. If it sounds fine, you know there is a problem with the front right and center outputs. If it sounds just as bad, then you know the speakers are blown.

Here comes the tough part: Figuring out if they both just happened to die of if the HT blew them out. Was there anything unusual about the CD you played when the problem started? Anything unusual about the system settings? (Did you have the sound turned up all the way from the night before, had you been fiddling with the speaker balance so that most of the sound was going to the right side?) In short, could they have been blown by a specific set of circumstances that you can now avoid?

One way of testing whether or not the HT blew the speakers is to put connect the good (left) front speaker to the right output. If it plays fine then you just have to buy two replacement speakers. If it blows out - well then you have to buy at least three speakers and possibly a whole new system.

Which you might have to do in any case. Once you've isolated the problem to the HT box itself you'll have to figure out a) is the thing under warranty. b) is the problem covered by warranty? c) if the warranty doesn't apply for whatever reason, what is the likely cost of a repair, and how does that compare to the cost of a new system? The only way to find that out is to contact a local authorized service company.

Regards,

Joe

P.S.

Max is right, of course, the first thing to do is disconnect everything and reconnect it, speakers, outside components, power cords. And in the spirit of not taking anything for granted I realized I should also ask this - are you playing the CD in the DVD drive of the HTiB, or in a separate CD player that is connected to it? Does it play OK with DVDs or other sources?