All my surround sound speakers have static/crackle (1 Viewer)

I bought a low end Phillips surround sound system about 4 years ago. I don't know the product number or anything like that yet as I haven't gone under my TV to dig around. I can say that it was bought from Walmart for about $400 about 4 years ago. It came with DVD player, Receiver for speakers, 1 center speaker bar, 1 sub, 4 corner speakers.
 

 

This thing has gotten almost no use over the past about 2 years. I turned it on about a year ago and there was a faint crackle, but I didn't think much of it just thought maybe it was the program I was watching. I just turned it on again yesterday and it sounds horrible. There is static/crackling in all speakers. If the volume is turned up the static/crackle gets louder. The best way to describe the sound is it sounds like really crappy signal when you are tuned to a weak or edge of signal AM station (the static/crackle carries over to the voices making them almost unreadable. I did a quick run through all of the different inputs (TV, AM, FM, etc) and the crackle is just as bad on all of those.
 

I have no idea where to start with trying to fix this (if even possible) except that maybe dust is to blame. I plan on disconnecting everything and maybe even taking the top cover off and clean with compressed air...but that literally is the only idea I have. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Great Cornholio

Disconnect everything except speakers and see if there is any static. Try to eliminate any external source of the noise. You may want to try it on a different electrical outlet. Does it happen when you change the volume? If so, there may be dirt in the volume control and compressed air may help.

I have found that over time some cheep audio equipment such as receivers, boom boxes, and radio's would develop loud static noise especially when you would change the volume. This was the result of the volume control failure caused by becoming dirty. Years ago I remember Radio Shack sold a spray on cleaner that would sometimes fix the problem.
 

I have a old boom box in my basement workshop which had this problem and I just fixed it by injecting a little bit of Blakemore Reel Magic lubricant which I use on my fishing reels and I got at Bass Pro Shops.

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately I travel a lot for my job and was unable to try to clean the system before I left town. I plan on trying it when I get home and at least feel better knowing that there is a slight chance that this may fix my problem.

Quick update as to what is going on. So I did some troubleshooting by hooking up headphones to the headphone jack and hooking up an MP3 player to the AUX port. The results are a hum that can be heard on all input selections regardless of anything being hooked up to that input (IE even though TV has nothing plugged into it the hum is still there) The hum gets louder/quieter with rotation of the volume knob. If something is hooked up IE MP3 player the hum sounds like static so it appears that I may have mis-diagnosed the issue in the beginning of this thread. I opened up the unit and it was surprisingly clean but I blasted it with compressed air anyways, but sadly it didn't fix the problem. I used special focus on the volume knob since it had what I'd call a cleaning access hole.
 

New question is since air didn't work would it be worth going to home depot and getting "contact cleaner" I know at work contact cleaner does an amazing job if push buttons are acting up but not sure if it will work in this application. Or does anyone know if Radio Shack has any kind of cleaner that would me more suited to the job?
 

Since I have gone deeper into the trouble shooting and its become obvious that the issue is internal and not with the speakers I may start another thread over in the receivers section. If it is felt needed by mods I'm ok with the merging of the two threads.