My speakers are humming!! Wha? (1 Viewer)

[Mark Lee]

I just moved to a new apartment, and finally managed to reconnect all those pesky cables and wires in my AV setup. When I turned it on, tho, I got a loud hum emanating from my main speakers (I haven't yet set up my surrounds, so I dunno if they would've hummed too), which was independent of the actual volume on the receiver. This hum only seems to go away when I unplug the cable connecting my subwoofer to my receiver.

The subwoofer is about two feet from the left main speaker, which is about the same relative position it had in my old place, and I didn't encounter this problem at all there.

What's going on??? All help is appreciated.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Sounds like a ground loop problem. Do you have the cable TV feed hook up to your HT setup? If so, try disconnecting it and see if the hum goes away.

You can also use cheater plugs (turns 3-prong devices into 2-prong devices - some people don't like not having a ground plug with their electronics to save them from being electrocuted) to get rid of the hum.

 

[Mark Lee]

Thanx, Patrick! Luckily, I had one of those cheater plugs left over from my last apartment (the outlets were all 2-prong, so I needed the cheaters to plug anything in), and that did the trick! I remember this topic coming up in other people's threads -- I don't pretend to understand the mechanism behind it, but hey, as long as it's fixed....