Denon 3803.. Can't believe I did this.

[rxonmymind]

Last weekend I left my receiver on in a rush to go somewhere. Come Wednesday I then noticed a hum? Oh, crap. Left it on in the cabinet enclosed except for maybe a crack. Not good enough. It was hot inside the cabinet and now when I turn it on there is a very audible hum coming from the speakers.
Think I fried something.
Can't believe I did this.
Luckily I paid $50 for it and I'm in the process of buying another for $35. A damn shame it's cheaper to throw it out than to fix it because of a mistake on my part. It's been a solid unit. Arggg!

 

[awillia6]

Last weekend I left my receiver on in a rush to go somewhere. Come Wednesday I then noticed a hum? Oh, crap. Left it on in the cabinet enclosed except for maybe a crack. Not good enough. It was hot inside the cabinet and now when I turn it on there is a very audible hum coming from the speakers.
Think I fried something.
Can't believe I did this.
Luckily I paid $50 for it and I'm in the process of buying another for $35. A damn shame it's cheaper to throw it out than to fix it because of a mistake on my part. It's been a solid unit. Arggg!

I'll take your old unit, if you're pitching it. Just PM me and we can see about arranging shipping. Good luck with your new one, BTW. 3803s are very competent no-frills units, although my favorite in the series is the 3808.

P.S. Be sure to let me know if you ever need parts for your Denon gear—I have boxes of them.

P.P.S. Did you try doing a factory reset on the 3803? Hold in two leftmost buttons while powering up, let display/lights flash a few times, release buttons, unit will boot to tuner 87.5, stereo, no volume. You'll lose all your custom settings, but it's worth a try before you replace the unit.

 

[rxonmymind]

I'll take your old unit, if you're pitching it. Just PM me and we can see about arranging shipping. Good luck with your new one, BTW. 3803s are very competent no-frills units, although my favorite in the series is the 3808.

P.S. Be sure to let me know if you ever need parts for your Denon gear—I have boxes of them.

P.P.S. Did you try doing a factory reset on the 3803? Hold in two leftmost buttons while powering up, let display/lights flash a few times, release buttons, unit will boot to tuner 87.5, stereo, no volume. You'll lose all your custom settings, but it's worth a try before you replace the unit.

Why do you like the 3808? I'm not looking for gobs of power just enough to push my garage speakers to a healthy level and I found that the 3803 did that well without fatigue. I'm kinda upset at myself for forgetting still. Wondering it a lower end model would suffice which would open up my options.
Thanks for the tip I'll try it later. Pm coming.

 

[awillia6]

The 3808 has Audyssey speaker/room correction software and shipped with its own setup microphone which improves output sound quality immensely.
The 3808 has a custom naming function for all its displayed inputs and an improved front panel display.
The 3808 will switch video up to 1080p.
The 3808 has robust buttons (which never break) hidden behind a flip-down door.
The 3808 has an Ethernet connection and embedded web server for setup/control over the network (i.e. via computer) as well as storage and retrieval of configuration files (I use this to switch between 7-channel HT and 2-channel audio setups).
The 3808 is/was firmware and feature upgradeable by internet connection to Denon servers (still works although no new updates are being developed).
The 3808 has improved thermal operation due to completely different component design and layout compared to the 3801/2/3 units.
The 3808 has a horrible main remote, but a wonderfully simple secondary remote.
The 3808 decodes DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby's TrueHD for home theater Blu-rays as well as SACD (DSD) stereo and multi-channel over HDMI.
The 3808 has more power and newer generation of electronics which means better operation (sonically and electrically) at any given output level.

For your application, the 3801/2/3 are perfect fits. I'm a bit mystified by the failure of your unit, apparently due to thermal overload. The unit has thermal sensing/protection circuitry that SHOULD have shut things down before roasting itself to (near) death. It's possible your unit had an iffy component that was beginning to fail and your "extended listening session" simply accelerated its demise. If I get my hands on your unit, I'll be looking in that direction.

 

[SoCal Sam]

Bad luck for the OP but karma is flowing back. Great that he is not sending it to the dump and that it will go to someone who will fix it. That works for me on many levels.

 

[rxonmymind]

Going to pick up another 3803 tomorrow. A little bit of a drive but at the price bought one can't complain. Maybe during the drive this will teach me to be a little more cautious next time. Fingers crossed.
More to come...

 

[Silentnet]

If it died sitting idle, no matter how enclosed, and wasn't class A (i.e. most receivers made in my lifetime) it was a piece of shit from the start. Sorry, sad but true.

No even borderline modern non-class-A equipment should cook itself to death sitting in a cabinet doing nothing.

 

[awillia6]

If it died sitting idle, no matter how enclosed, and wasn't class A (i.e. most receivers made in my lifetime) it was a piece of shit from the start. Sorry, sad but true.

No even borderline modern non-class-A equipment should cook itself to death sitting in a cabinet doing nothing.

Disagree with POS conclusion (especially for Denon AVR3803 which is anything but). Agree with raised eyebrows at circumstances of demise. I suspect prior, unrelated injury leading to weakness leading to disease and demise. I should know soon enough.

 

[Putterman]

First thought is that if that's enclosed, then my stuff is squashed with other components (a Sony Bluray on extra large feet on top of as Denon 1610 which is above a Sansui tuner). (In your pic) there's room on all sides and especially the top, the main venting area. In addition to the reset, you might try setting it up on a different outlet. Also if you were using it with a sub, I have found the cables can cause a hum.

So my test would be to move it to another room, hook it up to a pair of speakers and listen to the radio preferably on a Public radio station because they're generally less compressed and see if there's still a hum.

As for keeping it from overheating in the future, you can often find Notebook cooling pads in the thrifts. Plug it into the switched outlet in back and you have extra cooling. A sub removes much of the stress from the AV receiver onto the sub. For a real time check you might consider investing in an infrared thermometer to get a real time measurement of amplifier heat stress. Measuring my setup I get a max of 100 F, but I do have a sub.

 

[rxonmymind]

*Clipped quote*
So my test would be to move it to another room, hook it up to a pair of speakers and listen to the radio preferably on a Public radio station because they're generally less compressed and see if there's still a hum.

Well after driving over an hour each way to get it I finally made it home with the replacement.
I took your advice and plugged it up to my Klipsch Bell's into the outlet directly as the connection was so short thus no need for an extension. I then plugged in my Samsung tablet and hit play.
No hum. Zero, nada, zilch. Ink dead black silence.
Music started to play.
I turned off the 3803 and let it sit for couple minutes as I answered a few emails.
Turned it on again. Nothing. But I KNEW that there would be hum if I reintroduced each component methodically as it was connected in the garage.
I hooked up the NFC Bluetooth dongle and listened. Nothing. Played music through it. Nothing. Then first extension cord. Zilch. Second. Nope. Finally brought the speakers from the garage in being the last component of the gear with a little trepidation as I really liked these Infinity's Nuth'n. Phew. I even left the twist in the extension cord.
So here I am looking at it having recreated the exact set up and I'm certainly grateful it's back to normal yet leaves me scratching my head. THREE DAYS I had to put up with that hum and now it disappears.
It's back in the garage without hum.
Maybe it got scared by the Replacement. Lol.
But it's not over yet. I'll run it through it's paces yet again this weekend and see if once it is up to operating temperature the hum returns.

 

[awillia6]

That's GREAT news! Except now you got another couple hours drive ahead of you. Small price to pay for, er, audio karma.

So what else did you have running into the receiver when it was in the garage? ANYTHING? AM or FM antennal to listen to that big game last year? That short RCA cable for when you had an iPod hooked up last month? What about your power feeds in the garage? What else lives on the same circuit powering the 3803? Is there anything at all that cycles on and off out there? Say a light controller or some kind of heater/cooler/dehumidifier?

If you don't know what caused the hum, it's quite likely to come back when whatever unique set of circumstances/gear caused it originally happens to recur. If (when) it does, don't be alarmed as—thanks to Putterman—you now have an acid test to take the 3803 out of the equation: fire it up in the house again just to make sure no hum. Then, TRACK DOWN that gremlin!

Glad you got things running again. The 3803 is pretty hardy and has thermal protection built in via a thermal sensor attached directly to the unit's main heatsink. Enjoy your "new" system.

 

[rxonmymind]

Thanks!
Nothing was left in the garage in the audio chain. Everything you see in the picture was in the garage and was introduced into the chain one by one in the living room hoping to find the culprit. It's playing nice now whatever it was.
So I put it back together in the garage and it's working ok for the ten minutes I had it running.
I'm thinking maybe it was a loose connection of either the AC power plug or the NFC Bluetooth. Everything is tight now.

Nothing cycling in the garage.

 

[Putterman]

Glad to be of service. I was just kind of brainstorming. I've had issues with hum usually from subwoofer cables. Move them slightly and the hum goes away. That's what made me think of simplifying things to just receiver and speakers.

 

[SoCal Sam]

I like having doubles.

 

[Roboturner91]

You know how sometimes the cord for a phone charger or something like that will get a short near where it goes into the plug? So you can plug it in and nothing, but if you jostle it a little or move the cord to the other side, it'll start working.....

I'm thinking maybe that happened to one of your interconnects.This has happened to me with guitar amps.