Intermittent speaker crackle - I've replaced receiver, Tv, and optical cable. Please help!

c n

c n

Active Member
I'm at a loss. I always watch through my Xbox series x, and I have the tv optical cable connected to the receiver as my sound input. I'm having intermittent crackled audio from my speakers. It is present maybe 2% of the time, and goes away on its own after a couple minutes, but it's really annoying. Noise comes from all three speakers in my system (L/R/C). For a long time I figured it was my receiver, but I just replaced the receiver and it is still present. Then replaced the optical cable, still present. Speaker cables and speakers themselves seem like unlikely culprits since issue is not isolated to one speaker. Any ideas? Link to video of sound issue here: audio issue · Sunday, Jan 25
 
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Do you have any other source you can swap in for the xbox, that would use same optical input, etc.?
 
You could try a ground loop noise isolator. I use one from my computer to preamp.. and I should get another one from my TV (HDMI) to my DAC.
 
Yes, I could try something other than the Xbox. Guess that's a reasonable next step.

Would ground loop noise be intermittent?
 
Is it assumed that you connect the x-box to the tv via hdmi and then from the tv to the receiver with the optical cable? If you are using the hdmi connection to the tv, have you tried using a different hdmi input on the set to see if it's a port problem? How about a different hdmi cable?
 
Yes, I connect Xbox to TV via HDMI, and then connect audio from TV to receiver via optical. The HDMI port shouldn't be an issue, as the issue followed me from my old TV to my current one, but I can try a new HDMI cable. That's a good and easy step to attempt.

Trying a source other than the Xbox is also a good idea, but it's hard for me to imagine why the xbox itself would have an intermittent crackle as opposed to a piece of hardware that is facilitating the transfer of the sound from the source to the speakers. Additionally, smart TV interfaces just suck. The UI of the Xbox is infinitely crisper and faster, and it would be a huge downgrade to have to move to a smart TV app solution, or even a firestick/chromecast. That inconvenience is not a good reason to avoid testing an alternate source though to help narrow down the possible culprit. It will just really annoy me if I test it and that ends up working.

I'll try a new HDMI cable next and see what happens. Another solution would be transitioning to getting audio from TV -> receiver via optical to going xbox -> receiver via HDMI. I have just heard HDMI is more finicky for audio transfer though, so optical has always seemed simpler.
 
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