DIY speaker cable question

[jleaman]

Amp turns on, seems to work for a few minutes then the sound becomes distorted and compressed, the channels seem to get mixed up, right and left through both.

I plugged the cd player straight into the DCX, which goes into the power amp, and it all seems fine. Just incase i'm back to using old cables.

I have disabled the 'clipping' function for some time on the amp, like i said earlier it smelt like burning rubber today when it was just past half volume(near the speaker terminal posts/transformer), i have had it louder in the past. Bearing in mind you can't disconnect the speaker output, so it is still producing 75w into the terminals.

If it was under stress i'm surprised the cap5 protection didn't kick in.

Ill dig out my old speakers and plug then into the terminals and see if the distortion runs through to the speakers. Using the headphone out seems fine.

If you can recommend anything to try, would be much appreciated.

Grab a meter see if there is any dc voltage on the speaker outputs ?

Got a link to this beast so i can see a picture ?

 

[Studio Au]

Best google image i could find:

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

This is the blurb from the manual:

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/assets/documents/Azur540A-640AUserManual-English.pdf

Page 14 shows the protection, including DC.

 

[jleaman]

Best google image i could find:

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

This is the blurb from the manual:

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/assets/documents/Azur540A-640AUserManual-English.pdf

Page 14 shows the protection, including DC.

Maybe you cooked the relay contacts, have you checked your cables yet to see if they were shorted ?

 

[Studio Au]

No, still not sure how to test? Only thing i have is one of those screwdrivers that detects current.

But. A new day, and fantastically everything seems ok! Balance works, sounds good, signals are going where they are supposed to. No idea what happened or what i did (except leave it all off overnight) but the depression has lifted and the intense looking on eBay for pre-amps has subsided.

Thanks for the help.

I will test the cable before i build the other run, just in case.

 

[fastasulike]

I suspect that you have shorted the positive and negative speaker cables during construction. If you had a problem with the amp and smelled burning, then there is something wrong and you have damaged the amp in some way. A short means that the electrical current has no normal impedence and you get a very large current draw through the amp, this will cause overheating in various components and eventually burn them out.

 

[Studio Au]

The cables were not connected the Cambridge amp. there was the behringher and then the power amp in between.

How can i test the cables without multimeters?

 

[jleaman]

The cables were not connected the Cambridge amp. there was the behringher and then the power amp in between.

How can i test the cables without multimeters?

Can't really, just buy a al cheapo for now.! Ebay is dirt cheap or a building store near by.

 

[fastasulike]

The cables were not connected the Cambridge amp. there was the behringher and then the power amp in between.

How can i test the cables without multimeters?

The damage can be caused, even if they are not directly connected. I'm not sure how you've hooked up all you gear though, looks a bit confusing to me.

To test your cables, get a multi meter and check for continuity between the positive and negative wire terminals. Gently manipulate the area where the wires have been stripped whilst checking. Continuity is bad. Also make sure that you have correctly separated out the twisted pairs in the Cat6 cable.