Random Popping

[ShinOBIWAN]

Hi all,

I recently finished construction of a few ESP P101 amps and P09 LR XO's.

The problem is that I'm getting nasty popping noises at random intervals.

I can tell you what I have and haven't tried and what I've observed during this:

When the amps have no input connected the popping does not occur. I've sat and listened for an extended period of time and not one pop with this setup.

When I connect the P09 LR XO board the popping returns, its totally random and can be anything from a minute or two between or upto 20-30 minutes. The ever escapeable fact is it does it sooner or later.

The popping seems to come primarily from the tweeter and disconnecting power to the tweeter amp shows this to be true since the noise still comes from the mid-range although at a less severe level.

Connecting the amps upto the source directly and bypassing the P09 altogether results in no popping.

This all seems to point to the P09 LR XO or at least its incompatibility with the rest of the kit.

Does anyone have any suggestions for further troubleshooting and narrowing the list of posibilities down. I fear that it may eventually damage my tweeter and that would be costly.

Thanks for any advice

[m0cea]

It could be a number of things a few to consider are;

faulty components on the X-over, a cap breaking down?.

RF entering the X-over, just happens to be filtered to the tweeters

poor mains filtering on the PSU input.

An oscilloscope would be a useful tool here to try and see at what points the noise is apparent on the circuit.

Two things that can generate a lot of noise are central heating thermostats and good old fridges. Get someone to turn them on and off while your listening.

Could be barking up the wrong tree but as a radio ham I have suffered from interference from both these but yet again I've also cause interference too to plenty of audio/ visual stuff too

[Optical]

I had a mixing desk that was faulty and doing that a while ago,
every so oftern it would cause a big pop through the speakers..

check this thread

Wierd mixer problem..

[EchoWars]

Had an amp that did this once...drove me crazy. Turned out to be a busted ground wire on the input phono jack.

[pinkmouse]

Does the other xover have the same problem?

[chris ma]

cold solder joint in the psu that normally has tight contact but when higher temperature or high magnetic field being generated (current I guess) the gap of the cold solder joint widen and a very very small spark may shoot across and created the pop sometimes a loud pop sometimes a small pop depends on the build up of potential between the joints.

The Butcher