Soundstream Reference 705s problems

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Hi,

I purchased a malfunctioning 705s for a friend of mine.
The seller told me only two of the five channels were functional.
We removed the board, refreshed some solderings and sprayed some contact cleaner on the switches and worked them back and forth many times.

We did an ohms test with the DMM on the rectifier diodes which are problematic on Reference amps but they did not appear to be shorted on this amp.

The solderings were pretty good, but I must say I often find them to be better on these s /sx amps than on the original Reference amps (mainly driver board solderings), though the s / sx have other issues.

We put the amp back together to see what happens and when I hooked it up (without any speakers) it idled nicely at about 1.5 ampere.
Then I fired it up with speakers connected and I noticed the analogue amperage indicator of out power supply went over 3 ampere for a fraction of a second, during which their was a loud POP out of the speakers before it idled nicely.

All 5 channels produce sound, though very low, much lower than I have ever heard even out of the less powerful models such as 200s and 405s.
The mono-output was even weaker than the rest of the channels and it was noisy.

When I tried to turn up the gain of the mono output I heard some crackling, then one of the speakers connected to one of the 4 primary channels inflated or deflated (probably DC voltage on speaker outputs ?), not sure whether it inflated or deflated as I hastily turned back down the gain before the speaker overheated.

When I turn-off the amplifier there is also a POP on the speakers and one can see the speakers stay in a inflated or deflated position for a short while.

Anyone have any ideas ?
 
This is all quite me new to me, so I will have to ask you some stupid questions:

Would you like me to do this check when the amplifier is powered on or off ?

I have read many times people talking about Tip102 and Tip107 but don't know what they are ? Are these the simply the transistors in the output section ?

Here is a pic of a Reference Picasso indicating the parts I guess you are referring to:

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Thanks

ps if the image doesn't work:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/171/picasso5b.jpg/
 
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So I need to check the three-legged thingies in the output section while the amp is powered off ? Will do ! How should they measure, and how should they not measure ?

How do I need to check the big emitter resistors ? How much should they read ?
 
Yellow are the emitter resistors, the red are the outputs and the greens are relays, not entirely sure what their purpose is though, maybe they mute off as soon as remote is turned off to stop on/off pop, this is just a guess though..
 
The schematic diagram shows the locations for the TIP102s and 107s.

The devices indicated by the green lines are circuit breakers that open when the current passing through them exceeds their rating.

Do you get DC on all channels when you remove remote voltage?

With the black probe on the primary ground, do you see voltage of the same polarity (positive or negative) on all bridging speaker terminals that have DC when you remove remote voltage?
 
I went over to the house where we try and work on the amps yesterday evening and checked the output devices and big resistors. I suppose the resistors are of such low value that my DMM showed 0.00 in the smallest range ?

I did not have readings close to zero ohms on any of the output devices.
But my knowledge and skills are too little, I'll have to wait until tuesday-evening to have a look the my more skilled and experienced person I am doing this with.

Perry, tuesday-evening we will do the tests you are mentioning.
By the way, the DC-voltage on the speakers was just a guess (from how I saw them react), have not done any measurements on the channels yet. Will do !

With help, I am confident we can get this amp fully functional. It is a step forward from the easy-to-solve issues we had on the amps we repaired up till now, but we cannot ignore the amps with more difficult to find problems any longer, time to get better at this. Thanks, and will let you know what we find tuesday !
 
Sorry guys, we were supposed to work on the amps on our weekly amp-work-evening, but we had to replace the outer foam edges of my beloved vintage Altec Lansing ALS8 woven carbon-fiber subs (LOVE), everything went well but it took the whole evening.

To be continued...
 
We did some comparative measurements with a functional 405s, rectifiers, output devices etc, everything appears to be okaym except...

We might have found something out of the ordinary with U13 / U14 and some nearby diodes. I am unfamiliar with this part of the amplifier, my father mentioned something about 15 volt regulator. Looking at the schematics these parts are 7815 and 7915. Any known issues with this part of a Reference s amplifier ?

We'll do some more measurements at that location next time, with the amp turned on, see if it produces the right voltage.
 
Hi Perry.
We did not do any measurements today while powered-on, only without power.
While testing resistance, everything appeared to be okay, except that with U13 the multimeter maxed out in one direction while U14 did not. My father also had his doubts about a diode. We will do some voltage measurements next time.

Do you mean tiny orange caps around that area or the yellow 1000 uF 16v caps ?
 
Is there an easy but reliable way of testing them with the multimeter ?
Usually we check if it charges up with an ohms test and then switch polarities and check if it charges up the other way properly. I don't know if that is a proper test ? Besides the oscilloscope the DMM is our only measuring tool.

We thought we found a bad 1000 uF 16v cap on the Denon yesterday, we desoldered it and did the ohms test. The multimeter maxed out one side and the other side did not charge up properly. Then we touched the two pins together of the cap and did the test again, and it reacted properly to the ohms test from that moment on ?
 
We made some progress. Apparently there is nothing wrong with the U13 / U14 section, we measured a steady 15 volts and 37 volts on the rail, nothing wrong there.

There appears to be something wrong with channels 1+2.
When channels 3+4 and/or the mono channel are used separately from channels 1+2, all is well. When using channels 1 + 2 however, the sound is weak. When turning the gain of those channels, I think DC voltage arrives at the speakers hooked up to those channels as I see them deflate.

Furthermore, when using channels 3+4 and/or the mono channel WHILE feeding them an RCA signal coming from channels 1+2 (by setting the input switch to 1+2) the problem arises as well, with no load hooked up to 1+2. So there's something wrong there.

Next time we will put some switches (high/bypass, 2way/3way etc) in different positions, so we can narrow it down with help of the schematics. I am open to suggestions, though.
 
Alright my father thinks there might be something wrong with U1.
He also thinks there are errors in the 705s schematics ?

Anyway, these are the millivolts we measured:

U1:
PIN 1: 13670 mV
2: 13000
3: 12980
4: 14240
5: 12010
6: 12670
7: 13490
8: 14390

U4:
PIN 1: 0 mV
2: 1
3: 1
4: 14240
5: 1
6: 0.9
7: 0
8: 14390

U5:
PIN1: 2.7 mV
7: 3.3
8: 3.6
14: 1.4

U6:
PIN1: 577 mV
PIN7: 566 mV

U9:
PIN1: 4500 mV
PIN7: 12850 mV

U2:
PIN1: 1.5 mV
7: 1.9
8: 3.1
14: 0.8

U3:
PIN1: 10.3 mV
7: 4.9
8: 2.1
14: 2.4

U7:
PIN1: 1.7 mV
7: 4.4
8: 25.1
14: 3.6

U8:
PIN1: 2.5 mV
7: 15.8
8: 2.6
14: 16.4
 
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