cygweb

If Don can blog about his failing hard drives, I figure I can blog about my own electronics problems. ;)

Yesterday I picked up a Boston Bravo Center speaker to match up with my main Bravos in the home theater setup. I also have a Boston PV600 subwoofer, but no surround speakers. It took some time for me to get the speaker cabled up and the receiver configured to use it. When I was done last night, the speaker was working fine.

This morning, it was not working any longer. 8( I've narrowed the problem down to the fact that the center channel output of the receiver (a Sony STR-DE545) is no longer working. Since the receiver's had no nechanical issues to this point (it's about 4 years old, I think) I suspect that the exposed speaker wire connector leads may have contacted at some point and blown the channel's amplifier. I can connect the speaker wire up to either of the surround-channel connections and get a test tone, so I'm pretty sure of this.

Flat-rate Sony service for this out-of-warranty receiver is $120. I can buy a new STR-DE595 (the closest current model to the DE545) for $199 locally. I haven't yet taken the receiver out of the entertainment center for inspection, but unless I have the ability to discern any parts from the L or R surround channels that I could sacrifice to get the center channel back online, it's either going to be diagnosed and fixed by a pro or moved to other duty and be replaced by the DE595 (or something else).

I admit to being a fan of Sony audio and other than a slight hissing problem at low volumes, the receiver has been fine for our needs until now. It seems a shame to have to buy another receiver to be able to use the center channel, but I think it would be more of a shame to spend more than $100 to get it fixed when for $100 more we could replace it and move it somewhere in the house where it could do 2-channel duty.

It's hard enough convincing my wife that electronics break down after a certain amount of time. Now I may have to convince her that I didn't mean to break the receiver just to get a new one. ;)

Update (6/1): I checked it out today and now the center channel's working! Perhaps it was just a temperature issue. One thing that made me think there was hope was the fact that I still heard a hiss coming from the speaker even when it wasn't playing anything. Cool!

Update (6/2): Argh! Spoke too soon, it's not working again - it's still hissing, though. I think I'll probably have to take it out and look at it. It might just need some cleaning.