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Yes (sorry this gets long)

Posted by author@escapeclause.net (A) on March 13, 2010 at 07:12:02

In Reply to: RE: So you have replaced every single component in your system? posted by HumanMedia on March 13, 2010 at 01:19:03:

...and the DC-voltage seems to build up between the components the longer the interconnects are carrying signal.

I say, "seems to" because this part hasn't been confirmed by the electrician, who didn't want to bill me for staying that long and instead told me to call him back over when the problem was at its worst.

In answer to the previous questions, yes: everything in the entire system has been replaced at least once, starting at the circuit breaker panel and running all the way to the speakers. Some IEC sockets are two-pin-polarized, but the problem has exhibited itself when everything in the rig was three-pin.

Perhaps most interestingly, other associated problems have failed to reproduce themselves on anyone's test bench. Here are but four examples:

1) A Parasound A23/P3 combo that would develop a staticky whooshing sound in one channel and eventually drop that channel to zero -- never happened for the local tech, or at Parasound HQ, either one.

2) A Naim Nait 5i whose input selector would periodically freeze and not accept input either through the front panel or the remote until the AC power was disconnected and reestablished. Sent to NAIM USA, they had it for two weeks -- including taking it home to play with, at one point, and never could make it happen.

3) An Arcam FMJ CD-23 that, when playing with IC's connected, gets so hot to the touch, both at the top chassis cover just above the transformer *and* at the interconnect sockets, that you jerk-back your hand. Doesn't happen when powered-up but not connected, and doesn't happen nearly as bad when powered-up and connected and not sending a signal down the IC's. Sent to two out-of-town service specialists, neither of whom could ever make it happen.

4) A series of three separate Sony DVD-players, all of which would periodically issue a loud, scratchy "bang" down the signal path, and none of which have ever done so in any of the houses of the three friends to which I gave them.

A next-door neighbor is an EE grad student and he proposes an unorthodox approach:

Instead of trying to figure out what the problem is, or how it could be scientifically explicable, he proposes skipping all of that and instead building a contraption that would drain voltage differences without tying anything to earth that shouldn't be tied to earth. The way he would do this is by connecting drain wires to the chassis of each component, and thence to a capacitor with gates on either side, one of which is always open. When the capacitors are charging the gate on the earth side is open, so that the whole rig isn't connected to earth, and when the capacitors are fully charged the gate on the system side opens, so the capacitors can drain to earth without tying any chassis.

It's a tempting solution for the potential partnership, too: The EE kid would design the thing, I can plump for the parts, and my local tech can build the thing quite competently. The only problems are (a) whether it will work, (b) whether the EE kid can possibly know enough, without the schematics of all the components, not to blow something up, and (c) whether I'll void a warranty or leave open some other ghastly possibility through my own ignorance.

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