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Repairing a satellite speaker
Errodiel
19-04-2008
Hi all - quick bit of advice needed.

A friend who's moving house donated me a Sony 5.1 surround sound system today - model number on the back is STR-DE475. It's a few years old, but she says the sound quality is fab. The only problem is that one of the speakers (the front centre one, which we'd put under the TV) doesn't always work. She said that sometimes it will work perfectly, but usually not at all, and that the sound quality's still fab without it.

So the question is, is this likely to be something we can solve ourselves? My OH isn't afraid to take things apart and play with them and he has quite a lot of experience with audio equipment...but he's out at the pub. So any ideas to give him a head start with it tomorrow would be great.

Thanks in advance!
chrisjr
19-04-2008
Apart from checking the obvious like the speaker wires are properly terminated on the back of the speaker (if it has terminals) the next possible cause is a wire coming adrift internally.

If it has spring or screw terminals on the back make sure the wires from the amp are correctly terminated. I have known spring terminals especially where if you push the wire in too far the terminal grips the insulation of the wire and fails to make contact. You need to push the bare wire end in just enough so the insulation is just inside the hole.

With a screw terminal it is less easy to trap just the insulation. But one thing that I have known is if you try to clamp the thing down too hard you can twist the entire terminal round. Which do it too many times may dislodge the internal wiring.

If the speaker has a captive cable, ie a bit of wire emerging from a hole in the back, then a common problem is the wire fracturing where it emerges. It can actually fracture just the copper core and leave the outer insulation apparently undamaged. Sometimes flexing the cable makes the ends of the break re-connect so the speaker works. Move the wire a little and the break opens up and it stops working again.

You can usually tell if that has happened by gently flexing the cable when playing something through it. If the sound comes and goes you have a break. With experience you can even tell a break just by feel and looking at how the cable bends.

To cure some of these problems though you may need to get intimate with a soldering iron to wire in a new bit of cable. If the break is far enough away from the cabinet you may be able to cut the cable and use a terminal block to repair the break. Don't twist the wires together and wrap in sellotape!
Errodiel
19-04-2008
Originally Posted by chrisjr:
“Don't twist the wires together and wrap in sellotape!”

As if we'd do that....

They're spring terminals, and we took all the speaker wire out when we brought the system home. So I guess we'll be extra careful when we're reconnecting the wires. I guess clamping the insulation at either the amp end or the speaker end would cause it not to work? Because I know they've moved the speaker to have someone look at it (took the back off and didn't touch anything because it looked "ok"), but chances are they left the other end of the wire plugged into the amp....so the fault could well be there.

Thanks muchly for the suggestion - we'll wire it all up tomorrow and see if it's that simple, which would be fab. Free £500 surround sound!
Errodiel
20-04-2008
So after much fumbling, cursing and wire-unravelling (at 3am no less, need to learn just to put my OH to bed when he comes in drunk, not enourage him), we determined that the speakers are all in mint condition - it's the terminal on the amp that's not working.

Does anyone know any common faults with these spring terminals? Is there likely to be something loose that we can fiddle with? Bearing in mind that my friend said that the speaker would occasionally work no problem, I'm thinking that whatever the fault is it's quite simple.
Nigel Goodwin
20-04-2008
Most common problem would be dry joints, possibly on the speaker terminals (but unlikely), more likely to be on the speaker switching relay - but could be anywhere.
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