Yamaha RX-V1065 problem - hiss noise on center and front left channels

[nathanc]

I first noticed the hiss a few months ago but just assumed it was a bad connection or interference from nearby cables - but last night I disconnected everything to investigate.

The problem: white/static noise on the center and front left channels. It doesn't matter what volume or which input, sound processing system, spearker set up or even which speaker is plugged into the channel - I get the same thing noise.

How it manifests: It's not so noticable when watching movies in pure direct mode with lots of volumne but its the quite bits or just watching TV recorded on the PVR that it becomes really noticable.

My investigation: I disconnected every source and evey speaker, pulled out the amp and straightened out the power cable. Nothing else nearby was on. I first connected my center speaker to every output then did the same with one of my front speakers - the same thing.

Background: My set up means a separate Cyrus Pre/Power combo runs the font L/R using the pre-out with the amp driving a 6ohm center speaker and two 8ohm surround speakers. The power cable was tied up but I do try hard to keep source, power and speaker cables seperate.

I've had the amp about 3 years but it doesn't get used that much - only two or three times a week at the most.

Any ideas? Is it back to Yamaha or is this something my favourite hifi shop could fix?

 

[nathanc]

I have read around a bit and it seems its the power amp stage that has the problem.

This makes sense as I don't hear the noise on the front L when connected to my Cyrus kit.

So, my choices are:

1 - try to get it repaired

2 - buy a half decent power amp just for the centre channel and hope the surround channel don't break too and use it as a surround processor

3 - just dump it and buy something else

Either way, it looks like I shall be avoiding Yamaha in the future :wave:

 

[Son_of_SJ]

Hello nathanc,

Sorry to hear of your trouble with your RX-V1065. How old is it? I'm sure that Yamaha are not the only manufacturer whose stuff sometimes goes faulty.

Of your three options, getting it repaired may turn out to be viable - I'm lucky to have a repair shop close to me, and for the symptom that you describe the repair would be around £70. I can understand your option 3, but option 2 sounds not like good value for money at at all.

 

[Anonymous]

It's a long story but if anyone's interested it might help someone out...

I've had pretty the same problem with my Yamaha RX-1065. After less than a year I noticed excessive noise coming out of the Front Right and Rear Surround Left channels that sounded similar to a dodgy mic cable. :? I too disconnected everything, tested it with 3 different speaker leads, several interconnects and 5 different speakers. I even took it in another room, turned every other appliance off in the house but same result on those 2 speaker channels.

I called the hi-fi shop where I bought it from and they asked me to bring it in, it went to a local AV repair shop who said they couldn't find a fault. :O After several frustrated phonecalls with me explaining that it didn't matter what was connected and that it wasn't about inputs, sources etc etc, the engineer believing it could be fixed with firmware (nonsense) and contacting Yamaha who said they never heard of this problem. I tried to arrange a visit to demonstrate the issue but he wasn't agreeing to this. The bottom line was the engineer couldn't find a fault so it must have somehow been corrected, after several weeks the receiver was returned to the shop where I collected it and took it home.

Of course as I expected the fault was still there, so this time I tried going straight to the engineer but the best I was allowed to do was leave it at the repair shop and wait to be contacted. Same thing happened, he couldn't find a fault so I gave up and asked it to be returned to the hi-fi shop. :wall: The hi-fi shop agreed to test it with me on their site, so I finally felt I was going to get at least some level of satisfaction. You can imagine how frustrated and embarrased I was when the fault through their speakers was so inaudible that I couldn't reasonably argue a fault was there. So I apologized and awkwardly left, even submitting to the idea that it had been fixed.

Took it home again and guess what... the fault's still there. Seriously, I know it sounds like I'm being picky if anyone actually came to my house and heard it you would agree how bad it was. I then discovered you can hear exactly the same fault on the right side if you plug in headphones, shame no one spotted this before.

There's always a certain level of noise coming out of the problem channels but it does variably get worse, so I concluded the following. Either:

1. It's my house picking up interference somewhere

2. All of the speakers tested by both the engineer and hi-fi shop did not cover enough range to show the fault. The speakers used by the hi-fi shop test were a small build but they did look high quality.

Whichever way I can't go through returning it again, I just won't buy Yamaha anymore due to unhelpful customer service and possibly poor build quality. I've got several older amps and receivers in the house which have never had a problem. It was a tough decision to buy this receiver because it was so expensive but I needed something that handled HDMI. I so wish I'd bought another Onkyo instead. I'm putting up with the problem but it's not very pleasurable listening to anything with quiet breaks.