Very loud "Poltergeist" sounds. Cannot isolate

Hi. Love my Sprout a lot. Connected to B&W 600s and they sound great. The problem is, when I leave it on overnight, I get these infrequent and very loud “poltergeist” sounds and it wakes the whole house up.

If I turn the power off, it stops (obvious.). I’ve tried to isolate the problem. So far, I’ve come down to this.

  • system is grounded
  • I connect to using a chromecast through an optical cable
  • When the sounds happen, it’s on the digital setting. When I switch the channel, it also stops.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Describe what “poltergeist sounds” are like. Voices? Big popping sound?

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Honestly, like alien the movie, or those crazy robot squids in the matrix. Best way I can explain it :slight_smile: not white noise but pretty deep and with treble, not a constant frequency, and really does sound like. I’ve switched out the Chromecast for a new one thinking it was from that but didn’t solve it. Thanks for thinking about it

I guess I would try leaving it overnight with some other digital source connected to see if it still does it, in an attempt to determine if it is coming from that source or if it is the digital in. There is so much/there are so many possible sources of interference these days, its crazy.

However, simply turning it off at the end of the day, or switching it to an input that doesn’t wake the fam would be worth the button-pushing in terms of sanity and household harmony.

Got it. Yea. I figured but thought I’d see if it was something obvious. Thanks again

Sounds like you need a priest.

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Indeed. Do need a priest in general but actually got a half decent surge protector vs the $20 one on Amazon and it totally solved it. I guess LA grid is not particularly consistent :wink:

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Do you have a Rega P8 turntable?

I wish.

The reason I asked is a friends system was similarly haunted and it turned out to be an issue with the speed controller on the P8. We pulled the power cord out for ten minutes and the gremlins went away.

You might try not only powering down but unplugging power to your components to see if that helps.

Thank you for that. So actually I got a half decent surge protector (vs the cheap one on Amazon) and that solved the problem. I also noticed that it was happening only in the middle of the night so it must be something about the LA grid not producing a smooth and consistent amount of power

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Does your TV turn itself on? Do you feel strangely compelled by images on the screen? Couldn’t resist. I haven’t experienced this in Chicago but if you do track down your gremlin I’d be interested in knowing what it is. Info good to know when the first late night haunting of my rig occurs. :slight_smile:

Totally! I actually figured it out. See here. Grids! Very loud "Poltergeist" sounds. Cannot isolate

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