swingerofbirches

Thank you. Yeah I was thinking of buying a new cable, perhaps what you call source cable (the one that goes from the Airport Express to the speaker system), as that would oviously be the easiest thing to fix. I don't understand some of your terminology. You sound like an expert electrical engineer to me. I'll show your response to my dad thoughhe might know more about these things. But neither of us would know about repairing this. So, if I do get it repaired, will need to send it off. Thank you very much for taking the time with a very detailed response. Do you know what about this system makes it so good (the sound, that is)? For me it was just dumb luck that I came across it at Costco.

I bought a set of iFi speakers probably about 4 years ago because they were on sale at Costco. I am one of those people who really knows nothing about audio. I've never had anything but the speakers built into TVs or built into computers. Anyhow, these speakers were absolutely something and have been one of my favorite purchases until recently. I was playing my music a bit louder than usual on them, but not so loud I thought I would break anything, and I noticed ever since then, if I play them at a medium volume, certain sounds cause a static, crackly sound. It's quite disappointing. I play my music through an Airport Express which connects to the iFi system (I don't use an iPod with it). I have unplugged and replugged all of the connections. This actually improved the static/crackling sound at first. But the crackling sound still comes in at medium volume when certain sounds are played, I think probably sounds with more bass. If I turn up the volume louder, the crackling will invariably play. Some songs don't seem to reproduce the crackling as much as others. Strangely the song which I originally think I may have played too loud was Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," which, when I play it loud, does not induce any static or crackling (or maybe the loudness of that song covers it up). I hear it more when I play quieter songs like the Glee version of "Songbird" and the piano notes sound. The song "Treefingers" by Radiohead, which is sort of a deep bass ambient sound song, induces a light constant crackling, so it seems somewhat bass related. I just played the song Alegria from Cirque du Soleil, and it was really crackly. So my questions are: 1) Is it possible it's still a cable problem? Could the cables go bad? 2) If not, is it worth repairing? And how would I? 3) Are there other speakers like these? I think I paid maybe $150-200, but I have never heard anything like these before. I would love for them to keep going if I could. They're a bit funky with the iPod dock, which I never used, but I have never had sound like this before--which shows i am not at all an audiophile. I'm sure it gets much better, but for me these are amazing.