Issue with dual R112SWs

[Echd]

Good afternoon,

 

I am still new to the home theater game, having decided to slowly convert a portion of my basement to a dedicated theater room. I initially started with a yamaha home theater in a box set, but graduated to an entry set of Klipsch reference speakers. Now I'm looking at going into a set of RPs, so word the wise for whoever is on the fence- buy better out the gate or you'll regret it when you want to replace it right after! Regardless, more to the point, at present I am using a Yamaha V363, Klipsch R610F towers, R52C center, and R41 bookshelves as surrounds. About 8 or 9 months ago I purchased an R112SW which I have been very happy with. It has given me no issues, and given that I am running it in a room with subpar acoustics and a lot of open space, I have been running it quite hot without it skipping a beat.

 

Last week I purchased another R112SW on ebay as an open box model, hoping to see what dual subs were about. I received it and set it up via y-splitter. All goes well, except the new sub will cut off at times. It sounds great when it's going, but turn the gain too high? Cuts off. Turn gain down and adjust avr trim? Cuts off. High bass? Generally fine for a while then eventually cuts off. No bass? It'll eventually cut off, seemingly at random.

 

My first guess was clipping as I initially began running it warm like my other 112. I backed off of both and everything appeared well, but it is still occasionally shutting off. When it cuts off, I have to physically unplug the unit and plug it back in to have it cut back on. I thought at first the outlet may not be up to the task, so I tried a different outlet. It may have just been luck, but it did fine for a while until cutting off at 48 minutes into a 1 hour episode of The Witcher. Unplugged it, plugged it back in, and it finished out the show.

 

Complications and points of fact I have noticed- (please note I know little about subs and had I not gotten a fantastic deal on the first 112 I probably would have saved up and bought something different. But I have been and still am very happy with my first 112)

 

I have tried attaching both subs by an additional Y-splitter in both the LFE and R channel. This does not appear to result in any appreciable change to either sub. My understanding was that this would increase the voltage, and I did it more just to see what would happen.

 

I purchased new and better subwoofer cables. This actually did seem to improve the sound quality somewhat, but the problem persisted nonetheless. Note that I went from using leftover RCA cables from my home theater in a box to nicer mediabridge shielded cables, so that was probably a wise upgrade anyway. My cable run at this time is about 10 foot for the first sub and 15 for the second, as I have not done any routing and don't intend to until I get it hammered out.

 

I tried "daisychaining" off of a y splitter instead of splitting at the receiver. This did not appear to change things.

 

I tried changing power cables. My new 112 came without a cable so I had to use another one I had laying around. The new cable was grounded (3-prong), unlike the old OEM cable. I swapped them between both subs and never saw any appreciable difference, so I don't think this has much to do with it. The 112 doesn't receive a ground from the input anyway.

 

I attempted to play both at very low gain. At extremely low gain neither shut off, but turning the AVR or volume up considerably will still knock out the new one. Being new to subs, I followed the advice on Subwoofer 101 on Youtube and while the old 112 had no problems, the new one seemed to cut off rather quickly beyond 50% gain, and below 50% it will generally still cut off at some point for the most part.

 

Auto-On appears to work fine on both subs.

 

One thing I have not tried yet is attaching the new sub alone, and not dual to the old one. I've tried cutting off the old one and continuing to run the new one and it doesn't seem to change things.

 

I suspect that it is an amplifier problem, but I am hoping there is something else I am missing. For what I paid for the new sub, it wouldn't really be worth shipping it back, and I would probably try and buy an external amp instead if need be.

 

Again, when they're going, they sound great, and I can't really tell any major difference in output between the two subs. This isn't a case where the sub cuts off the second it hits a deep note, it will soldier through some things and then "trip" on something fairly quiet or mundane. 

 

I will pull the amp and see if there is any obvious damage, but I feel that if there were any actual damage to the amp at this point that I could see, it wouldn't work at all.

 

Thank you for any assistance or input you may have.

[wuzzzer]

The issue you're having happens to tons of the 112 and 115 subs and 99.9999% of the time it is a bad amp. 

[wuzzzer]

 

[Echd]

Fortunately the ebay seller offered me a large partial refund when I asked him about it. Unfortunately the fact he offered to return 80% of the sub cost and for me to keep the sub tells me he probably knew about the issue ahead of time, but that means the replacement of the amp wont cost me anything out of pocket...

 

I am really happy with my other 112. It has done better than I expected and at a reasonable price. I hope it does not develop these issues too.

 

Thank you for the post on the matter.

[wuzzzer]

Check with Klipsch, I know for the failing 115s they were exchanging amps from the current SPL-150 series that supposedly had the issue fixed that was causing the amps to fail.  Just plug and play.

 

They may have a similar solution for your 112.

[OO1]

21 hours ago, Echd said:

o I purchased an R112SW

 

Thank you for any assistance or input you may have.

swap the amps in your R112SW and you will know if it has an issue on the 2nd sub -----