[jfindon]

My right speaker is crackling, I've had them for maybe 2 years at the most.  I did just move my room around and got new carpet and it's extremely dusty, what are the odds it's just dust and not a dying speaker?  I've never turned them up too loud or anything to risk damaging them.

 

[jfindon]

Bumping this back up since I never got an answer.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Dust will make a record crackle, but I've never heard of dust causing a crackle in a speaker.

I'd guess that there might be RFI it's picking up, a bad channel in the amp, or possibly a problem with your source.

Try playing your source through something else to find if it is making the crackle. Reposition the speakers or put them in a different room to see if something like a fluorescent light, AC motor, cellphone, dimmer switch, etc. are putting noise on the line. Depending on how those experiments turn out, you'll be able to narrow down the source of the problem. Once you do, you'll be able to figure out where it is coming from.

 

[jfindon]

I just unplugged it from my soundcard and hear the humming from both, but no crackling from the right one.  I'll try plugging my MP3 player in and seeing if I get crackling again.  If not, one more reason to snap this POS Creative soundcard in half.
 
 
EDIT:  I hear no crackling, sorry for my idiocy, don't know why I didn't think to try this earlier.  Now I need to find out if it's the soundcard or maybe the cable that's screwed up.  I bought a longer cable from Monoprice, the one I'm using right now for the MP3 player is the one that shipped with the A5s.
 
What are the odds it's the soundcard vs the cable?  Will it hurt them to keep using it this way until I find a solution?

 

[Uncle Erik]

I'd blame it on the soundcard. Cables rarely go bad unless they're flexed a lot. In this case, the cable has mostly been sitting there and rarely gets moved, right? If so, it's probably fine.

Another possibility is that your soundcard is OK, but is picking up RFI/EMI inside the computer. There is a tornado of electrical noise in there. Instead of dumping the card, you might want to think about picking up an external DAC to feed digitally from your computer. That usually gets rid of noise, too.

 

[jfindon]

Quote:

I'd blame it on the soundcard. Cables rarely go bad unless they're flexed a lot. In this case, the cable has mostly been sitting there and rarely gets moved, right? If so, it's probably fine.

Another possibility is that your soundcard is OK, but is picking up RFI/EMI inside the computer. There is a tornado of electrical noise in there. Instead of dumping the card, you might want to think about picking up an external DAC to feed digitally from your computer. That usually gets rid of noise, too.

Recommendations?  I plugged my headphones in too and get the same thing in the right side.  Also, this wasn't happening when I put the computer together a couple months back so I'm not sure it would be interference from components either.  It just randomly started, I'm leaning toward my soundcard.