Vantage issue. Clipping

[Rickschoppen]

Hi everyone. Anyone have an idea? My Martin Logan Vantage speakers have a problem. One of the speakers clicks as soon as it is turned on. (Not in stand-by )

I clean them every month and have done so now as well.
I have swapped everything: power, speaker cables, etc. But the clicking remains on one side. Only the panel itself is affected, the woofer has no issues.

Additionally, when I connect it to my amplifier, it clips. Even my DAC is flipping. . The other speaker has no issues at all.

I swapped the internal amp boards already to test that. Still the same.


Anyone have an idea?

 

[Jazzman53]

If, after swapping the power supply to the panel, the problem followed the panel, that would indicate a short somewhere in the panel, and the click would likely be an arcing event.

An area that can be prone to arcing is where the bias supply wire penetrates the panel edge, but arcing can occur anywhere on the panel, and can eventually burn thru the insulating powder coat on a stator, or even damage your amplifier if it progresses from diaphragm-to-stator arcing to stator-to-stator arcing.

An arc occuring out in middle/visible areas of the panel can sometimes be found by turning all the lights out to completely darken the room, and looking for a visible arc event (that would be the 'click' sound you are hearing). If you can localize it, it might be possible to repair it, but there's no point in talking about that until you find the arc site on the panel.

 

[Rickschoppen]

I don't know if it's in the panel itself. I don't see anything unusual here, nor do I see any sparks when I look at it in the dark. I only moved the amplifier module from one speaker to the other. The ticks I hear don't seem to have a specific location in the panel; they seem to go through the entire panel. Additionally, it seems like something is being sent through the speaker cables, as my DAC and amplifier are also reacting to it.


Additionally, as soon as I disconnect the cables and leave only the power connected to the speaker, the popping continues until the speaker switches to standby mode. Remarkably, when I touch the panel, the popping seems to stop until I remove my hand. This applies to the entire panel and not just one specific spot. Even blowing air on it causes the popping to stop for a few seconds. It also doesn't matter where I blow on the panel—whether at the top or bottom, there is no difference

 

[Robert D]

Have you checked the point where the wires are soldered onto the panel? Sometimes there's damage to a wire there. The panels slide downward over time with gravity, and that can damage the wires as it pulls. ML can provide you with metal brackets to put at the bottom, and those will stop the sliding. They call them stat stops.

 

[Jazzman53]

I don't know if it's in the panel itself. I don't see anything unusual here, nor do I see any sparks when I look at it in the dark. I only moved the amplifier module from one speaker to the other. The ticks I hear don't seem to have a specific location in the panel; they seem to go through the entire panel. Additionally, it seems like something is being sent through the speaker cables, as my DAC and amplifier are also reacting to it.


Additionally, as soon as I disconnect the cables and leave only the power connected to the speaker, the popping continues until the speaker switches to standby mode. Remarkably, when I touch the panel, the popping seems to stop until I remove my hand. This applies to the entire panel and not just one specific spot. Even blowing air on it causes the popping to stop for a few seconds. It also doesn't matter where I blow on the panel—whether at the top or bottom, there is no difference

I may have misunderstood what you meant by swapping out the 'amplifier module', which I understood to be the entire 'amplifier interface', consisting of the step-up transformer, crossover, and HV bias supply.

If you left the bias supply wire connected, then the panel was not isolated in your test.

A global / not localized clicking sound could be a problem in the panel but it's more indicative of a problem in the HV bias supply (leaking capacitor, shorting diode, cold solder joint, arcing between components).

The simplist way to determine whether the short follows the panel is to disconnect all three wires that feed power to the panel (on both speakers), and then use jumpers to connect the power leads from the 'good' speaker to the panel leads on the 'bad' speaker.

If the bad speaker then plays OK, the problem was in the interface (probably in the HV bias supply). If not, the problem is in the panel.