Greetings -

I'm in the midst of upgrading all of my home theater gear.

My current receiver (4 years old) is a Sony STR-DE635, which I'm beginning to think is crap wrapped in a metal box. However, I do have an Onkyo TX-SR502 on its way to replace this one, but I digress.

I received my new sub today, a JBL E250P. I hooked it up OK and threw a couple movies in; I was very impressed - tight and deep bass, not muddy at all.

I threw LotR:RotK in, selected the DTS track and headed for the Ride of the Rohirrim chapter. Everything seemed ok, was getting the bass I wanted. Then the "Mumakil" elephants came, every step was a blast of bass. Then the receiver stopped producing sound and flashed Protector on it.

I researched the message on the net and most say it's a problematic speaker wire causing a short. So I double checked the wires, refitted them and tried again. During big pulses of sound or big bass instances, the receiver keeps stopping and giving me that message. It's well venhilated - warm to the touch but not hot. No obvious "heat" odors either. Is this just a symptom of an underpowered receiver?

Thanks for any insight.

I don't know what specifically is causing your problems, other than you are overloading the receive. And you're right, Sony's DE line of receivers is crap. You'll be much happier with the Onkyo.

You don't say what your other speakers are, or what their impedence is. I assume the subwoofer is powered, so I can't see that as a problem as far as it drawing too much current from the receiver. That doesn't mean there isn't s short somewhere though.

I use to have a Sony receiver, I believe the protection is just an overload protection. The receiver likely started to clip and shut itself down before it hurt itself. I would check the instructions but there should be a way to reset it. You might try just unplugging the receiver for a few minutes and see if that resets it.

Check the polarity of your speaker wires (+ to + & - to -). Having them out of phase could cause the protection circuit to kick in. You don't happen to have your speakers connected directly to your subwoofer do you?

Sonic

Make sure you have checked both ends of the speaker cable. If there is even a single strand of copper touching another then this could be the problem.

Otherwise I would try the same part of the film that causes the problem with low volume and see what happens.

Some things to check:

1) Make sure the crossover is set properly for all of your speakers. You probably want them all set to "small" with the crossover at whatever frequency your full-range channels can handle (80, 100, 120hz, whatever... err on the side of too high). This will help prevent the receiver from sending power-sapping low frequencies to the 5 channels.

2) The subwoofer should not draw power from your amplifier as long as you set it up for "subwoofer-yes" and connected the sub to the LFE Out on the receiver, so the addition of the sub, in and of itself, should not additionally tax the receiver.

3) Inspect the entire length of all speaker wires. Sometimes a staple or an abrasion of some sort can penetrate the casing just enough to cause an intermittent short.

Excessive current draw is the usual cause of a shutdown. This happens when the impedance becomes too low, and while very low-impedance speakers combined with an underdesigned amplifier *can* cause this, a short is the more usual culprit.

RichC

Nope, just one RCA cable from the sub to the receiver.

I'm beginning to think this was the problem. All of my current decoding is being done by my DVD player and then sent to my receiver, so no LFE signal could be managed and thus the crossover was improperly set.

Thanks for all the input and help people!

Do yourself a favor and quit using the DVD player to decode. In 99% of the cases your receiver will have superior decoders then the DVD player and you'll only need a single digital cable instead of 6 analog cables you use now to get the decoded signal to the receiver.

Ummm... NO! This is absolutely untrue. The "phase" of the speakers merely makes sure the different speaker drivers (cones) "push in" and "push out" in synch. The receiver sees the exact same impedance whether or not the speakers are hooked up in phase.

Where do you get this misinformation? And better yet, why do you post it?????