The past couple nights, I've been smelling something down here in the HT room, it started this weekend. It's kinda got a plasticy smell, but not quite.

This weekend, I picked up new speakers to replace the generic ones that came from my Sony HT in a box (links on my HT page in my sig). At first, I had some problems with my reciever being able to keep the volume high enough, and if even shut itself off, supposedly to prevent overloads. With the advice from a few people, I learned to switch my reciever to 4 ohms instead of 8, and this helped.. volume has stayed fine and no shut-offs since.

My receiver is inside a glass & wood entertainment center TV table thing. When I open the glass door, I can kind of smell the smell from in there... but, I don't feel any heat at all. I put my hand on top of the reciever and it feels fine to me.

Thing is, also this past weekend I bought and installed a new celing fan, that's mostly made of plastic. It said to use 60 watt bulbs, and takes 2 of em, and it all works fine.. but I'm wondering if the heat from the fan could be what's causing this smell?

So, before my house burns down, can anyone tell me what might be causing this, if you have any idea at all?

I really think you're overheating the receiver. Get that thing out int he open!

make sure that you're not overheating the receiver. if it's in an enclosed space, it's highly likely that it is getting too hot. Mine was... to alleviate the problem, I picked up a small cooling fan from Radio Shack and connected it to the back of my A/V rack, blowing over the heat sinks in the receiver. Works great now

When you changed speakers, did you move the receiver around a lot? My guess is that you could have stirred up some dust (or maybe even dropped a piece of wire insulation) in your receiver, and now it is burning off. I would keep a close eye on it for a week or -- if you're adventurous -- open the receiver up and look inside.

The "plasticky" smell is weird -- could it be solder? Did you tin your wires?
It could be residual from when you were running at 8 ohms -- maybe you burned something then, and you're just noticing the effects of it now.



I'd also check that ceiling fan if I were you. Try 25-watt bulbs.

Well, last night I took the receiver out of the cabinet and now it's just sitting on a big box next to my TV, but by the time I had it all hooked back up, it was getting late so I just made sure it all turned on, then went to bed.. so tonight I'll see if the smell is still there

Well.. reciever has been on all night, out of the cabinet, and no funny smell at all.. guess it really was just too cramped in there