I've got a Panasonic BD30 BD player, a VSX-92 Pioneer Elite Reciever, and a Polk Audio CSiA6 center speaker.

Love my setup, saved up for a while and have every component that I wanted. It's never even hiccuped until today when I threw in the Street Kings BD. Anytime there was dialog, the center speaker made a cracking sound that sounded like static or something. The static grew louder the more I turned up the receiver. This was a rental disc, so I assumed it was just a bad disc, and I exchanged it for the SD Street Kings. Again, the same audio problem, anytime there's dialog I hear a cracking static sound that's not overwhelming, just annoying.

I have an extra Polk Center speaker and swapped it out, same static issue, so it seems like it's obviously coming from the receiver. I've tried out a few other discs and cannot replicate the dialog issue (tested with Cloverfield BD, Anchorman HD-DVD and a couple other dialog heavy titles...).

How could just those discs cause that center channel cracking? I guess it could be possible that I got two bad discs, but for a movie released on Tuesday, I'm the first one to rent either the BD or SD of Street Kings. I swapped out the speaker wire and HDMI cables, nothing changed. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

i would guess it's not your equipment, but bad audio encoding for the discs. I get distorted dialog from the center channel sometimes also...but it's mostly with older movies like Godfather.

Have you swapped the speaker wire feeding the center channel speaker with the right channel speaker wire (re-directing the center channel audio to the right channel speaker) and then listening to see if the static sound shows up in the right speaker or the center speaker?

I did not try that, I'll give that a shot when I get home and see if it's still there. I'm assuming it would be since it was on the second center speaker I tried, but certainly worth trying.

I fed the center channel into my left front and it was still cracking. I tried the extended stereo setting on the receiver that bypasses the center channel and it cracked there as well. I guess it really is the movie, I'm not starting to hope that it's somehow not an error in the receiver.

Sounds like this ought to be in the HD disc forum, now. Hope they fix it and exchange or something.

Since it has happened on both the sd and bd discs, and none of the online reviews I read have mentioned it, I'm still trying to make sure it isn't my system. If anyone has either disc to check, the worst scene that I noticed was I believe chapter 7 (the one where keanu and forrest meet laurie in his office).

A thought just came to me. Have you tried different codecs from on the disc? If there are any.

Both the BD and SD only had one english audio track each, I didn't check the foreign tracks but I should.

You need to try and troubleshoot the cable and speaker before worrying about a disc.

Run the test tones first, even at a higher than normal volume and see if the crackling is there.

Then check all the connections, tight at both ends and in proper polarity.

If it is coming from the receiver it could be a cold solder joint failing and it goes away when the receiver warms up enough.

Also you should try to test just the center channel by feeding it a signal and see if the speaker crackles on the left or right front side as well. That will tell you whether the speaker is the problem or if it is in the receiver.

I swapped speaker wire, HDMI cables, HDMI inputs and watched 30 Days of Night, Casino Royale, and Bucket List all on BD and didn't hear anything out of the ordinary and no cracking or static at all.

Watched Street Kings again after all of the changes... still cracking and static, I think I'm finally confident enough to say that it's not my system and most likely an error on those discs. I don't know if it's a pressing error or anything, but those two specific Street Kings discs from Movie Gallery had the same static and cracking at the same points on both BD and SD.