Best Of

I did some more testing. My test notes confusing, to say the least. I thought that when the left channel was playing, the only other speakers playing should be the right SDA speakers. That doesn't seem to be the case. But that might have been amplifier misbehavior. What it comes down to is that no matter what I did, I could not seem to trigger the misbehavior with the Parasound with the SDA disconnected. I suppose it does draw more power with SDA connected for the same volume, so that could have had an impact? But, I still had crackle in stereo no matter what I did, once SDA was connected for a bit with the volume up. It would be fine for a bit, but then go to crap the longer it went. No shrieking this time.

Frustrated, I finally caved and hooked it up to a plain vanilla Denon X3500H receiver. Very, very limited testing since by this point it was getting late and the testing was getting ... less and less appreciated. But, it seems not to to do it. So perhaps I was wrong and the problem is electronics. I was only able to drive it hard for a couple of minutes, but if that holds, I guess it must be that this 100 pound amp just does not like whatever is in that SDA crossover. Fingers crossed that's all it is. But, I still need a good half hour to drive them hard to confirm, and test with some other amps.