Speaker doesn't seem to work unless I turn the volume up

oscillator

Hey guys! I'm new here, really just registered to ask for some help:)

So I have a Yamaha rx v361 receiver, with a 5.1 speaker set hooked up. It's a 'relatively old' (6-7 years old maybe) receiver and I honestly haven't even used it in the past couple of years.

So my problem is: I turn on the receiver and I wanna do the Manual Speaker Sound Level setting, that's an option in the menu where you can set the volume level of each 6 speakers separately. When I go and do it, every speaker works except the left surround speaker. Just no sound. Now, the thing is, when I crank up the volume (and I mean the volume control that controls all speakers together) on the remote or using the volume pot, at a point it magically starts to work and now I can even turn it down or whatever, it seems to work just as well as the others. I have tried this over and over and it's always the same, that left surround speaker only works if I turn the volume up and then I can turn it to whatever db, it's good to go.

Now, why the hell is this? I obviously changed up speakers and wires to see if it's one or the other, but no, it's definitely the receiver. And this problem just appeared magically since I haven't even used the receiver for like 2-3 years now. Is it just the dust? The inside doesn't seem that dirty, but I'm sure there's some dust in there, even though I kept the receiver behind in a glass cabinet. I have some compressed air cans, should I try to use those? Or just take the receiver to a shop? To be fair, the problem's not a biggy, but it still annoys me that I don't have a perfectly functional receiver for some reason.

Thanks for any help!

F1nut

I would suspect a cold solder joint at the binding post/circuit board connection in your AVR as the root cause. Try wiggling the binding post at a lower volume to see if that gets the speaker to play. If it does, that's confirmation of a connection issue.