Gang,
I'm hoping to get some feedback into troubleshooting a Velodyne DPS12. I purchased this in 2008, so I suppose it's off the warranty. After about 20 minutes once turned on, the unit starts making a loud humming noise in addition to the normal performance. The humming noise almost sounds like continuous thunder - like the unit is amplifying some external noise along with the audio signal. It is loud enough to hear through the entire 3 story house whether or not music is playing, and is subwoofer (and receiver) volume independent. What I mean by that is the volume of the humming is independent of the level at which I play the subwoofer at. The only way to make the humming stop is to turn off the unit for several minutes. When switched back on, the unit plays normally for a few minutes, and then the humming returns. The weird thing is it's clearly responding still to the audio signal so one can hear both the humming and bass notes overlapped.
Based on readings I've done on this forum, I've disconnected all connections to the receiver and just turned on the unit. Same thing happens after 20 minutes - even with no audio input or physical connection to any other device, the units just starts to produce constant loud humming noise. I've also physically moved the unit to a different room with a different power outlet, thinking there was some electrical interference, but the humming occurs again, even when not connected to another device.
I contacted Velodyne support via email, and was simply told it would cost $190 plus shipping to fix the electronics. To be honest, I'm not sure it's worth it - how can I spend another $190+, get only a 6 month warranty, and feel comfortable the same problem won't pop up again? I couldn't get any other response from them and am wondering if this is something I can fix myself?
I have to say I'm really disapointed both in Velodyne's response and in the subwoofer itself. Since I have small kids in the house, I never played the unit at anything other than low listening levels so if anything I've never come close to using this thing to its full potential. This is my first experience with a Velodyne product, and over the years I've never experienced this sort of problem with any of my other audio equipment (multiple receivers, speakers, other units in 25+ years of quality AV purchases). The frustrating thing too is that I always purchase higher-end audio equipment precisely to avoid this sort of problem from happening.
This is a beautiful unit for which I feel I paid a substantial amount of money - certainly enough that I should expect to get more than a few years of listening enjoyment from. I'm hoping there's a simple way to figure out what happened.
Any feedback, even if anyone has insight on if there are some simple fixes with the internal wiring I can look at, would be appreciated!
If nothing else, thanks for taking a look at my ramblings
