Popping through speakers over HDMI

[Biftheunderstudy]

I've had the setup for a little over a year working fine, now it makes popping sounds through the speakers when playing anything over HDMI.

I have a Samsung LN40A550 TV with a Samsung HT-AS720S receiver with the speaker set that came with it. The devices connected to it are a PS3 and a WD HDTV media player, both are connected by HDMI to the receiver and a monitor HDMI to the TV. The media player also has standard analog AV outputs to the receiver as well.

If I play an analogue video with the media player there is no popping, and indeed it does seem like digital noise.

For the past year it's been on a standard power bar, nothing special (and probably the cause). As a test I tried to isolate the power by putting the TV and Receiver on my UPS for the line conditioning aspect with little or no change. Playback from the PS3 also exhibits the popping noise and it persists even if I swap all the HDMI cables -- I don't have any spares so all I can do is rotate them in the system.

There don't appear to be any video glitches, but I guess it is easier to detect an audio glitch...

I suspect that the problem came about after a potential power surge...my wife's power supply died on the same day as my CPU and a few days later we tried to watch a movie and noticed the popping. I now have UPS's to protect things, too little too late maybe.

 

[ICXRa]

I added a PS3 about a year and a half ago to my setup. This was plugged into my Samsung LNT4071F via HDMI but all my other stuff was feed from an older AVR that was limited to component output. Anyway I ordered a couple of Blue Jeans Cable latest HDMI cables and when I got them I plugged up everything and started having the same issue you describe except I also had some minor video glitches. BJC's sent me a replacement cable but the new one did it to. Just a few days later my PS3 was dead just inside of the first thirty days of ownership.

I would start unplugging HDMI equipment one at a time as a starting place to track down the problem component.

 

[Biftheunderstudy]

Good advice, but I checked both HDMI devices individually and both produce the sound. Turns out it does happen over analogue too, just not as often. I think I'll probably have to RMA the reciever.

 

[Number1]

Obviously a receiver problem but just to make sure, hook up your components one at a time via HDMI directly to the TV and see if you still get the popping sound. If no popping sound, get a new receiver or only use analog sound.

Yes, get a surge protector before you blow anything else.