For about a month now I've been experiencing a strange noise problem. Randomly, it seems, the empeg develops a rather loud hissing sound, not unlike the hissing you get between songs on a tape when your stereo is at high volume.

Sometimes the hissing will be there right as the player starts up, and sometimes it will happen after it has been playing for a while. The volume of the hiss does not change with the volume of the music, nor does the hissing go away when the player is paused.

I have not been able to find a cause of the problem.

The only cure that I have found is hard-restarting the player (i.e. pulling it out of the sled) several times (but sometimes once will do it) I don't often listen to it in my house so I don't know if it only happens in the car or not. I have checked all the connections etc... and everything seems to be hooked up and clean.

what do you think?

Sounds like a bad connection on the sled, or possibly in the player - this is why pulling/reinserting helps as it's just disturbing the contacts. Actual reboots are very very very unlikely to be helping.

Hugo

kind of what I figured.

What do you think is the best way for me to test?

Do any particular connections come to mind?

It is possible that the problem could be unrelated to the empeg. Check your amplifier and its wiring.

In fact, the next time the hiss happens, leave everything running but unplug the RCA cables from the amp, at the amp. This will leave the amp powered up (the amp remote line is still "live"), but will disconnect the empeg from the loop. Then if the hiss is still there, it's the amp.

Although this is a different problem, it illustrates the sort of thing that can go wrong with an amp: One thing that happens on one of my amps is that the right front speaker sometimes gets crackly. It sounds like an EQ or an MP3 problem when you hear it. But the truth is that the gain adjustment pot on that amp channel is just a little iffy, and I just need to turn the knob to sweep the contacts a bit. I have to do this procedure about once every two months to keep the speaker from crackling.

That sounds exactly like what happened to me when one of the wires had come loose from a pin on the docking connector. Check the wires going into the back of the docking connector, give each one a gentle tug and see if it's tight in there are just hanging loose.

Right, could be that, too. Or any other sort of wiring problem, not necessarily on the docking connector.

Check the wires going into the back of the docking connector

wow. that should be fun with my install.

maybe i'll just live with it. Crap. It really is annoynig.