Just the other day one of my zones speakers started sounding kind of horrible. I thought that the speakers had just gone bad so I got a new pair and it did not change anything. I have moved the wires around and tried all sorts of things. I will be trying other things too but was wondering if anyone has ever heard of what it could be with a Russound cav6.6?

I just placed my speaker wiring from the zone that was having problems into another zone to see what would happen. The speakers with the wiring going into that zone still had problems with sound. It was not the amp to that zone. Can speaker wire go bad? I have never heard of such a thing!!!It is a high quality wiring.

you could have a fray shorting things out

OR

You could have squirrels/rodents that have chewed your wiring

Okay, get this. The room in question was a room we never really listened to with any kind of volume much above 16 or 20. The other day was the first time really that we listened to music above that volume and that is when we heard the problem. That is why I was trying to find out what had happened. I have been looking for answers but nobody seemed to have any that made any sense. I have been scrambling for answers to the point of even thinking of replacing the wire which would have been a major undertaking. After checking the speakers wiring from the Cav to make sure all was correct I went down to the Cav and all the wiring on the back of the Cav was the same. I then just for the fun of it decided to move the positive and the negative around and just switch them. You would not believe it. The problem went away. The wiring on the Cav must be screwed up on that zone. It now works after I put the wires in the wrong places.

that tells me the wire is most likely damaged and shorted against something. Get an ohmeter (Around $20 at the Rat Shack) and test the wiring

And what would be the recommended way to test the wiring using this ohmeter?

Hmmm.... I can only guess what oex meant. Switching the polarity of the speaker wire fixed the problem. How did he conclude from that that there's a damaged and shorted wire?

I'm guessing here, but try this. Disconnect the speaker wire from the back of the Cav, like you did before, but instead of switching them, twist them together and leave them temporarily disconnected from the Cav. Then, go to the other end of the cable, where it's connected to the speaker. Remove the wires from the back of the speaker, and connect them to the leads of the ohmeter. If the resistance is too high, that indicates a poor connection somewhere.

This is close to the time of year when the weather turns cold. When this happens, the roof rats around here look for shelter. They'll gravitate towards places that are relatively warm, and have a food supply. Like the bird food we used to store in our garage. Rats chewed hoses on the washing machine, wires on my water softener, and hoses and wires on both of our vehicles. Sometimes we'd see a dead rat in the driveway. I'm guessing they were poisoned by the antifreeze in the cars. Our little Yorkie kept trying to tell us about this problem, but we didn't listen. We had to learn the hard way.

Look for signs of rat droppings. Set rat traps. Peanut butter makes good bait.

I would say that the positive conductor is grounded against something. To test remove the wires from the cav. You could test each pair. You should get approximate the same on both pairs. Around 6 to 8 ohms. If you get something other than that or a variation between the pairs you probably have an issue that will require more testing. I'd also test between a known ground and each conductor.

Iwent thru this exact dance on a job I didn't do. Squirrels at the wiring and was laying on the recessed lighting can.

No rats or anything in the attic or any animal for that matter. I will check the wire for problems.