Pioneer SW-8MK2 (Subwoofer) Hum

Hey all...I figured the best way to say thank you to the amazing people here that have given me advice is to post whatever useful information I come across so the next version of me looking for help might find what their problem is.

This site renewed my love of reading about , looking at and most importantly listening to music. Life , right now, has me limited in size and scope of what I can run so I have a fairly simply Pioneer Elite receiver with a 5.1 Pioneer AJ speaker setup for home theater and I now have a dedicated Onkyo A-9010 (thanks to advice on this forum) and my old MIssion bookshelf speakers just for music but that is a story for a different post.

Anyway..As part of the home theater setup I have noticed the sub puts out a low , though very audible, hum. This hum is there immediately as soon as power is sent to it. I can literally have it powered on without any source going to it and I can hear the hum. I went through all the basic troubleshooting of checking grounding external to the sub, surge protectors , take your pick and its still. It's bad enough that I unplug the sub when not watching TV.

Next steps were searching the Web and it seems this actually is a very common problem for this specific sub. Just about every negative review on Amazon mentions the hum and multiple different AV type forums have threads on it. One person talks about the internal ground wire being swapped which is causing the hum but Icant seem to prove that and I didnt want to take it fully apart yet as I am still in warranty.

So to that end I reached out Pioneer Support to see what they say. Im supposed to get a reply in 2 business days but Ill give them a week. Additionally Im going to take it to a small electronics shop around here if Pioneer doesnt give me any info to see if they can figure out where its coming from. Hopefully something useful comes of it and Ill be able to contribute to this site. =)

 

Check this out:

Pioneer sw-8mk2 humming sound - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews

Refer to the post from 7/18. He states his hummed too, he opened it up and discovered the HOT and the NEUTRAL wires were reversed, I'm assuming at the back of the IEC connector. Maybe yours has the same problem.

 

Says a lot about the sub, sadly. Since you've ruled out a ground loop, maybe you should get a different sub ? Maybe an upgrade in the way of a bigger, beefier one, provided you have the space and the budget ?

Now THIS is a good idea. Since the tech is gonna charge you, he'll do the impossible to fix the issue. Pioneer, OAH.....

 

First response from Pioneer wasnt encouraging , "There is no common known issue with this subwoofer and the issue you are having. Where do you have this subwoofer plugged into for power? Is it plugged into the same power strip as any other device. The hum you are hearing is feedback coming off the subwoofer. Please plug the subwoofer in its own power socket with nothing else plugged into the same electrical outlet."

So I captured a few screenshots showing the number of Google results and various Amazon reviews complaining about the hum on this sub.