[solid7]

2 days ago, as I was setting up my HT with the Audyssey Room EQ, an abnormal occurrence took place. Some time after completion of the setup, during the course of normal listening, my receiver flashed briefly, turned itself off, and continued flashing red on the power standby button. When I turned it back on, something didn't sound quite right.

I went through 8 hours trying to figure out why I couldn't hear voices properly, while the rest of the system sounded great. I came across all sorts of features - some of which, probably shouldn't even be legal. I used every ounce of common sense that I could muster, before finally figuring out to run a manual channel test. (I'm a newbie with a brand new receiver) Upon doing so, I noticed NO sound from my center channel.

Next, I took the center channel, and hooked it up as an independent channel on another system, just to eliminate the receiver as the problem. Nothing. I returned it to the store from whence it came - just outside of the 30 day return policy, of course.

So, while the center was out for FA service, I thought that I would just run 4 channel stereo mode. No problem, it sounded good enough to get me by until the other speaker came back. However, my wife pointed out something else. A strange noise was masking voices - a rather eerie hum over, similar to what you'd hear (I guess) with a speaker maxing out excursion - but at low volumes. It seems to get worse the longer the system plays, although it's not exremely obnoxious - but it is definitely killing my HT experience. The first thought in my mind was that I have damaged all 5 speakers. I will be testing these later today.

Can anyone suggest what MAY have happened here? Here is the affected portion of my setup:

Denon AVR-2808CI receiver
Mirage Nanosat CC (prestige) mains and surrounds

The output of the receiver is matched to the input of the speakers, and I have no abnormally high settings on ANY channel. (Center channel was +3 dB, Fronts were +2.5 dB, Surrounds +1 dB, and sub was flat)

I thought that perhaps the noise could also be from damaged HDMI cables - however, I have an older satellite receiver that uses S-Video, and I still get the noise through it.

Thanks to all for reading this far, and in advance for any replies.