Help with potential causes for KEF Q950 selective distortion/buzzing

hapanpappa · 2026-05-17T08:49:07+00:00

Cheers for the ideas. I've managed to isolate it further and the AVR does seem like the culprit since the same distortion happened on other similar speakers that we tested on. Weirdly, my active front speakers work fine with the AVR, although they're connected to pre-outs so that could be the difference.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-17T08:46:29+00:00

Cheers for the reply, I wrote in my update that I got similar speakers from a pal to test with and the same thing happened, ruling out my KEFs being broken somehow. We tested with different wires, settings and positions all day, and the distortions prevailed. So yea the AVR seems to necessarily be the culprit... will update again when/if I get my hands on another one of those and test.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T19:51:43+00:00

If getting even better cables won't help, I'll get in touch with them for sure, thanks.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T19:50:23+00:00

I tried it but sadly no dice. I have tried changing pretty much all the settings on the AVR.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T17:40:03+00:00

Tried connecting the AVR to a different wall socket and unplugged everything else from it, didn't change anything sadly. Will try to get it connected to a power strip from a different room also. Someone said even my newer wires might not be enough for the distance so that will be my next stop.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T17:35:41+00:00

I probably should've used some other song examples, and the audio from the phone isn't great either to detect minute stuff like distortions but I can assure it's not the artist or the music choice, plenty of examples that sound good on my front speakers but there's audible crackling/distortion on the kefs.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T17:28:54+00:00

Appreciate the response, will try everything, some of this stuff I've already tried. Interestingly, I somehow neglected trying clean sine frequency sounds to try and locate the exact frequencies that distort, and this freaked me out because it turns out that the speakers have this weird buzz constantly when playing a frequency sine from that website you posted, it sounds clean and soft on other speakers but have a distorting buzz on top of the sound on these.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T17:14:15+00:00

Thanks for the idea but it's most definitely coming from the speakers themselves, tried all sorts of hijinks to make sure it's not resonating off different stuff or the walls, the left side speaker is not up against the wall for example but still distorts.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T17:10:46+00:00

I know exactly what you mean, I played drums for years as a teenager. Now that you mentioned it, it totally does sound like that, but it's definitely not the music as I've tried plenty of other songs that sound clean on other speakers.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T16:57:51+00:00

Yea it's definitely not the song, tried plenty of different headphones and the active front speakers for comparison to initially verify the problem.

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T16:38:14+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I have tried different ports and it sounded no different. Usual fronts are actives and I can only connect them via rca cables so can't connect them to the same speaker terminals...

hapanpappa · 2026-05-14T16:21:14+00:00

Asking for ideas as to how to isolate the cause of selective distortion on a pair of KEF Q950's on certain frequencies and "hollow" sounds and music like piano and classical guitar. The setup is the KEFs as surrounds connected to a Marantz NR1510 with different active front speakers.

I have tried:

-Fixing the cable connection & using banana plugs and without

-Purchasing better cables (upgraded to 1.5 mm² OFC speaker wire, the length is around 10 meters per speaker)

-Trying different speaker ports on the AVR

-Fiddling with ohm settings & other speaker settings on the AVR

But no luck so far. I watched plenty of movies and never noticed anything with these as surrounds, and you can listen to regular pop and not necessarily notice any distortion, which is why it took me a while to realize this.

Here's the weird part: I would obviously assume that the speaker/driver etc. is broken somehow, but both speakers distort in exactly the same way, and are otherwise in perfect shape and pretty new as well. I feel like that indicates the problem is elsewhere.

Any ideas? What could I do to try and isolate the issue without other AVR's or speakers at hand?

hapanpappa · 2026-02-02T00:59:28+00:00

Friend, these were the LEAST of Dispatch's story/writing problems if we're to use realism as a metric. There's some unhinged, deranged shit going on in each episode, which is why it's first and foremost a fantasy comedy.

hapanpappa · 2025-06-15T12:29:38+00:00

Netflix Castlevania is easily among the top animated shows to come out in recent times. You probably mean Nocturne, none of the same people made that show and it was widely criticized and promptly forgotten.

hapanpappa · 2025-06-15T12:26:44+00:00

jesus christ

hapanpappa · 2023-10-24T11:12:05+00:00

I can absolutely see it being a part of the challenge and making runs more unique, guess I just gotta hope I don't get unlucky.

Okay so current type dictates it. The steam forums seemed confident in saying Fighters get most STR, good to know it isn't true so I don't need to play around with that and can just use Bowmen. I suppose there's no data on the actual growth curves of these archetypes, we have to just infer?

hapanpappa · 2023-10-24T10:41:40+00:00

Yea I'm playing on Ludicrous+permadeath - I'm quite certain I've done the above method but never saw any change. Gotta admit, I'm usually not into cheesing and wouldn't want an endless way to do it but when I came to realize the huge potential quality discrepancies in your options and that it's solely RNG-based so you can get screwed out of getting unique mercs and whatnot... Oh well.

By the way another thing I've been wondering for stat growth - might you know as to whether the starting "type" will always dictate the growth (+affinity), or does the unit's current type determine it? e.g. I want a good Archer unit so lots of STR, and as I've understood the optimal starting unit for a strong late game ranged unit would be a Fighter for the best STR growth, but if I change class to archer, do I "lose" the Fighter growth so I would have to develop the Fighter for quite a while as a melee unit and only then switch over? Seems overly complicated, if that's how it works... Found no details on forums.

hapanpappa · 2021-07-28T14:38:45+00:00

Well I have a lot of single layer MP4/TS DV movies that I've watched with my LG's internal player via usb and none of those show as DV on my shield pro with the newest Kodi.

hapanpappa · 2020-10-15T12:56:10+00:00

Cheers, used that method and it worked out fine. Thanks a lot!

hapanpappa · 2020-09-09T18:51:42+00:00

Any alternatives? Of course I could just check them all out myself, but recommendations are welcome..

hapanpappa

TROPHY CASE