Hallo jc,

Had this problem as well with one of my Beolab 20, very random failure, cannot be produced and can happen month in between.

I got a spare part change on site and never heard the problem Again.

II owned my speakers for over a year without issue, and one evening, that awful loud electronic bassy / glitchy sonic digital static at an absurdly high volume began playing when I turned on my Essence. They did it for two or three power cycles, and then the next day, all was well. Then out of the blue after a few days, the same. Then after a few weeks, and then randomly... I couldn't tell if it is one or both speakers. Techs came to my home and ran diagnostics and found no issues, and finally after it happened again (I was determined to get it on video, I got a bit of it on video, but not the full effect), a Tech replaced something called a power or sound module, for both speakers, and the issue hasn't happened. The warranty repair was done recently and the speakers have been fine since, but each time I turn on the Essence, I prepare to hear the worst! LOL It's nerve racking! 

I wonder if we all had similar serial numbers / same run of speakers / PCBs. My dealer said he hadn't heard of this issue at all. It is so random and not reproducible / repeatable.

Wired or wirelessly connected? Could well be something in the DSP module used for the crossovers and driver tailoring, could be something in an amp module, but I'd put money on the DSP brains.

My behavior occurred wired, as they were always wired to the Essence.

Yes, mine are wired to the BS3000 as well...

Mine was wired with RCA to a MARANTZ reciever.

Interesting, all wired. I don't know the design of the modules in a BL20, but it's probably the same module/board, and since the thing has DSP and if I recall correctly A/D converters in it to digitize the PL inputs, functionally I'd bet either of those two functions. But I don't' know how they're implemented in hardware, but it sure sounds like a hardware issue or a firmware glitch. They are new enough B&O should definitely handle it for y'all, and please let us know what the solution is, I'm quite curious!

Jeff, when my issues began occurring, one of the diagnostic steps we did was to connect them via WISA and see if I could reproduce the problem. Unfortunately, the problem was so random, it never happened the few times I connected them via WISA to my BV11. We also attempted to use different outlets in my house, different surge protectors, etc. Completely random, so I wouldn't say that it wouldn't have happened via WISA as well perhaps it would have, but never did.

My experience is that 95% of the time it happened, it happened when the speakers initially turned on to play sound. Only a couple of times, did they turn on, begin to play music normally, and then after about a second, decide to bombard me with a horrifically loud digital mess of sound.

I know for a fact that boards were replaced in both of my speakers since I couldn't determine whether it was one or both which made the sounds (it was so loud). As I mentioned before the engineer termed the PCBs either a "sound module" or "power module." Knock on wood, they've not done it since that repair, though. Funny, though, when the speakers were returned to me, one speaker's woofer wasn't firing at all. Turned out another tech visit found that the connector to the woofer had come loose (likely during transport), so all that was left was to plug it in again. *phew*.

At a point I was thinking I had lemons for speakers. The pessimist in me is wondering whether the "issue" is still there in the hardware, only to rear its ugly head after the warranty period is over. That is to say: were the replacement boards the same as the faulty ones, only to misbehave after a certain amount of time due to poor design or something else. Ugh.

Can other owners of BL20s on BeoWorld share any peculiar behavior of their speakers? Later this afternoon, I'll attempt to post a link to the short clip I was finally able to take of the behavior, though it isn't representative of the majority of what happened. I'll explain in the post.

Interesting Sal, thanks for the further info! I know what you mean about worrying that this will recur. I've seen it where it was random boards, and where it was due to either a common design fault or common problem with the production process, where all boards from a certain time frame are potentially bad, and the real fix is to swap out every board with replacements that are known to be different and good. How a commercial company handles this is probably to replace the ones that fail under warranty, maybe with a potentially bad board, and hope for the best, until the unit is out of warranty. Depends on the company and how much they care about customer retention I guess. I worked primarily in the military world, where if there was a problem you absolutely had to fix every single system in the inventory. We actually did warranty our products for a prearranged period of time. Which at times led to going out and repairing a huge number of things that were already out in service or in storage depots!