Vantage Speaker - Hissing

New to this forum, and was happy to see the sticky about lifetime service.

I've got a pair of Vantages. Yesterday one of them started "hissing". In order to troubleshoot, I unplugged the power cord, and of course the hissing goes away, but what is interesting is that when I plug the power cord back in again, the blue light goes on and quickly goes off. I swapped speakers, left to right, to make sure that it was not my audio source, and strictly the speaker which I confirmed.

I assume there's some electronics that need to be replaced. I will be calling ML on Monday.

Is my situation commonplace for an almost 7 year old speaker?

On my Ascentis, the blue light will come on and then go off almost right away if the power cord is plugged in, so that alone is not an indicator of a problem. It's much more likely that you have a piece of dirt, hair, or bug causing a local HV leak. You should be able to find the dirt by listening carefully for the exact location of the hiss. Use some magnifiers and a soft brush to thoroughly vacuum the panel front and back.

Thanks, Tosh, for your suggestion. Unfortunately I've not been able to eliminate the hiss by vacuuming the panel. The hiss is throughout the panel. I'm leaning toward something with the electronics. As to the blue light, on my other speaker, the blue light remains on all the time that power is applied. On the speaker with the hiss, the blue light goes out immediately after applying power, but didn't behave this way prior to the hiss issue.

I'll be calling them in the AM.

Thanks,
Ron

If the hiss is coming from all over the panel, then that indicates a problem in the HV supply. Please keep us updated, and Good luck!
Have you been in touch with the Suncoast Audiophile Society? (several ML owners there)

I called ML service on Tuesday, and based upon my description, they concluded that the power supply needed replacing. The replacement power supply arrived on Saturday and yesterday, I followed the instructions they sent, to a T, and the hissing is gone.

The only negative is, that based upon my reading of a sticky, I misunderstood and thought that lifetime service on legacy products would cover the cost of the part, which it did not. With shipping, it cost $125, which is quite nominal in comparison to what I paid for these speakers. The important thing is that my speakers now perform as superbly as they did, before the problem surfaced.

So you have two good power supplies to compare against the hissing one, so you might be able to track down the fault?