Imagine you are really getting into a great action movie, the spaceship lands, and all of a sudden, you hear this terrible buzzing or rattling sound coming from somewhere in your room. The effect of the movie has just been totally ruined.
Finding the source of the noise or rattle in your room can be much more difficult than you think. It is usually a light fixture, cabinet door, or HVAC vent that only makes a noise at a very specific frequency.
If you can locate where the noise is coming from, a material called “Blue Tack” is great for fixing the problem. For HVAC vents or recessed can lighting fixtures, you can normally just apply it to the backside where it touches the ceiling. This will hold the piece solid and usually eliminate the buzz. A cabinet door making noise might require a similar tactic, but using a rubber cabinet bumper.
The catch is finding where the rattles are coming from! To help you out, we created a video with a frequency sweep in the area that normally causes things to rattle
Before you start, set your volume at a low level, then turn it up slowly as playing steady test tones like this loudly could be damaging to your speakers. This test will work the best if you put your home theater receiver or processor in “all channel stereo”. This is a mode that sends the same signal to every speaker in your system. Some systems call it all-channel music or party mode.
If you have heard rattles before, at some point in the sweep, you will hear them again. Make a note of the frequency on the screen, then go to the end of the video where we have longer sequences of most of the frequencies. You might have to get on a ladder to find a buzzing ceiling fixture, and for some of us, it is just quicker to put the Blue Tack cure on all the vents in the ceiling than trying to figure out the culprit.
After you are done, make sure you put your home theater receiver or processor back in your normal surround sound mode and give yourself a pat on the back as you can now watch that spaceship land and not jump up thinking you have a blown speaker!