Reply to Mixer troubles..

Hey so those of you who may have read my last post about me having trouble recording, this is kind of related..

I noticed today that when recording i was using an on board effect on my mixer (manual filter..) and for like a tiny split second my meters shot up and there was a loud clicking/popping noise.

I tried to keep this in mind when listening to my playback and I'm fairly certain this is the position where my recording got ruined and began to be heavily distorted (it stayed distorted for the rest of the mix).

I suppose my question is, what is this? I've noticed it before, and it seems to be on effects that I don't use as much as others. I bought the mixer new from the factory so could it be a default? Or routing issue (bad cables maybe?).

The only other thing I can believe of is that it's actually got a asian AC cord so I use an adaptor - I believe it's pretty shitty too it's an old one I used for a phone charger. Can electrical interruption cause this type of behaviour?

Any ideas would be swell.