And is there any way the speaker cables could be causing the hum? Capacitance? Inductance? I have read where some speaker cable designs can cause problems for a power amp.Thanks for your comment, Jim. You may be thinking of the fact that a few speaker cable types having ultra-high capacitance have been known to cause some amplifiers to oscillate, with destructive results in some cases. Goertz and the old Polk Cobra cables, for example, at least if they are used without a Zobel network connected at the output of the amp. The reason for the ultra-high capacitance in those cases being that it is a side-effect of their approach to achieving ultra-low inductance.
Such an oscillation would most likely be at a much higher frequency than is the case here, though, and would typically occur with an amp having low output impedance, considerable amounts of feedback, and particularly wide bandwidth. None of those characteristics apply to Michael’s VAC Renaissance 30/30, and in general are most likely to occur with solid state amps.
Best regards,
-- Al