Pre / Power amp impedance mismatch?
Hissing sound coming from tweeters
Right now I'm experiencing a hissing noise coming from the tweeters on my Klipsch RF7II's, and can't figure out what is causing the noise. It's almost like a white noise that is there when the amplifiers are powered on and is not affected by changes in volume.
My system consists of an Oppo BDP-83 blu-ray player, Ayre K-5xe preamp, and two Emotiva UPA-1 mono blocks. My cables are Audioquest King Cobra and Audioquest Emeralds. I would greatly appreciate any help resolving this problem. The hissing sound is very annoying. Thanks.
My system consists of an Oppo BDP-83 blu-ray player, Ayre K-5xe preamp, and two Emotiva UPA-1 mono blocks. My cables are Audioquest King Cobra and Audioquest Emeralds. I would greatly appreciate any help resolving this problem. The hissing sound is very annoying. Thanks.
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The RCA cables were actually emitting a humming noise when I connected them in place of the XLR's. They have never done that before. I don't have any other amps to put in place of the monos. I know somone with McIntosh MC-501's mono blocks that are hooked up to Klipsch Chorus II, but they are too much work to bring over to my place. I wonder if any Mcintosh power amps would work well with the Ayre? The attenuators might be worth a try. I have never heard of them, but it sounds like they would reduce the hiss. Are there any ill effects from using the attenuators? |
Are there any ill effects from using the attenuators?A lot of people are happy with them, but there have been some reports of adverse effects on dynamics, etc. I suspect that they would do fine when driven from a component having very low output impedance, such as your Ayre preamp, and assuming that the input impedance of the amp does not vary significantly as a function of frequency (which I would expect to be the case). I wonder if any Mcintosh power amps would work well with the Ayre?The key thing is that you want an amp having significantly lower gain than your present amp. More often than not that will correlate with having a lower maximum power rating than your present amp. The MC501 is an exception, though, having greater power capability but significantly lower gain. See JA's measurements. The hum you are now hearing with rca's is most likely due to a ground loop problem, assuming that the interconnects are not running close to and in parallel with any power cords. I suspect that if you are hearing just hiss and not hum with the xlr's that the hiss is not being caused by ground loop issues, but you can verify that by using cheater plugs as DTC suggested. As I had indicated, xlr interfaces are inherently less susceptible to ground loop issues than rca interfaces, at least if they are well implemented. Regards, -- Al |
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