Is a dimmer noisy when it's turned OFF?

Tonywinsc,

Tmsorosk expressly asserted that dimmers do not make noise even when on. See the post two above mine. The following poster seemed to agree. Sorry if it wasn't clear that I was responding to those comments.

I concur that (IME) dimmers do not make noise when turned off.

You guys are great. I will tell my wife that having a dimmer in the dining room is a BIG compromise but I am willing to make it. :-)

Tim (Tmsorosk) and Pops, in addition to verifying that your dimmers produce no audible noise through your systems (as you have done), you may also want to compare sonics between the situations where the dimmers are dimming say 50% or thereabouts, and when they are switched off.

See pages 36 and 37 of this paper by Bill Whitlock of Jensen Transformers, in which it is indicated that many commonly used dimmers generate "very strong" power line harmonics up to 70 kHz. It therefore seems conceivable that sonic effects may result from intermodulation of those harmonics with the audio signal, which would manifest as low level distortion rather than noise.

I can't cite relevant experience, though, as I have no dimmers in my house.

Regards,
-- Al

Good recommendation Al, I have Lutron Maestro dimmers and do listen with them dimmed most of the time....maybe I have tin ears, LOL, but I do not hear any difference from all the way up, dimmed, or off.

...then there are dimmers that don't make noise (that you can hear), but kind of pixilate (make fuzzy) the sound of my system....actually, its the ceiling fan that does that. I searched many hours to find out what was wrong to find the problem.