Speaker hiss from power amp
@ RWATSON, The reason for balanced cables are many, long runs no signal loss, rejecting EMI, EMF, stopping ground looping, and many more. That is why all good amps used them like your amp, pro amps, military amps, hospital amps. Or any engineer looking for the ultimate transfer function connection. Hope that helps... .. |
Rwatson, a few more comments. BTW, welcome to the "Gon. As you stated, the hiss is not audible from your listening chair, so I would not worry about it. Putting your ear close to the power amplifier, it is quite common to hear the transformer. A recent thread on " Tech Talk " here, about transformer hum, might be a good read for you. Replacing your speakers will be entirely up to what you like, and being a musician, just read up on manufacturer product descriptions, product reviews, both from professionals and consumers, and listen to stuff, if at all possible ( which can be difficult during the virus ). Always keep your room, a major part of the equation, as both size, and the acoustics, matter. Speakers that are more sensitive ( efficient, playing louder with the same power applied), will likely show a higher hiss level, just as an fyi. I am a little confused about your statement, relating to the Parasound, and the 5 amps, available from the wall, which is quite inadequate. and abnormal. As cleeds indicated, the term " gain ", and mc, with " signal to noise ratio ", is quite a lot, of what connecting this audio stuff, is all about. Lots of articles abound, about these subjects. Enjoy ! and stay safe...everyone. |
Att rwatson OP cleeds I’m pretty sure that your amp is a true balanced ("differential") amplifier, so you will get 6dB more gain using the balanced connections than you will from unbalanced.Levinson 532H it’s +0.4db difference in favor of the RCA!!!. What "could" be is that the balanced input is a balanced summing opamp feeding the single ended discrete input circuit. If so less noise and better sound if you go direct with rca, as this cuts out that balanced opamp with it’s added noise. Stereophile measured Levinson 532H . Or it could be the same but to do with the dac, it’s se output is one less opamp compared to it’s bal output. PS Here’s the answer, similar to what cleeds said but from the dac not the poweramp. The Levinson’s 390S DAC maximum output level was 2.18V from the unbalanced RCA jacks, this doubling to 4.36V from the balanced XLRs Cheers George |
Thanks, @mrdecibel, I really appreciate it! To clarify, I have a Parasound Max 5500 (actually, borrowed from a video set up in another room) that indicates (what I assume is) amps from the wall. Again, forgive my lack of knowledge regarding electronics, but I've often heard of dedicated 15A circuits, etc., for audio systems. Bottom line is that I don't have anything like that. Perhaps it's a non-issue, or perhaps I need to have an electrician come in. It sounds like you're saying the latter might be advisable? Regarding speakers, I am really just looking for some initial manufacturer suggestions since synergy is another thing that is often discussed on this forum and I'm sure there are speakers which are particularly well suited to the Levinson gear. It might be best to start another thread so we don't drift too far off topic. But, for what it's worth, I really only listen to vocal and instrumental jazz and classical music. I'm sure there are many modern speakers that are far more accurate and better sounding than what I've been using. Piano, small instrumental and vocal ensemble music sound quite nice to me on the B&Ws and I can definitely tell which recordings are not particularly well mixed. One area where I'm sure there's a lot of room for improvement, however, is in detail and dynamic range with big band and large orchestral recordings. Stay safe (and sane) as well! |
