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Tube Phonostage Causing Rumble and Noises

Hello, I am desperate in need for advices and help.

I have a Aesthetix I/O Eclipse (one power supply) that I acquired new in 2009. It started to make the SVS SB16 Ultra subwoofer rumble a few months ago. I sent it back to Aesthetix, they performed a bunch of upgrades and replaced 4 tubes in gain stage one claiming these would help with the noises. 

When I got it back three months later, the rumble got a bit better but it was still there. Then Aesthetix sent me a new set of tubes claiming there were specially selected and tested for low noise. However, they didn’t eliminate the rumble.

Then I played a record to during the test, the unthinkable happened. When the phonostage is idle, there was just rumble. As soon as a signal was passed from the phono, the sub went crazy, it produced some subsonic noise that made the room shake. I then connected the phono to a tube integrated amp and I heard a loud distorted noise through my LS 3/5A.

The strange thing is that I have no issues using the I/O with my Apogee Fullrange without the sub.

I would appreciate any shape or form of advice/help.

Thanks in advance and Happy New Year!

agharion
yoyoyaya's avatar
yoyoyaya
749 posts
 

@davetheoilguy - the Frog is relatively high compliance for a moving coil and favours arm's on the lower end of effective mass range, so if there is a problem, it's more likely to be in matching of the arm and cartridge than the cartridge per se.

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

The phono stage is fine. It sounds like the subwoofer is way too sensitive. I would disconnect the sub and any crossovers and see how things run. Remember, records always produce a little rumble. If all is back to normal you have a subwoofer problem, if not than you will have to start eliminating units one at a time. Other sources do not produce a lot of very low frequency garbage like a record does and may not excite the problem. 

davetheoilguy
146 posts
 

@yoyoyaya 

The 3D printed tonearm is one of the Van den Hul recommended tone arms for the Frog Gold and vice versa.  In fact, they market together.  The mass of the 12 inch dual pivot is 12.5g.  They sound wonderful together.

Also note that the problem (as stated above) reproduced with the cartridge on the Esoteric Grandioso with its TA-9D tonearm which is a radically different design.

And there is no fault invovled, except the odd acoustics of my room and my tendency to listen at high volume.  I suspect any sensitive cartridge would have had feedback.

yoyoyaya's avatar
yoyoyaya
749 posts
 

Thanks Davetheoilguy. I thought from your post that the Frog was gone before the Esoteric arrived but of course the Esoteric arm is a different kettle of fish altogether. The Frog is a great cartridge - I owned one for ten years - replaced by a Crimson XGW Stradavarius.

mulveling's avatar
mulveling
1,902 posts
 

And there is no fault invovled, except the odd acoustics of my room and my tendency to listen at high volume. I suspect any sensitive cartridge would have had feedback.

I’m a very loud listener too. The various problems with feedback and phono stage noise become exponentially worse as we raise volume. It’s vinyl playback on "hard" mode (extra hard if you also use a sub), but worth it. The KAB filter is the easy fix (but not perfect) if you don't feel like doing too much experimentation. 

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