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Static noise from speakers

Hello,

Getting what sounds like static noise from my speakers. The weird thing about it is this happens when I am not playing any music with the volume turned just about all the way down. Problem comes and goes, minutes can go by between interval in which this noise occurs. Noise last for a few seconds and the noise level varies. Problem appears to occur once in a while when I play music, but not any where near as often.

Any help would be much appreciated.
sympaticonorm
ryder
1,745 posts
 
Reubent's advice on isolation of each component is spot-on. If static noise is still prevalent I would suggest swapping your source ie. CD player. I have encountered this intermittent static noise from one channel previously and suspected everything from the tube preamp to the power supply. In the end it turns out that the CD player has some bad capacitors that are causing the hissing/crackling noise. You might want to keep that in mind. The funny thing is the static noise will not happen if I leave my CD player switched on 24 hours a day. Since that day I have never switched off the CD player until today.
reubent
7,080 posts
 
Ryder makes a good point and it is something you should determine before chasing after a tube.

If you cross over the interconnects between pre-amp and amp, and the problem moves to the other speaker the issue could be in either the pre-amp or source component. To isolate further, cross over the cables between the source (cd player?) and pre-amp. If the problem moves again, the noise is coming from the source component, not the pre-amp.

Of course, if you have multiple sources and you've heard the problem using different sources, you can skip that step.

Enjoy,

TIC
sympaticonorm OP
103 posts
 
This morning I swapped interconnects at the preamp and heard some static noise on the right channel. I thought, good so it has to be a preamp tube issue. But, a few second later I also hear static noise on the left channel and then later the noise was more prominent on the left channel. Basically, I think that the problem is the same, I probably had not noticed the static noise in the right channel since it is so faint and only occasionally occurs. I guess this points me to an amp tube problem. The problem occurs with any source hooked-up.

Thanks for all your help and please let me know if you have any more troubleshooting tips to share.
reubent
7,080 posts
 
Sounds like its time to start swapping tubes in the amp.

TIC
sympaticonorm OP
103 posts
 
Reubent,

Yes, I will swap tubes but I am so surprised to see that system still sounds so good....even with tubes on the way out.

Not sure, but I guess that I could also have tubes tested at an audio store instead of swapping. Maybe this could better determine whether I need to change only one or two tubes versus all the tubes.

THx,
NJT
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