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Hiss not Hum help

Hi all,

I have been on my "audiophile"  journey for several years and my main goal is to reach great instrumental separation and clear voice with a wide soundstage.

I mixed and matched many brands such as Anthem, Onkyo, Parasound, Emotiva, Furman, APC, Audioquest, Kimber Cable, Oppo, Ifi, and even DIY, and in general, liked the sound of the latest system, however, there is a hiss coming out of any tweeter, and overall for music is fine since I am 10 feet away from my front towers but If I turn on the Home theater the aggregation of all speaker makes the hiss unbearable.

My attempts to solve the "problem"  include replacing receivers and preamps like switching from Onkyo to Oppo network streamer and recently to Anthem AVM60, and also from RCA to XLR cables, which I used basic cheap RCA, to AudioQuest Red, Acoustic Research Master series, and currently Mogami Gold, cables and cable type made no difference.

On the power line, I started with a regular cyber power AC filter, moved to an APC H15 AC filter, then a Furman Elite PF15, and also tried an Emotiva CMX2 and an Ifi AC purifier, all of this made little to no difference.

Does anyone here experience similar hissing, and has any budget suggestions to attempt to solve this issue?

thanks for everyone's help.
badgod86
erik_squires
16,123 posts
 
Sorry you have been on this merry go round without better help.  Sadly the only thing to do here is to find the source of the hiss, and for that we must work our way from your speakers backwards.

Can you describe your spepaker, amp and preamp and/or processors?
badgod86 OP
11 posts
 
I have two different outlets that are not connected, one has a Furman ac filter, the other has an APC H15.

From the Focal towers, it has KK PR8 cables, to Emotiva or Parasound Amplifiers, that are fed by the Furman, then Mogamy XLR to the Anthem AVM60 fed by the APC H15, on the Anthem I have CD player, Bluray player, Chromecast, and all that.

Changing the Amps, or the outlets does not help but I currently don't have multiple preamp and receivers available to test, but the hiss is noticeable only after a signal from the preamp is plugged into the amplifiers so either it comes from the wall or the preamplifier itself, but either I am super unlucky to get 3 or 4 different ones with some defect of something disturbs all the preamplifiers I had.
russ69's avatar
russ69
3,519 posts
 
Your system has too much gain in the chain. You can use attenuators to knock down the gain. Between amp and preamp, or from a noisy source. 
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