Ditto “too much gain” does produce
white noise hiss
Good luck Willy-T
Anyone who owns a Technics SU-R1000, can you answer a quick question
I’ve been getting familiar with the new SU-R1000 for the past couple of weeks and I’m thrilled with it so far. Selling all my other gear, sounds amazing, couldn’t be happier and all that jazz.
But I am wondering if anyone here who owns one can answer a question about the phono preamp noise floor?
Stereophile measurements appear to be impeccable, but I hear a definite noise floor in the phono pre, even when the source is turned off. It is a hiss that is inaudible until the unit is turned up much beyond 40 on the volume knob.
I have swapped out my Pure Fidelity table with my Technics SL-1200, optimized both cartridges, and both have the sound. When the amp is muted it mutes the sound.
It is not audible on any of the other inputs.
So if anyone else has this preamp - could it be mine has a defective phono pre input, or is it just a higher noise floor?
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@designsfx yes, I did do the calibration and the effects are definitely audible so that’s working. The noise floor is there regardless of whether I engage the calibration DSP or not, but after working through the weekend on this, I think it’s just that the gain is so low on this input that I’m having to turn it up to where the noise floor is audible. The sound overall is exceptional but it’s so much quieter than my Line 1 or USB inputs, there is like a 10dB difference between streaming and the phono pre. Technics’ lack of customer support was a concern when I bought this thing and now I’m thinking I’ll have to give them a shot regardless. My hope was that there are other SU-R1000 owners on Audiogon that can verify their experiences with the unit. If there’s something that is wrong with the phono pre input on the unit that would suck. I did test this with my MM Ortofon Blue cart on my SL1200MK2 (also calibrated with the LP) and the gain was also quite low in this case. In both cases I had the "MM" or "MC" set properly. There is a way to add 3dB of gain to the phono pre input but that defeats the calibration setting/optimization. |
For those of you in the future who may be looking for an answer on this issue (low gain after calibrating the SU-R1000 phono EQ), this was a combination of poor manual instructions and user error. Apparently if you are using a LOMC you must set the +3dB gain to “on” before running the calibration. If you calibrate and THEN try to turn the gain on, it defeats the calibration settings. I did go back and set the gain to +3dB, and turned the volume on the amp way down before re-calibrating with the LP and the phono pre and line level inputs are MUCH closer. Plus if I want them to be practically matching there is a setting to attenuate the Line In inputs to get them almost level. This was very helpful when trying to compare the phono pre in (vinyl), my NDX2 DAC (line in), and the internal DAC (USB in), getting the levels between inputs much closer and eliminating the noise floor on the phono pre input. |
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