Hello All,
I am battling with a small but weird issue with my Solupeak S1 RCA switch box and I am wondering if anyone out there might have any tips on fixing it. As tube amps often have few inputs, I thought others in the forum might have some experience with these. It seems well made and the reviews were generally very positive.
I have recently completed a Tubelab SPP build (with much help from Steve Morley). I built a two input amplifier,although I have five audio sources. (No TV/home theatre stuff.) I connected my turntable on one input - no hum at all. For the other input, I decided to splurge on a four channel Solupeak S1 to enable easy switching. Channels 1 & 2 are dead quiet, but when I switch to Channel 3 I get a slight low hum and on Channel 4 a louder low hum. The volume of the hum does increase when I turn up the amp volume, although it seems clear the amp is not the problem. Oddly (to me), the hum persists even if I remove the RCA cables from the humming channels. Channel 4 is being used for an AUX input for cell phones with a 3.5 mm male jack. Plugging in a turned-on cell phone seems to eliminate the hum. If the cell phone is off when plugged in the hum persists. My wife, who has better hearing than I do, cannot detect any hum on Channel 3 when the tuner hooked to it is turned on, although it is obvious when the tuner is off and Channel 3 is selected. All very odd, and perhaps not worth worrying about, but the switch was pretty expensive...
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much,
Andrew
I am battling with a small but weird issue with my Solupeak S1 RCA switch box and I am wondering if anyone out there might have any tips on fixing it. As tube amps often have few inputs, I thought others in the forum might have some experience with these. It seems well made and the reviews were generally very positive.
I have recently completed a Tubelab SPP build (with much help from Steve Morley). I built a two input amplifier,although I have five audio sources. (No TV/home theatre stuff.) I connected my turntable on one input - no hum at all. For the other input, I decided to splurge on a four channel Solupeak S1 to enable easy switching. Channels 1 & 2 are dead quiet, but when I switch to Channel 3 I get a slight low hum and on Channel 4 a louder low hum. The volume of the hum does increase when I turn up the amp volume, although it seems clear the amp is not the problem. Oddly (to me), the hum persists even if I remove the RCA cables from the humming channels. Channel 4 is being used for an AUX input for cell phones with a 3.5 mm male jack. Plugging in a turned-on cell phone seems to eliminate the hum. If the cell phone is off when plugged in the hum persists. My wife, who has better hearing than I do, cannot detect any hum on Channel 3 when the tuner hooked to it is turned on, although it is obvious when the tuner is off and Channel 3 is selected. All very odd, and perhaps not worth worrying about, but the switch was pretty expensive...
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much,
Andrew
High impedance inputs will pick up hums and buzzes from the electrically noisy world we live in. If connected to a low impedance source, these stray fields are largely shorted out. Most low impedance sources stop being such low impedance when turned off. Is this consistent with what you're seeing?
All good fortune,
Chris
All good fortune,
Chris
Thanks for your reply, Chris. I think this is consistent with my observations. The hum seems to disappear when a signal travels through the number three and four inputs. It seems odd that this wouldn't happen for the one and two inputs, though. I contacted the seller and they recommended a ground loop isolator, but that doesn't seem to be the issue.