Hum and buzz - they are totally screwing up your sound. - kurt s

Tube DIY Asylum

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Hum and buzz - they are totally screwing up your sound.

Some engineers who know I play around with tube amps like to make fun of me a little and tell me "oh, don't you just like all that hum and buzz?"
Well, I'll tell you something about that. No.
Since I got my mu metal shield I do not hear any significant hum or buzz out of the system at the maximum gain levels. This system goes from a low output MC cartridge to a pair of 110 dB sensitive horns with only four triodes in each channel's signal path. I have to contend with low noise design from the low output MC cartridge levels and low noise from the low output 45 SET's own emissions going into very sensitive speakers. And yet with tube amps it's still possible to eliminate all these hums and buzzes in this situation and shield well from RF interference. It's not the 1950's still and we're not using old guitar amps.
Anyway, I thought it was sufficiently quiet before to enjoy good sound. But after it was exceptionally quiet on the front end with mu metal shielding, I am noticing a big increase in those minute details in the background. The proverbial black background comes to mind. And yet there is no real substantial noise decrease to my ears without playing music at normal listening levels. But there's just more detail in the soundstage, tighter imaging, etc, without the RF interference and hum and buzz that was being picked up before.
So I say even if it sounds acceptable with the music playing and the hum doesn't seem to matter much, I think you might be surprised what a truly clean background can do. Of course, you may have to stay away from 60 Hz on the DHT's. I use 30 KHz, and while this is a form of RFI, it doesn't seem to destroy the black backgrounds. I use a "distorted sinewave" for a 30 KHz filament supply, not a hard squarewave. Maybe that helps.
People were talking about RFI problems we have today on our equipment in bad listening rooms, and I think I heard an example of how cleaning that up does indeed help a lot for the high resolution systems.
Kurt

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Topic - Hum and buzz - they are totally screwing up your sound. - kurt s 21:08:00 01/20/07 (7)

Re: Hum and buzz - they are totally screwing up your sound. - arend-jan 02:57:51 01/21/07 (6)

Re: Hum and buzz - they are totally screwing up your sound. - kurt s 20:54:05 01/21/07 (3)

Actually, isn't 30 KHz a tad low? - arend-jan 02:51:23 01/24/07 (1)

No. - kurt s 14:32:32 01/24/07 (0)

Re: Hum and buzz - they are totally screwing up your sound. - arend-jan 05:35:11 01/23/07 (0)

Ultrasonic Filaments - Triode_Kingdom 19:04:54 01/21/07 (1)

To minimize the possibility that certain sources might create... - Allen Wright 06:12:31 01/22/07 (0)

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