Crown Xti-2000 Hum


Just hooked up my Crown Xti-2000 to a Crown IC-150 pre-amp, and I have a lot of hum and some buzz. The IC-150 pre-amp outputs are going into a Bose 901 eq then into the Xti-2000 with an RCA to XLR cable. The hum is ridiculous. how do I solve this? I had and Onkyo M504 hooked up to the system just before I hooked up the Crown and there was no hum at all. Can I run the amp with nothing in the inputs just to see if it's the unbalanced leads going into a balanced inputs causing the problem?
tony3d
Well I hate to say.. I won’t say it, so I will just try to help.. #1 Fan driven power amps especially of the Pro variety have many power supply issues in home use, they hum, they POP very loud many times when turned on and off.. They hiss, and they do many things very hard to control.. Only crowns higher series like the K'series I think use like soft turn on and off relays etc.. They run dead silent and do not gain hum and ground problems due to the fan circuit stuck in the path pulling power and yes are fanless with some type of digital amp section that pulls less power and heat.

The only Way I have EVER heard a reduction on the hum with most Pro amps of this type are either using them on very low efficiency Subwoofer setups, but it still hums, only a little more acceptably, or by Using this convertor device in the second link below, which will cut it in half, but never totally eliminate all the noise that amp will create in the background… It is possible the ground Tie from the balanced is backwards in your wire, I believe #2 pin needs to be the Hot from your RCA, and the #3 and #1 Pins on the XLR must be tied to Ground of the RCA, check the Crown manual they should have a diagram, most do…. I have seen this occur with the Wire not being in correct phase and jumped to the right pins, but even if this is the case I still don't see it being completely eliminated. That is just my experience, as stated here a few times in this link…
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1165592328&openmine&zzUndertow&4&5#Undertow

Link for Rolls Below RCA to XLR , this also adjusts the voltage in and out, and you can turn down the line input to reduce hum, but might not have enough gain out of the amp in doing this… Again I have been on this path and was never completely succesful in bringing down a Fan cooled amp to an acceptable silence level in home use. Good luck

http://www.sandlpro.com/ItemView.cfm?INV_ID=259
Oh and by the way a Cheater plug at the wall in my case never did anything in or out of the system.. Hum still was exactly the same, so you can try
I found the ground loop problem! It was the cable box which goes into my 62" tv then the tv goes to my Crown IC-150. Pull those off the Crown and the buzz and hum are gone. I bought the Rolls he18 hum reducer and hooked it up between the tv out and Crown IC-150 and that took care of the hum in my system and doesn't effect the rest of the system. Sounds great plus I can't get the amp hot enough to run the fans. I'm very happy so far. I have no hum or buzz the am is very quite.