Help with hiss


Hello Friends,

My speakers have developed an audible hiss that I am trying to chase down. The hiss can be heard from across the room and while music is being played. Sometimes, the hiss is pulsating and sometimes constant. It occurs at all hours, perhaps less so in the early morning. Sometimes there is no hiss at all and everything is silent. It is an intermittent issue that is unpredictable.

My speakers are powered by mono block amplifiers. Both speakers exhibit the exact same behavior. The monos are plugged directly into the wall outlet. I also plugged them into a PS Audio AV Power Center with no relief. I changed power cords with no relief. No other piece of gear is on, although all are plugged in and some are in standby. I turned one mono off of course stopping the hiss in that speaker. The other continued to hiss. In reverse, same result.

This is not a “hum” (like from a ground loop). It is the same hiss that you can hear with your ear next to the tweeter but much louder.

I’m happy to answer any questions at all to help me resolve this. Thank you in advance.

 

forestg

Showing 1 response by panzrwagn

Hiss is random noise generated by active electronic components. It is not induced nor due to grounding issues like a 60Hz hum. Nor is it impacted by cables, AC power or external electrical components. Are you familiar with ’gain staging’? Basically, your amps are running at max gain and your preamp isn’t required to run at a level very far above its noise floor. Solution: Reduce the input sensitivity on your monoblocks and drive your preamp harder.

As well if you are using a low-gain MC phono cart the signal to noise ratio of the MC preamp may be 10-20 dB noisier than a MM input. You can check this by switching to an unused line input, and if the hiss drops, that’s the contributor. The solution is the same - gain stage your preamp and monoblocks, and now your MC preamp as well, to raise the signal (variable) to noise (fixed) ratio.

Gain staging is a basic survival skill in live sound and recording studios, (it was one of the first things I was taught, along with grounding theory) but is rarely mentioned in HiFi. Here’s are two good good tutorials: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/gain-staging-what-it-is-and-how-to-do-it.html

From Sweetwater Music: https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/gain-staging/