What's that noise?


I am running a Plinius Tautoro into a Plinius SA103 amp. When I turn the volume to maximum with no input, I can hear low level white noise from the tweeter and a similar but more "jagged" sounding white noise from the mid range driver. I am running the system on a standard household circuit (including outlet) through a Furman Elite 15PFi. What might be the source of this noise? It does not sound like 60 cycle hum.
falconquest

Showing 1 response by almarg

I agree with the others that it's nothing to be concerned about.  The cause could be what George suggested, or it could be the inherent self-generated noise of the input stage of the preamp amplified by everything that follows (any electronic circuit inherently generates a non-zero amount of noise), or it could be noise introduced into the preamp as a result of a ground loop between it and the source component (ground loops can cause high frequency noise as well as low frequency hum).  Or it could be a combination of some or all of these things. 

Contributing factors are undoubtedly that your speakers are more sensitive than average, and the gains of your preamp and power amp are a bit more than average. 

Regards,
-- Al