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Electrical buzzing sound, or else I'm imagining it

For about a year now I've either had an intermittent problem or an intermittent psychosis, and it's turning out to be really difficult to tell which one it is:

The sound from my system is often dry, reedy, really unpleasant -- even my girlfriend can hear it -- and the problem seems to be of an electrical nature. There's a sort of a buzzing noise through the upper midrange and low treble -- sort of the audio equivalent of those little trickles we used to see on the television when dad was running the electric carving knife in the next room.

If I experiment with different connections (interconnects, power cables, etc.) I can sometimes -- but not always -- make the sound come booming in, perfect, so there's no possibility at this point that what I'm hearing is speaker damage. The trouble is that the bad sound doesn't always go away when I do this little disconnection routine (I've tried every configuration, scientifically), and it always comes back, no matter what I've swapped.

One other symptom that might be interesting: when I get really lazy in my detective work and start connecting speakers to an already powered-up amp and preamp, I can hear a whisper of cloudy-sounding static, almost like the sound your ear would make if it was full of water. I know a person should never hook speakers to powered-up equipment, but in the past when I've done this incredibly stupid thing I haven't heard any such crackle.

It's not the source because it happens on different sources, and it's not any of the cables because I've switched them all out at least once. It's not RF pollution because I've treated the whole system extensively and, besides, it's in the wrong frequency band.

The mains in my house are NOT grounded, so at this point I'm thinking that it's a buildup of fault energy in the amp or preamp, but why would that affect the sound intermittently, and why only in this very peculiar, difficult-to-pin-down sort of way? Could a "bad cap" be the culprit? Any ideas are appreciated. I don't *think* I'm delusional, because non-audiophile friends can hear the difference, but on the other hand this problem has spanned several configurations of gear.
dog_or_man
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,313 posts
 
I second everything Jea48 has to say.

I would put not just switching off but *unplugging* everything close to the top of your list (off sometimes isn't really off). The next time it happens, have someone stay near the system listening, while you work round the house unplugging everything (everything--even the fridge). If the buzz suddenly goes away, they can shout out and you can figure out what was injecting nasties into the electrical.

Another thought. There are inexpensive electrical testers (looks like a 3-prong plug with several lights on it) that you can go round plugging into all your outlets. The lights light up in a certain way if all is well, and light up in other ways to indicate a variety of faults.

Good luck.
dog_or_man OP
68 posts
 
UPDATE:

Last night I went to a friend's house with all of my stuff. The friend's house is relatively new construction in a quiet suburb, far from urban multipaths and overhead wires, and his listening room is carpeted and plushly furnished and big. We dutifully plugged everything in, powered up, dropped in the first disc and....

....and it sounded exactly the same. Terrible.

This experience would seem to suggest that my problem isn't RF pollution or lousy AC main power, or for that matter room acoustics. We experimented a while, at some indeterminate point trying some of his Acoustic Research interconnects, at which point the kind of musuc that the system should be making all the time came roaring in without a hint of buzz or rattle -- as if I'd just bought replacements for everything and put it all together right next to my own rig.

I suppose it's possible that the whole thing will be fixed from this day forward, simply because his cables are more forgiving than mine. Much more likely, it seems to me, is that the problem has something to do with the act of making and breaking the connections. Either there's some sort of fault energy building up in my rig and it's somehow being dissipated by the act of breaking and reestablishing the connections, or there's a cracked connection inside one of the pieces of equipment, or there's some trouble with the terminations on some of my cabling (which is all essentially brand-new, so I want to think this last possibility isn't it).

Any further thoughts, based on this experiment, would be greatly appreciated. My friend bought me two pair of these AR interconnects, on the spot, but I'd be lying if I said that I thought the magic bullet had been uncovered for a total outlay of twenty-four bucks.
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,313 posts
 
Sounds like you need to go through your system, one component/interconnect at a time, swapping one piece out and substituting something else and noting the results. Laborious and time-consuming but might get you closer to the cause of the problem. Process of elimination. It does sound as if there might be a loose or partially shorting connection somewhere, either in an interconnect termination or at/behind one of the jacks on one of the components.
dog_or_man OP
68 posts
 
Getting closer!

I just tried this exact sequence, and it worked:

1) I stopped the CD player but did not power off

2) I shut the preamp and power amp off (preamp into "standby")

3) I disconnected the speaker cables at the speakers

4) I disconnected the CD-player from A/C power, and re-established

5) I disconnected CD-player ic's at the CD-player end, and re-established

6) I powered on the preamp and the power amp (with no speaker connections)

7) I reconnected the speakers

I Pushed "play"... and everything was PERFECT.

....So what does everyone think, now?
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,313 posts
 
Hmmm. More technical-minded Audiogoners out there will be able to explain exactly why, but it can be dangerous both powering up your amp without speakers attached, and even more so connecting the speaker cables to your amp while it's powered up.

Your latest experiment is definitely interesting, but I'm not sure how much it narrows down the possibilities. IMHO, it demonstrates that:

(A) there is--as I think you suspect--some system synergy that is causing the crappy sound. Something like the build-up of a static charge or some such, which gets dissipated when you break connections and turn components off.

...or...

(B) there is--as I suggested before--some kind of partial or intermittent short, poor connection or something similar, in one of the cables or one of the components. As you suggested in a previous post, the mere act of connecting or disconnecting an IC to a RCA jack can change things, physically moving wires or solder joints and hence temporarily "curing" the problem. I once had an expensive pair of Acrotek 6 nines copper interconnect which if dressed in a certain way wouldn't pass any signal at all, and if dressed three inches in another direction worked just fine.

By the way, did you use your own original cables for this last experiment or the new ones?
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