what are you listening to?

NeverSatisfied

Chief Journeyman
Joined
Nov 3, 2021
Messages
916
Location
Houston Texas
Tagline
Play the Game, don’t be the Game
Well……sometimes better isn’t always better.
So today I decided to swap out my all Rotel front end for my Acurus R11 and Acurus P10 phono preamp’s. This feeds my Infinity IRS Beta’s via a pair of Rotel RB 991’s for a total of 800 watts into 8 ohms ( actually 1600 watts since these speakers are 4 ohms nominal).
Anyway, I also swapped out the Rotel CD player with my spare Sony SACD player and left the Rotel FM tuner.
I had tested the Acurus preamps in my shop system and was very pleased with their performance, especially the phono preamp.
After getting everything swapped, which meant adjusting the shelves and swapping several interconnects around I finally got it all up and running.
Guess what….everything sounds fantastic except I now have a slight but noticeable 60 hz hum from the P10 that increases with volume….fuuck
No hum when in the shop system and all the other inputs are dead silent.
Ideas ???

Had to throw up a couple pics for Glen…..yes I actually do use a laser to get everything aligned back up…lol
B350693E-66F5-4CC8-9B99-525B7644105A.jpeg 572BD23C-EEC8-4EF3-82C1-754D923E738F.jpeg 8AD1F6DC-1DD2-40E6-8405-FE38DE21A830.jpeg
 

WOPL Sniffer

Veteran and General Yakker
Joined
Aug 10, 2015
Messages
11,522
Location
Minnie-Soda
Tagline
Screw it
Well……sometimes better isn’t always better.
So today I decided to swap out my all Rotel front end for my Acurus R11 and Acurus P10 phono preamp’s. This feeds my Infinity IRS Beta’s via a pair of Rotel RB 991’s for a total of 800 watts into 8 ohms ( actually 1600 watts since these speakers are 4 ohms nominal).
Anyway, I also swapped out the Rotel CD player with my spare Sony SACD player and left the Rotel FM tuner.
I had tested the Acurus preamps in my shop system and was very pleased with their performance, especially the phono preamp.
After getting everything swapped, which meant adjusting the shelves and swapping several interconnects around I finally got it all up and running.
Guess what….everything sounds fantastic except I now have a slight but noticeable 60 hz hum from the P10 that increases with volume….fuuck
No hum when in the shop system and all the other inputs are dead silent.
Ideas ???

Had to throw up a couple pics for Glen…..yes I actually do use a laser to get everything aligned back up…lol
View attachment 72641 View attachment 72643 View attachment 72646

When reconfiguring your system, start with the bare minimum and bring in the new stuff one piece at a time. I'm surprised you didn't get one of the Rotel Phono preamps, I found a beautiful one, a RQ-970BX, and there was a thread on another site for upgrading it. I've done a few of them and they are dead quiet. Even though the chineeze bought Rotel, they used very good quality components. Try the phono pre that you pulled out and check your hum. I didn't have luck with a couple other phono pre's I was given and one hummed (less hum with the external ground attached but still hummed) so I gave it the boot. Could be a number of things including cables, speaker wires (get out the chopstix), and as I mentioned before, kill the lights to see if one of the components doesn't like the lighting. Time to back up and spend the time. I even had a set of speakers that caused the hum. They didn't like to play well with others so I moved them to my shop for mules. I chased that hum for a week till I tried another set of speakers. Could have been the internal wiring or the crossovers. I used million dollar cables but that don't do squat when the internal speaker wiring was crappy old 1970's Oxygen Full wires. I run a bare bones system so it makes finding quirks easier. I got rid of my Reel to Reels (except for the Tandberg going through rework), my cassette deck, CD player.... I don't need all the fluff. Good luck.
 

gene french

Veteran and General Yakker
Joined
Mar 6, 2022
Messages
5,556
Location
guayabo de bagaces, guanacaste, costa rica....
Tagline
music...the healer of souls...
Well……sometimes better isn’t always better.
So today I decided to swap out my all Rotel front end for my Acurus R11 and Acurus P10 phono preamp’s. This feeds my Infinity IRS Beta’s via a pair of Rotel RB 991’s for a total of 800 watts into 8 ohms ( actually 1600 watts since these speakers are 4 ohms nominal).
Anyway, I also swapped out the Rotel CD player with my spare Sony SACD player and left the Rotel FM tuner.
I had tested the Acurus preamps in my shop system and was very pleased with their performance, especially the phono preamp.
After getting everything swapped, which meant adjusting the shelves and swapping several interconnects around I finally got it all up and running.
Guess what….everything sounds fantastic except I now have a slight but noticeable 60 hz hum from the P10 that increases with volume….fuuck
No hum when in the shop system and all the other inputs are dead silent.
Ideas ???

Had to throw up a couple pics for Glen…..yes I actually do use a laser to get everything aligned back up…lol
View attachment 72641 View attachment 72643 View attachment 72646
what a beautiful setup!!!
congratulations!!!
 

NeverSatisfied

Chief Journeyman
Joined
Nov 3, 2021
Messages
916
Location
Houston Texas
Tagline
Play the Game, don’t be the Game
When reconfiguring your system, start with the bare minimum and bring in the new stuff one piece at a time. I'm surprised you didn't get one of the Rotel Phono preamps, I found a beautiful one, a RQ-970BX, and there was a thread on another site for upgrading it. I've done a few of them and they are dead quiet. Even though the chineeze bought Rotel, they used very good quality components. Try the phono pre that you pulled out and check your hum. I didn't have luck with a couple other phono pre's I was given and one hummed (less hum with the external ground attached but still hummed) so I gave it the boot. Could be a number of things including cables, speaker wires (get out the chopstix), and as I mentioned before, kill the lights to see if one of the components doesn't like the lighting. Time to back up and spend the time. I even had a set of speakers that caused the hum. They didn't like to play well with others so I moved them to my shop for mules. I chased that hum for a week till I tried another set of speakers. Could have been the internal wiring or the crossovers. I used million dollar cables but that don't do squat when the internal speaker wiring was crappy old 1970's Oxygen Full wires. I run a bare bones system so it makes finding quirks easier. I got rid of my Reel to Reels (except for the Tandberg going through rework), my cassette deck, CD player.... I don't need all the fluff. Good luck.
I did consider the Rotel phono but after getting the R11, the P10 came up for sale cheap and I figured why not.
It’s a pain but I will go back through everything and make sure all my interconnects are in the correct direction ( I only use directional cables with the ground shielding at the source). Funny thing is, even though I am running 4 systems with miles of wire, I have never had a hum problem before. I have even run all 4 systems at the same time and never had any cross talk or noise issues. I chalked that up to carefully routing my power cables to keep them away from signal cables and the use of the directional signal cables.
If I don’t find anything wrong with my hookups then I will try one of those 3 prong to 2 prong cheater plugs on the phono pre…. I don’t like doing it but that ended up being the only solution I could find for a friends system that had a similar problem.
Fingers crossed I get this sorted, not really in the mood to try a bunch of phono preamps.
 

NeverSatisfied

Chief Journeyman
Joined
Nov 3, 2021
Messages
916
Location
Houston Texas
Tagline
Play the Game, don’t be the Game
Supertramp ...famous last words

Playing on the Pioneer PL-70.

View attachment 72793

Nando.
Return To Sender Mix Tape

Playing on the Phase Linear Model 7000 Series Two cassette deck. An excellent recording to a BASF Reference Maxima TP II 90 without NR.

View attachment 72828

Nando.
Hey Nando, I just bought a non working PL7000 off the Bay. Cosmetics look great in the photos , we will see when it arrives. I will be reaching out to the collective when I try to get it running. It is the last piece of Series 2 gear I need to have a complete system from TT to speakers.
Funny part is I don’t own a single cassette tape and haven’t in two decades but even if it turns out to be an expensive piece of rack jewelry, I am ecstatic to finally have one.
 

Elite-ist

Administrator, (and straight-up pimp stick!)
Staff member
Joined
Jun 12, 2010
Messages
9,910
Hey Nando, I just bought a non working PL7000 off the Bay. Cosmetics look great in the photos , we will see when it arrives. I will be reaching out to the collective when I try to get it running. It is the last piece of Series 2 gear I need to have a complete system from TT to speakers.
Funny part is I don’t own a single cassette tape and haven’t in two decades but even if it turns out to be an expensive piece of rack jewelry, I am ecstatic to finally have one.
Spence: Nice...Glen is also thinking of getting one for his system, too. Won't be selling mine as it's as nice as it gets and it was serviced before I bought it. I had the old man (Bob Carver) autograph the owner's manual for me when he was last at Innovative Audio.

PL Deck001_zpsyaj8ihcr.jpg
DSC05253_zpshoca9xh2.jpg


Nando.
 
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