[Erwinatm]

Yesss, no issue with balanced, only single-ended!

Same with me. Single ended has Slightly hum at medium and high gain with Atrium. Solved with XLR balance.

 

[Palyodgree]

However, the key is did the first one make noise or not? If not, then it’s the amp.

On the other hand, it’s not unheard of for transformers to hum. My Audio Research amp did.

I’ll have my Mk2 on Friday I think, and I’ll post if it hums or not.

The person I can answer your question is Cayin. Send an email to them. I found their customer service to be excellent.

This was a highly regarded server what I thought had a faulty transformer you could hear from across the room,i supposed a number of factors I wasn’t even aware of were at play that added to degradation of my system . A similar issue with the member llamaluv hearing a radio station with noise when using single ended connection though switch to XLR and the problem seemingly goes away however in my case how much components degradation was robbed I wasn’t even aware of .
Power distribution components like Stromtank a pure sine wave inverter battery powered can power most components for hours at time is said to significantly drop the noise floor and improve overall performance like nothing else on the market , certainly nothing like a power conditioner or power regeneraters and what have you that plug into the wall can compete the dealer tells me . I would think would solve most electrical interference issues causing buzz and unwanted radio broadcast to be heard at worst too giving a system a jump in overall sound quality performance from what I’ve been told .
However pure sine wave inverters are a dime a dozen starting at a few hundred dollars with recharging battery, certain brands are interesting.

 

[bluenight]

Someone suggested cayin-ha-300 to me to be a perfect paring with HD800S. Do you agree?

Also how does it compare to other tube amps or SS amps? Is it worth the asking price? Is it TOTL like Niimbus amp?

It could drive other TOTL HP as well with great result? Just not a HD800S one trick pony? Maybe in future i decide to buy other HP

I have bought the Ferrum Oor + Hypsos but does not sound that good with HD800S imo. Dont want to make that mistake again?

I name drop other contenders ive been thinking about Woo audio WA2 or WA22. Feliks Euforia or 20th anniversary edition.

 

[Andykong]

Anyone with MK2 noticed the power supply transformer's hums, this is replacement unit I received and I don't recall the first unit having this noise?
When powering on, it will start out a little loud for a brief 2-3 seconds then settled down to steady hums that it audible standing 2ft. away.
I checked all the tubes making sure in sit nice and tight and also rearrange them to see if that would help alleviate the noise.

If you have tried two HA-300MK2 in the same installation, with the same source and power supply condition, and you have hum with one set, but no hum with another, then we safely assumed that the hum is related to the second HA-300MK2. However, we should perform some simple tests to minimize environmental implications before we certify the case. Can you move your current HA-300MK2 to another location in your house and setup up a simple system for testing purposes?

Preferably,

• The new location is connected to a different circuit breaker in your main electrical service panel.
• Use a simple analog source such as CD/Bluray player, DAP line out or 3.5mm phone out of your mobile phone/computer (with a 3.5mm to RCA cable)
• In all cases, please avoid any USB connection in your testing setup.
• With any headphone other than the HD820?

In other word, the new setup should be as different from your current setup as possible. We are not testing sound quality in exercise, we merely check if the hum will existed in a completely different setup. If fact, when you send the HA-300MK2 back to your dealer, they are going to test the unit in their system, which is also another completely different setup. It would be difficult to everyone if the unit didn't hum in your dealer's system, so please give it a try so that before you do anything drastic regarding your current HA-300MK2.

Initially was using it with an HD820 and the electrical background noises was excessive with all impedance settings. Notified tech support and was ship out a replacement unit.
The replacement unit still have the excessive electrical background noises with the HD820 and according to Andykong the HD820 was one of the headphone that were not tested with the MK2.
In hindsight there the original unit functions correctly and did not have the transformer hums. I'm now using it with the Susvara and there is not any detectable electrical background noises, just the power supply humming.

Yes, if you ask me again specifically, the answer is the same, we didn't test HD820 with HA-300 or HA-300MK2.

We used around 10 headphones in our development process, so if anyone asked a similar question, without another "popular" headphone, the answer will be similar: we didn't test your headphone in the development process. This is inevitable.

However, we use the original HD800 as one of the reference headphones in our development process. and we didn't encounter excessive electrical background noise with HD800. We use the 6.35mm headphone cable that comes with HD800, and a DIY XLR4 cable. We use a CD player as our analog source or iDAP-6+any DAC with a coaxial or AES digital connection.

I didn't recall your system configuration. Can you tell us more about your signal path? Do you use PC as your digital source and connect to your DAC in USB? Maybe you can check out the experience of some HA-6A users (HERE and HERE) who fight their noise problem and somehow traced the source of the noise to the PC. They managed to solve the noise problem of their ZMF headphones (also 300oh) with adding a USB signal cleaner/ground isolator. One user even traced the noise to GPU loads, so the debugging process can involve a lot of unexpected.

 

[pguimaraes]

Hey, guys, I have just installed speakers on my HA300 MKII. When switching from headphones to speakers, the sound completely moves to speakers and mute the headphones as expected, but if I switch back to headphones, the sound keeps playing on the speakers (lower level) and the headphones simultaneously. I was expecting to have sound either from headphones or from speakers at a time. Has anyone of you experienced that?

 

[dnd3241]

Someone suggested cayin-ha-300 to me to be a perfect paring with HD800S. Do you agree?

Also how does it compare to other tube amps or SS amps? Is it worth the asking price? Is it TOTL like Niimbus amp?

It could drive other TOTL HP as well with great result? Just not a HD800S one trick pony? Maybe in future i decide to buy other HP

I have bought the Ferrum Oor + Hypsos but does not sound that good with HD800S imo. Dont want to make that mistake again?

I name drop other contenders ive been thinking about Woo audio WA2 or WA22. Feliks Euforia or 20th anniversary edition.

Ferrum OOR good for planar HP, for the Dynamic I prefer Tube Amp

 

[Ysound]

If you have tried two HA-300MK2 in the same installation, with the same source and power supply condition, and you have hum with one set, but no hum with another, then we safely assumed that the hum is related to the second HA-300MK2. However, we should perform some simple tests to minimize environmental implications before we certify the case. Can you move your current HA-300MK2 to another location in your house and setup up a simple system for testing purposes?

Preferably,

• The new location is connected to a different circuit breaker in your main electrical service panel.
• Use a simple analog source such as CD/Bluray player, DAP line out or 3.5mm phone out of your mobile phone/computer (with a 3.5mm to RCA cable)
• In all cases, please avoid any USB connection in your testing setup.
• With any headphone other than the HD820?

In other word, the new setup should be as different from your current setup as possible. We are not testing sound quality in exercise, we merely check if the hum will existed in a completely different setup. If fact, when you send the HA-300MK2 back to your dealer, they are going to test the unit in their system, which is also another completely different setup. It would be difficult to everyone if the unit didn't hum in your dealer's system, so please give it a try so that before you do anything drastic regarding your current HA-300MK2.

I didn't recall your system configuration. Can you tell us more about your signal path? Do you use PC as your digital source and connect to your DAC in USB? Maybe you can check out the experience of some HA-6A users (HERE and HERE) who fight their noise problem and somehow traced the source of the noise to the PC. They managed to solve the noise problem of their ZMF headphones (also 300oh) with adding a USB signal cleaner/ground isolator. One user even traced the noise to GPU loads, so the debugging process can involve a lot of unexpected.

Plugging the unit in a different area of house the buzzing hums still there.
However, I discovered that powering on the power supply without the amp connected to it the buzzing hum disappear completely and the power supply is dead silent.
Also I noticed the right transformer on the amp run cooler then the left transformer.
My previous unit, both transformer were equally warm.

My set up is:
Aurender N30SA to Esoteric D1X DAC with USB, DAC to HA-300 MK2 with XLR. Everything is plugged into Synergistic PowerCell SX.

 

[ARCXENOS]

@Andykong I am wondering if Cayin has a roughly estimated rating on how many insertions can the tube sockets do before it gets loose?
I think I must have swapped tubes like 6 times a month on average, but I imagine that will add up eventually.


Also for anyone else interested, I recently got a pair of Ampata socket savers, and I must say, they are absolutely tough to remove your tubes from. Will definitely not recommend, I had to remove the saver to safely remove tubes without applying additional pressure on the actual amp's socket itself, which entirely defeats the purpose of using a tube saver in the first place. It felt like pulling something out of the jaws of a stray dog.

Maybe I had a bad pair, but definitely consider another brand if you are thinking of getting a passthrough, your precious tubes will thank you

 

[Erwinatm]

@Andykong I am wondering if Cayin has a roughly estimated rating on how many insertions can the tube sockets do before it gets loose?
I think I must have swapped tubes like 6 times a month on average, but I imagine that will add up eventually.


Also for anyone else interested, I recently got a pair of Ampata socket savers, and I must say, they are absolutely tough to remove your tubes from. Will definitely not recommend, I had to remove the saver to safely remove tubes without applying additional pressure on the actual amp's socket itself, which entirely defeats the purpose of using a tube saver in the first place. It felt like pulling something out of the jaws of a stray dog.

Maybe I had a bad pair, but definitely consider another brand if you are thinking of getting a passthrough, your precious tubes will thank you

That's a lot tube rolling activities you've done or will do my friend. Personnally, I try to avoid adding tube socket converter or anything that is unnecessary in the system. Keep the audio signal as short and simple as possible like the designer wants us to hear.

If it got loosen, just replace it and get a better one if possible.

 

[Palyodgree]

@Andykong I am wondering if Cayin has a roughly estimated rating on how many insertions can the tube sockets do before it gets loose?
I think I must have swapped tubes like 6 times a month on average, but I imagine that will add up eventually.


Also for anyone else interested, I recently got a pair of Ampata socket savers, and I must say, they are absolutely tough to remove your tubes from. Will definitely not recommend, I had to remove the saver to safely remove tubes without applying additional pressure on the actual amp's socket itself, which entirely defeats the purpose of using a tube saver in the first place. It felt like pulling something out of the jaws of a stray dog.

Maybe I had a bad pair, but definitely consider another brand if you are thinking of getting a passthrough, your precious tubes will thank you

Looking for that personal flavour of sound , in the past few months Ive borrowed seven or eight popular dacs including servers / streamers and I found exactly what I was looking for , Im still using the stock tubes in my 300 MK 1.

 

[wazzupi]

Looking for that personal flavour of sound , in the past few months Ive borrowed seven or eight popular dacs including servers / streamers and I found exactly what I was looking for , Im still using the stock tubes in my 300 MK 1.

what dac did you go with ?

 

[Palyodgree]

what dac did you go with ?

I found the Merason Dac 1 more to my liking at producing a little more realistic timbre especially with the human pitch, I had the Rockna WaveDream dac XLR model and Rockna WaveDream Net server i directly compared to my current front end I’m glad to be off the trend mill .

 

[wazzupi]

I found the Merason Dac 1 more to my liking at producing a little more realistic timbre especially with the human pitch, I had the Rockna WaveDream dac XLR model and Rockna WaveDream Net server i directly compared to my current front end I’m glad to be off the trend mill .

That’s one of the dacs I’ve been looking into too. Awesome to hear you good things.

 

[Palyodgree]

That’s one of the dacs I’ve been looking into too. Awesome to hear you good things.

One other thing I’d like to mention the dealer lent me his floor model Merason I didn’t have a usb cable and said the Merason is available with i2s input as I used it with the Rockna components, he sent along a Audience FrontRow usb cable I figured he was just up selling me however after a week of home listening I didn’t want to try any other usb cable brand nor did I want the dac with a i2s input I liked it the way it was using usb with the Rockna Net server including the RoseAudio server , one spectacular cable .

 

[ken6217]

Andy, are the KR Audio 300B HP tubes OK to use in the Mk2?