raif
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2002
- Posts
- 2,047
- Likes
- 18
First a notice. There were some power issues at the meet were morsel and I did testing of the amp. That really did not make a noticable difference untill the pot was turned to above 12 o'clock then got progressively louder. Also, it was more of a hum/buzz.(to me) At the levels that I listened, there was the familiar hiss, that did not change in volume. Another issue was that the listening was in a meet setting so take the following post with a grain of salt.
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I took my ppa to the bay area meet. After some extensive testing I was able to confirm that there was indeed a hiss present in the ppa with my cd3ks. However, it was also present in the prototype ppa that kurt brought to the meet. Another thing is that not everyone could hear it.
My conclusion is that there is a barely noticeble low level hiss when the ppa is combined with closed, high-sensitivity, low impedence headphones.(or at least the cd3k) Combined with other higher impedence headphones(sennheisers, beyers) the noise completely disapeared. Also, in the large gilmore at the meet(v2?) the hiss dissapeared, so it isn't a headphone issue. Hopefully some of the others that were present for the testing(kurt, morsel, neilpert) can chime in with their impressions, which undoubtedly will provide a better interpretation than the one I have already beat to death on this forum.
Some people will never hear it, if so enjoy it, because the sound quality, presentation and value of this amp is great. For others though, a slight word of caution.
I think neilperts comment best describes the issue.
[after listening closely for a moment]
"Oh, my god, I hear it. I thought you might have been mistaken, but I can hear it. It is very faint though, I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't told me what to look for.
EDIT: I did hear the same hiss in the other gilmore present at the meet. It is very possible that it was a power issue, though, I just felt I should include that because this could just be a personal issue with high power amps.
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I took my ppa to the bay area meet. After some extensive testing I was able to confirm that there was indeed a hiss present in the ppa with my cd3ks. However, it was also present in the prototype ppa that kurt brought to the meet. Another thing is that not everyone could hear it.
My conclusion is that there is a barely noticeble low level hiss when the ppa is combined with closed, high-sensitivity, low impedence headphones.(or at least the cd3k) Combined with other higher impedence headphones(sennheisers, beyers) the noise completely disapeared. Also, in the large gilmore at the meet(v2?) the hiss dissapeared, so it isn't a headphone issue. Hopefully some of the others that were present for the testing(kurt, morsel, neilpert) can chime in with their impressions, which undoubtedly will provide a better interpretation than the one I have already beat to death on this forum.
Some people will never hear it, if so enjoy it, because the sound quality, presentation and value of this amp is great. For others though, a slight word of caution.
I think neilperts comment best describes the issue.
[after listening closely for a moment]
"Oh, my god, I hear it. I thought you might have been mistaken, but I can hear it. It is very faint though, I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't told me what to look for.
EDIT: I did hear the same hiss in the other gilmore present at the meet. It is very possible that it was a power issue, though, I just felt I should include that because this could just be a personal issue with high power amps.