[millerdog]

after reading about the hiss and hearing it on my slimx, I thought oh, well...it's still a great player. Then lo and behold! The hiss seems to come and go with different tracks. I got barely discernable hiss on my new Lisa Loeb cd. Intermittent hiss(on different tracks) on my indie cd by Blue Yard Garden. Again, barely if no hiss on my Steely Dan Aja ultradisc(not remastered). Hiss again on the new Creed cd Human Clay. No hiss at all on my ddd Jazzmasters cd. Again no hiss at all on my Gin Blossoms cd.
What gives? Is it in the recording and not in the player? The earlier posts seem to imply that it was the player at fault. Hell, I even got a 60hz buzz on one of the Gin Blossom tracks. I suppose that was in the recording also.
Has anyone in this forum had similar results? I admit that I hear a hiss on some cds but I would hate to say the player had anything to do with it as I find this a top notch cd/mp3 player.

 

[phidauex]

I haven't noticed differing hiss on different tracks.. however, i mostly listen to mp3s, so it may be a CD only phenomenon.

One thing i've noticed about the hiss is that its level seems to be independent of the volume setting on the player. Since I use a portable amp (a homebuilt cmoy), i find that if i turn the amp down a touch, and then turn up the player (I usually run the player around 30/40), the hiss fades out into the background noise, and becomes unnoticable. I suppose though, as always, YMMY

peace,
phidauex

 

[millerdog]

thanks for the reply phidauex
I plug my Grado sr60 straight in to my slimx. I rip my mp3s from 160 to 192 depending on the music..vocals at 192 rock at 160.
On my mp3 discs, I also noticed hiss on some songs and none at all on others. Perhaps like you said, it is a cd thing. I don't believe now it is my player creating it. I wonder if you bypassed your amp and went directly into the slimx you would have the same results as I have. By the way I set my volume to 30/40 to try and duplicate your results.
I have read in other posts that the hiss was rated on a scale of 1-10 at 3.5....in defense of this nice unit..I would say the hiss is dependant on your cd's recording. I plan on purchasing a TAH soon so perhaps my review will change.
I wonder Phidauex, what eq settings do you use with your player? I use a user defined mode with bass and treble cranked to the max.

 

[phidauex]

For my Eq settings, I use a slight bass boost, with a reasonably low corner frequency, and a bit of a treble boost, with a low corner frequency. I have tried running my headphones directly from the the player, and it works pretty well. I don't seem to notice any more hiss, but I haven't done much critical listening. For my portable listening, i use a pair of senn HD497s. For my home listening, I generally use HD590s. They both use the cmoy amp. The 590s are obviously the more revealing of the pair, but even then the hiss is a non-issue when the gain stages are set properly.

peace,
phidauex

 

[Kelvie1234]

On my SlimX, there's no hiss if you use the line out jack instead of the remote jack, however, it is roughly 2/3 the volume..