Humm

nikolas812

I just recently got into seperates and the am

p I bought was a B&K ST-140 and a B&K avp-3090 preamp. I'm getting a low humm out of my speakers. It doesn't affect music to much but on quiet parts of music or movies you can slightly hear the humm. I thought it might be my power wire. I included pictures of what it looks like and how its ran. The guy I bought it from said it was a upgrade. But I dunno if it is or not:o Also when I unplug my preamp the humm goes away. Does this meen its my preamp? I also have all brand new wires from blue jeans. Any help would be appreciated.

The Power Wire is the funky looking green and red wire.

cfrizz

This is a fairly common problem when you add a high powered amp. There is a ground loop somewhere in your system.

Now you can go the long way around & unhook all your connections one at a time until you find out which piece of equipment is causing the hum, or you can go to a hardware store & get a 3 prong to 2 prong plug & plug the amp into the plug & the plug into the wall or protector.

nikolas812

Thanks for the advice. But I think I found the problem. If you notice the white and orange cables all secured togeather there are white ones and a orange one. The white ones are the stereo interconnects and the orange one is the digital connect. When I unhooked my digital wire the humm went away. I haven't seperated the two yet but I hope it solves the problem. I think I will also do the plug thing any way, I personally think it should have a ground no matter what.

jakelm

nikolas812 wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. But I think I found the problem. If you notice the white and orange cables all secured togeather there are white ones and a orange one. The white ones are the stereo interconnects and the orange one is the digital connect. When I unhooked my digital wire the humm went away. I haven't seperated the two yet but I hope it solves the problem. I think I will also do the plug thing any way, I personally think it should have a ground no matter what.

There is nothing wrong with the way your interconnects are together. I think the problem runs deeper than just seperating the wires. The interconnects look to be shielded very well. So I dont "think" it will help to seperate them. But I hope I'm wrong. Good luck.

nikolas812

Well I seperated the stereo wires from the digital one and plug the digital cable back in and still got the humm. Does this meen I have to do the ground thing for my plug? I think my dvd cd player also might be on its way to giving out. I got it off of ebay and it never was really right from the begining.

jakelm

Change out the digital wire, see if that helps.

dudeinaroom

if you can use an optial wire for you digital, go that route, no ground loop that way

billbillw

I had a terrible hum from my Parasound when I first hooked it up. Had to use a cheater to lift the ground from the amp. No hum after that. None of my other gear had grounded cables, so maybe it all needs to be grounded, or all ungrounded. Not sure, but this was the first time I had a problem like that.

nikolas812

Well I tryed a different digital wire and still have humm. I can't try my optical wire because my preamp does not accept optical:( I kinda hope grounding the plugs will fix it.

nikolas812

Had to use a cheater to lift the ground

Whats a cheater

jakelm

I would guess that the digital out on the player has a small short in it somehwhere.

cfrizz

That is the term we use for the 3 to 2 prong plug I told you about, since it is basically cheating the grounding to take away the hum.

There are other more expensive, time consuming ways to find out & eliminate the annoying dreaded hum!

I just prefer cheap & easy!:D

nikolas812 wrote: »

Whats a cheater

MillerLiteScott

I have had a similar problem and used a cheater plug to find the problem. I did not like the idea of plugging in my equipment through a cheap cheater plug so I just broke the ground prong off and solved both problems. I did this on the stock cord so no big loss. I will probably build new cords and I have seen plugs with removable third prongs which I would probably use if need.

Scott

nikolas812

Thanks for everybodys help.;) Hopefully I can get it fixed.