What are you Listening To Right Now? - and more

Being one of the weirdest contributors here, I’m probably in a good position to comment on the virtues of the ML electrostats. Mine are the Theos, and are about 3 years old. They are different to the majority of the company’s electrostatic offerings, having a passive woofer. Most of the others have an built in amplifier to power that section.

I spend a lot of time listening to women’s and children’s voices as well as a healthy supply of prog rock, and those speakers lap it up. The female voice is supposedly the most difficult to reproduce properly and we all know about the complexity of music by Rush, Yes, ELP, Dream Theater and others, not to mention large orchestras with everything going on from a solo flute to a crashing finale. The ML speakers take everything in their stride.

There are probably better speakers out there but at the price point, they would be hard to beat. Of course, their WAF is practically zero but they’re fine in a cave.

MartinLogans are really beautiful from what I've seen. They look like you can despising a nice living space around them , and really enjoy the benefits of living with them..High Quality speakers for sure. I'd love to have a pair in the house for a long spell and reap the benefits.
 
Since this is such an active thread full of helpful guys, I wonder if I can get some advice? Since I got this Heathkit AA-1640, which really is nice and drives my Snells better than even my Yamaha amp, there is a low level background hum in a quiet room. This is only heard with no music playing and annoys me. I've tried several things but am still in the process of investigation of others. Now of course there might be an issue inside the amp, that is to be determined.

Anyway, during this process I have begun to wonder about my AC line to my house and if it is noisy? Especially that the furnace and other household appliances are feeding noise into the circuit. We also can have brownouts throughout the year. I used to have a nice UPS but it finally died. Of course I have a lot of different electronics on this circuit. Vintage and modern. Anyone comment on their experiences with power filtering and surge protection devices? I had what I thought was a decent power strip until a few months ago it died, and I have not replaced it. There are a myriad of cheap products out there and I keep coming across conflicting information. I keep reading that having devices with MOV's (Metal Oxide Varistor) is bad news to have them in surge protectors, ultimately they will fail and the whole protector will need to be repaired or replaced (I'm fairly certain my last power strip failed for this reason). Exhausted by the research...

thanks!
 
Since this is such an active thread full of helpful guys, I wonder if I can get some advice? Since I got this Heathkit AA-1640, which really is nice and drives my Snells better than even my Yamaha amp, there is a low level background hum in a quiet room. This is only heard with no music playing and annoys me. I've tried several things but am still in the process of investigation of others. Now of course there might be an issue inside the amp, that is to be determined.

Anyway, during this process I have begun to wonder about my AC line to my house and if it is noisy? Especially that the furnace and other household appliances are feeding noise into the circuit. We also can have brownouts throughout the year. I used to have a nice UPS but it finally died. Of course I have a lot of different electronics on this circuit. Vintage and modern. Anyone comment on their experiences with power filtering and surge protection devices? I had what I thought was a decent power strip until a few months ago it died, and I have not replaced it. There are a myriad of cheap products out there and I keep coming across conflicting information. I keep reading that having devices with MOV's (Metal Oxide Varistor) is bad news to have them in surge protectors, ultimately they will fail and the whole protector will need to be repaired or replaced (I'm fairly certain my last power strip failed for this reason). Exhausted by the research...

thanks!
https://www.panamax.com/product/powermax-8-av-PM8-AV


I use a Panamax and have had zero issues. The power into your rig is nowhere you want to skimp on money.
 
Since this is such an active thread full of helpful guys, I wonder if I can get some advice? Since I got this Heathkit AA-1640, which really is nice and drives my Snells better than even my Yamaha amp, there is a low level background hum in a quiet room. This is only heard with no music playing and annoys me. I've tried several things but am still in the process of investigation of others. Now of course there might be an issue inside the amp, that is to be determined.

Anyway, during this process I have begun to wonder about my AC line to my house and if it is noisy? Especially that the furnace and other household appliances are feeding noise into the circuit. We also can have brownouts throughout the year. I used to have a nice UPS but it finally died. Of course I have a lot of different electronics on this circuit. Vintage and modern. Anyone comment on their experiences with power filtering and surge protection devices? I had what I thought was a decent power strip until a few months ago it died, and I have not replaced it. There are a myriad of cheap products out there and I keep coming across conflicting information. I keep reading that having devices with MOV's (Metal Oxide Varistor) is bad news to have them in surge protectors, ultimately they will fail and the whole protector will need to be repaired or replaced (I'm fairly certain my last power strip failed for this reason). Exhausted by the research...

thanks!

Hopefully is just a ground loop issue with the TT and or the headshell/cartridge contact points...that can make the whole system hum even when it's not the chosen source...I'm sure you know all of that so forgive my assumptions..
 
Hopefully is just a ground loop issue with the TT and or the headshell/cartridge contact points...that can make the whole system hum even when it's not the chosen source...I'm sure you know all of that so forgive my assumptions..
for sure it is just the amp (this is not an integraded amp) and no source. I can have the input to the amp connected to a preamp that is not plugged in to anything and I get this low level hum.
 
Since this is such an active thread full of helpful guys, I wonder if I can get some advice? Since I got this Heathkit AA-1640, which really is nice and drives my Snells better than even my Yamaha amp, there is a low level background hum in a quiet room. This is only heard with no music playing and annoys me. I've tried several things but am still in the process of investigation of others. Now of course there might be an issue inside the amp, that is to be determined.

Anyway, during this process I have begun to wonder about my AC line to my house and if it is noisy? Especially that the furnace and other household appliances are feeding noise into the circuit. We also can have brownouts throughout the year. I used to have a nice UPS but it finally died. Of course I have a lot of different electronics on this circuit. Vintage and modern. Anyone comment on their experiences with power filtering and surge protection devices? I had what I thought was a decent power strip until a few months ago it died, and I have not replaced it. There are a myriad of cheap products out there and I keep coming across conflicting information. I keep reading that having devices with MOV's (Metal Oxide Varistor) is bad news to have them in surge protectors, ultimately they will fail and the whole protector will need to be repaired or replaced (I'm fairly certain my last power strip failed for this reason). Exhausted by the research...

thanks!
If you want to see if it is a problem with the amp internally, disconnect everything from it except the speakers of course. Then short both RCA inputs (not to each other) signal to ground on the rca's. If it still hums, the problem is internal.
 
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