Great advice! Thanks!

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In Reply to: Get a heavy extension cord, posted by Al Sekela on April 2, 2007 at 11:16:47:

First of all, how silly of me to consider moving everything into the kitchen! Of course I could simply run a long extension cord!
As you suggested, I started with just the power amp and speakers. There was just a little bit of hum. Switching to the grounded power connection, the hum completely disappeared. There was still a slight hissing static sound but I guess this is normal? By the way, I've noticed on my system that polarity is actually more important than grounding because changing the polarity of the AC connection (even with the grounded outlet) produced some hum. Correcting the polarity on my normal (non-grounded) connection reduced the hum to a negligible level.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that the culprit is the combination of my interconnects (Silver Audio SB4.0's) which are not shielded and the passive preamp (FT Audio LW-1). Swapping the interconnects with shielded ones solved the problem. Fortunately, I could still use my unshielded SB4's upstream between the preamp and sources.
I'm not sure about the technical reasons behind the solution but I'm guessing that my passive preamp (or maybe even passive preamps in general) doesn't "properly terminate" the interconnects? Is this a reasonable assumption? Or hopefully you could just explain to me what's going on here?
Anyway, thanks very much for your help! This hum problem has been bugging me for a long time now. Now, at least to my ears, the improvement in sound quality is noticeable.

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - Need advice with a power problem... - Aylwin C 09:44:19 04/01/07 (7)

Your problem is safety. - Al Sekela 16:09:13 04/01/07 (4)

Re: Your problem is safety. - Aylwin C 22:06:52 04/01/07 (3)

Get a heavy extension cord, - Al Sekela 11:16:47 04/02/07 (2)

Great advice! Thanks! - Aylwin C 09:13:14 04/03/07 (1)

I'm glad you were able to make progress! - Al Sekela 17:35:32 04/03/07 (0)

Re: Need advice with a power problem... - Listens2tubes 15:30:54 04/01/07 (1)

Re: Need advice with a power problem... - Aylwin C 09:18:06 04/03/07 (0)

Follow Ups

Great advice! Thanks! - Aylwin C 09:13:14 04/03/07 (1)

I'm glad you were able to make progress! - Al Sekela 17:35:32 04/03/07 (0)

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