Seems that audio16 is getting into the underlying truth about the nasty noise and hum that even not a great distraction from musical content is annoying to say the least. We need to 1st distinguish what kind of noise/hum is there? Already we can get crazy here! I am obsessed with the matter as for me total black silent passages in musical interpretations, piano, violin, lyrical actually have their very own musical signification. You have seen at this blog that I play with large horns that are actually near to 116db sensitivity also frequently played with no xover at all. Meaning? That this is many multiples (each 3db you double….work it out!) more than the already crazy and magical100db and then….not having capacitors, coils or resistors in the signal path that strip things…..So what! Well….this actually means that any defect upstream will be heard in many many multiples….getting no noise from tubes amps with these big horns means serious attention to detail….I mean very serious. And actually that is all it takes….but as we know detail = time….and time is the real luxury we have! Well yesterday a good resident of the US west coast (hi….N..good trip back ?) was astonished that when putting his head “into” the we13a that no noise could be heard at all…he did ask “is it on?”.,..answer=yes! My blog partner here is showing the 1st steps to get this results. I call it audio hygiene…..clean cable paths etc….and decent ground point. Then it’s about the finer yet more important details that will, I insist, be further complicated by mixing balanced and unbalanced signal lines, be the balanced via transformer or not.

Here are some good views that can raise questions…..more later need to run…