That humm or hiss that you are hearing Is what you get from an unbalanced pre amp. I find it maddening too.

if you really want separates, Emotiva has a balanced pre-amp called the XSP1 for $888. You could pair that with an XPA-200 for $339. It is 150w which will make your power issues go away. They offer a 30 day in home trial. I have heard some Emotiva power amps and they sound good. I have never heard one of there pre amps.

The Musical Fidelity integrated is the best option above on your budget. That Emotiva is the cheapest balanced pre amp I know of. I can find unbalanced but you will likely have the same issue. Your other option is to troll Audiogon or ebay for a used pre amp. Somebody might be selling a Parasound P3.

I will sell my M3i for $850 plus shipping. It is as good as new; used for 2 years.

As soon as you post another message here indicating you want it, I will post my e-mail address on here for a brief time before deleting it.

The problem you are having is because that small amp is being cranked up to almost maximum gain and that of course means the hiss and hum are getting amplified a lot also; but I guess you kind of have that figured out.

You probably are not really putting out a lot of power with that amp; you just are using up most of its limited voltage gain capability. A small amplifier has simpler circuitry, which means less stages of gain.

Are you on now??

We will talk.

Thanks

bierfeldt wrote:

That humm or hiss that you are hearing Is what you get from an unbalanced pre amp. I find it maddening too.

That's utter BS. The only time I've ever had hiss from any combo was using a tube preamp, my Lazarus Cascade Basic to be precise. And it was acceptable. If you are having a line level hum it's likely a ground loop or RF interference issue. There's nothing wrong with balanced interconnection, but keep in mind the reason it's used in professional equipment isn't that it SOUNDS better, it's that it reduces noise in environments that are variable and difficult to control - probably not your living room/den.

Try lifting the earth from your power cable. If you have your equipment plugged into a competent line filter/surge protector you are not endangering your equipment. Start with your sources and work toward your speaker. If that doesn't eliminate it, move to shielded interconnects/speaker cables. Again moving "out" from your sources to your speaker. Now keep in mind that shielded cables can sometimes sound a little drab and closed in, especially compared to unshielded Kimber Kable - but if noise is more important to you, it's a sacrifice you make.

The other option is to just ignore it. I've have setups that were a little noisy but FAR more musically satisfying. And I've heard very high end impeccably setup systems in salons that were interconnected with balanced and shielded cables and heavy shielded speaker wires sound absolutely terrible.

Yes, that eliminates everything but the amplifier.

This has been an example in chasing down noise. There was a question no one asked.

Does it sound bad? Just a little noisy?