Catharsis147

AH! Thanks. Joe said to ground the reciver to the amp though using a wire or screw. I also read somehere else that losening the chassis screws of the Onkyo might help. Heck, I will try it; it cannot hurt.

The Blue Jeans are a lot more than the monoprice ones, and I am only keeping them for aesthetic reasons (not that anyone sees cables, I realize how insane that sounds). $130.65 shipped for 4 pairs. That is a lot, but obviously the sky is the limit with cables (though at least Blue Jeans do not sell you snake oil. They are actually very very very well made). I do not even know what they sound like yet...bought solely for trying to resolve this problem. I will let you know how they sound. Attenuators basically lower the gain from the amp. I got -12db attenuators. They actually improve sound quality, at least from what I could tell. The noise floor drops quite a bit. Regarding our good friend "hum," it makes it much less perceptable. It is still there, but much quieter. They will not solve the problem, but I love what they do to my system. Thos were around $125 shipped for 4 pairs from parts express....

I have not tried using a cheater plug. I will do that, too. What is that schematic of, or more to the point, what does it look like and where can I buy it? Forgive my ignorance.

Well, spoke to Joe from Emotiva this morning and gave him every scenario I ran. He said it may have to do with my Onkyo receiver, as when I talked to him, I told him that the hum comes from the RCA cables only when they are connected to the TX-RN809. He then stated that over the past month, the calls coming in about hum have been mostly from Onkyo customers. He said try grounding the amp and the reciver using a wire or a screw. I will be doing that tonight and will report. He was very nice and did not in any way seem to be BSing me. On a side note: I figured the RCA cables I was using (monoprice) were the problem, so I replaced them with Blue Jeans Cable. Same problem, but I am keeping those cables. Solidly made (and in the USA), and much more flexible than the monoprice ones. Also, even though they did not 100% fix the problem (but did decrease the hum), those Harrison Labs attenuators a bought I highly recommend.

Oy. Well, I bought some attenuators that should be arriving today. Let's see what that does...I admit, I am using Monoprice Cables too...maybe those need to be changed out to Blue Jeans Cable... I am a tinkerer, and as someone that worked in the bicycle industry for years, I love solving problems if I can. I do not think it is the amp in my case, as I get no hum unless the receiver is turned on, regardless of where this combo is placed, even on the other side of my place (which has seperate 20 Amp circuits). When the XPA-5 is tunred on by itself, no hum...just the hiss (which I am fine with) out of my RF-7s. Will continue to troubleshoot and report...

Well, SuB, I see you sold your XPA, and now have an Outlaw...Congrats! Well, I have not traced my problem to either a complete gain change between the Emtoiva XPA-5 and my receiver/preamp. With everything hooked up, including all cables to the receiver, when I turr on the XPA-5 I get no hum whatsoever. The second I turn on my receiver though, there is the trusty hum. Curious at the very least.

...so you returned your Emotiva, SuB? Please elaborate. I noticed in another thread you isolated the problem to one bad channel.....the same happened to me. I have isolated my problem to a bad right (if you are facing the XPA 5) channel. This is after switching my Onkyo and XPA-5 to a different electrical plug, and even using my rear speakers connected as my fronts...this is a fascinating experiment, but I am not happy.

I have the same issue. If the RCA plugs are not connected to the amp, and just the speakers, I get no hum....but the second I connect the RCA plugs to my pre-amp, I gte a serious hum. Rather frustrating.

yessir!!! I remember going to my dealer and seeing the rc 7 the very first time and thinking "who the hell would buy a center channel that big?? Like ever???" I started with an RC-25. Eventually, as I upgraded to the 7 series and purchased the RC-7, I thought...."who would NOT purchase this center??? It sounds AMAZING!!!!" And I think it is striking when paired with the 7 series of speakers. The rc-64 is certainly more practical, but will never look as cool as the RC-7.

Does the RC-7 actually produce lower frequencies than the RC-64??? More importantly, are the differences noticable?? I love my RC-7, but it is damn impractical for the vast majority of TV stands. But the RC-7 DOES look incredible as a center....

LOL. I still think that HD streaming of video is simply waaay too far away for that medium to supplant the physical HD formats. As mentioned by ClaudeJ, people go for convenience over quality, and to transmit the amount of information needed to equate to a Blu Ray disc would take forever on our current networks, thus limiting the conveneince factor tremendously for HD streaming. I could be wrong on this theory, but I doubt it highly. Blu Ray looks to be the next staple of physical media until HD streaming of video (or something else) takes over. Unless, of course, this format war and lack of consumer interest already committed Blu Ray to that of minidisc (which I loved actually) or laserdisc.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Klipsch-Reference-Series-RB-75s-Pair-Mint-RB75_W0QQitemZ110226807403QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item110226807403 FYI. Seller says they are mint.......

.....another vote for Blue Jeans Cable. Whoop *** company with no bullshit quality. I own the 12 gauge speaker cable and could not be happier with the quality or the performance.

That will certainly work, though I think you should look for a pair of Rs-7s for the future, you never know when 7.1 will be utilized more in the Blu Ray format. As of right now, your RS-3s should be fine. Not a perfect match, but as already stated, that is not quite necessary (UNLES you listen to music often in matrixed 7.1 sound)

.......Have to agree with MAS here, though I hope for all our sakes he is wrong. HD technology, while fantastic, definitley has some fundamental problems before it turly penetrates the market. To truly appreciate HD requires an HDTV, which I can tell you right now is still not in most peoples homes, no matter what statistics are thrown out. The CD penetrated the market because it was a QUANTUM LEAP above cassettes and records, similar to how DVD was a quantum leap above VHS. Now, though Blu Ray and HD-DVD are a siginificant leap above SD TV, I think that leap is more like the leap of SACD to CDs (which again required five speakers to truly appreciate, hopefully they matched). Certianly an improvement, but not one to justify jumping into a new technology.