Tube Problems and Cons - Need HELP!

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Funky54, Jul 16, 2017.

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  1. Funky54

    Funky54 Coat Hangers do not sound good Thread Starter

    I recently went all tube. I mentioned some issues in another thread, thought I do a seperate thread about those issues.

    I'm experiencing a number of issues. I thought I'd share what I have and what the issues are to see if anyone can help. I've kinda narrowed it down to the power amp.

    Problem 1
    Lots of back ground hiss, not horrible when playing, but between... annoying.

    Problem 2
    When I lift the tone arm off a record at say 70 to 80db, it makes my power amp go into standby, shutting the tubes off. I can counter this by muting the pre before lifting the tone arm.

    Problem 3
    If I increase volume to get an average of 80 db's, the amp eventually within the course of one song, goes into standby mode.

    Rogue Audio Perseus Magnum - My preamp, no problems here. I've isolated it by playing with solid state and all problems are gone. I have experimented with different gain and loading options and nothing makes solid state have my problems and no settings stop the tube amp from having these problems.

    Jolida JD1000RC - My power amp. So far I have tried to remedy these issues by:
    -cleaning the internal board snap on contacts
    -tightening the tube sockets
    -replacing and re-biasing the tubes

    Maybe the background hiss is just how tube amps act? But the standby is ridiculous.
    Jolida (Talked with Jared) suggested the steps I mentioned. They also suggested trying one side at a time to see if I can isolate the issue. I'll do that next. He offered to have me send it to him and then pay for a repair. It's likely going to be around $100 to $300 plus $80 shipping to him and likely $80 back....

    What would you guys do?
     
  2. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    You're not going to like this answer but take comfort in knowing I largely have do idea what I'm talking about.

    Your amp is working too hard to drive your inefficient speakers.
     
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  3. sberger

    sberger Dream Baby Dream

    When you say you have replaced the tubes, do you mean you have removed then reseated them, or used different tubes? After doing some research it seems this happens when a tube is going bad. That may explain some of the hissing you hear as well.
     
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  4. sberger

    sberger Dream Baby Dream

    The amp is 100 watts output, and he hasn't mentioned his speakers. How do you make this assessment?
     
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  5. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    I pay attention. This isn't his first thread on the topic. And I'm pretty friendly with mr. Funk.

    You are correct with the 100 watts but I'm suspicious of Jolida.
     
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  6. Funky54

    Funky54 Coat Hangers do not sound good Thread Starter

    Dennis knows my gear from previous conversations.
    Speakers - Accarion Systems Alon IV with some updated drivers. Really Big open room with lots of absorbtion. I use to run 863 watts per channel with verticly bi-amps Carver amps. So there's probably some truth to his reasoning.

    I not only removed, repositioned and re-biased the original tube, but I also then replaced them all with new matching tubes and re-biased those. No change.
     
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  7. Funky54

    Funky54 Coat Hangers do not sound good Thread Starter

    Speakers are 86db sensitive at 3 ohms. But those specs are kind. In truth you can hear improvements as you add more and more power. With the Carver amps I measured 19hz at 101 db's with no sign of clipping. They drink power.
     
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  8. sberger

    sberger Dream Baby Dream

    If you're going into standby mode at 80dB's, I doubt very much that it's because you're pushing the amp too much. I've used low power amps to push AR 3's, without any problem other then the speakers needed more power to sound their best. There is something else going one here. Are you not the original owner, or is the amp's warranty expired? No local tech around?
     
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  9. Funky54

    Funky54 Coat Hangers do not sound good Thread Starter

    No warranty, not the original owner and don't know anyone local...
     
  10. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    It looks like maybe your lower efficiency speakers, combined with low inpedance speakers is causing too much current to flow, when you are listening at a 80-dB level.

    Sell amp, buy a Rogue M-150 or M-180, it will give you more power than you can handle. Something a little smaller, then the Rogue Stereo 100.
     
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  11. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    I can't tell you what is wrong, or how to fix it, but I will tell you, having lived with various all tube systems since the early '70s, I have no noise of the type you are describing. And I'm running a tube phono stage with tube power supply, tube line stage and tube power amps. With the gain cranked, you can barely hear fine grain "noise" only if you put your ear literally into the mouth of the horns, and they are 104 db efficient. (A few watts can make these things play very loud).
    It is probably borne out of habit, but I always mute before i lift the arm, and keep in mute when I lower the arm onto a record. Perhaps not necessary, but I don't want to hear a big "thump" particularly if I've got the volume up.
     
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  12. Funky54

    Funky54 Coat Hangers do not sound good Thread Starter

    Good to know. Thanks for your experience it does help me figure things out.
     
  13. vinylkid58

    vinylkid58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Victoria, B.C.
    Have you tried your amp with any other speakers, to see if the problem persists.

    jeff
     
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  14. Funky54

    Funky54 Coat Hangers do not sound good Thread Starter

    No, but I can. The speakers don't make any hissing sounds with any of the solid state amps I use.
     
  15. BIGGER Dave

    BIGGER Dave Forum Resident

    Let's review. Is this your preamp?

    Products: Perseus Preamplifier

    And is this your amp?

    JD 1000 BRC | Jolida

    If so, the Jolida appears to be an ingergrated amp, meaning it's a preamp + power amp. If you're feeding the Rogue preamp into the preamp section of the Jolida, you're feeding preamp into preamp, which would result in a very hissy outcome. Am I understanding your situation correctly?
     
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  16. samurai

    samurai Step right up! See the glory, of the royal scam.

    Location:
    MINNESOTA
    Can you bypass the Jolida pre-amp section?
     
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  17. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    OP, with respect, what jumped out at me is how you stated you replaced everything with tube-based electronics and then reacted to some of the issues by asking whether this is normal for that type of gear.

    I'm a bit shocked that you're insinuating you never listened to a tube-based system before spending all this money. Seems a little unwise to me but I'm probably missing something...
     
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  18. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I'm not sure what's going on but my suspicion isn't that you have a tube problem per se, but an amp problem. I mean, it may be true that there's some kind of thermal protection circuit being tripped by the low impedance of the speakers, but that really doesn't explain the tonearm lifting tripping it. Sounds like the amp's protection circuit is faulty to me. But it's just a guess. Sounds like it needs repair.

    Hiss, yeah, tubes can and do often make more background thermal noise than solid state, but it's also true that they can be very, very quiet between tracks at the listening position at anything like normal volumes to the extent that you won't know whether or not your system is on.
     
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  19. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    The standby issue when lifting the stylus is probably clip protection of some flavor. The circuit sees lots of DC or power sag and shuts the signal down. I was troubleshooting an amp that muted with particular audio I was testing with (but not with 5x as much test signal), and it turned out to be clipped digital MP3 that triggered it. Subsonic filtering in the pre might help.

    3 ohms is too low for most home audio amps. Many tube amps have separate selectable windings in the output transformer for 4/8/16 ohms; your amp specs 4 or 8 ohms, but I don't see a switch. You might have thermal runaway from ultrasonic resonances that are not properly damped when played into the low load. I'd have to look up the amp schematic to postulate more solid hypotheses. Run your speakers in series (3 + 3 = 6 ohms) into one channel and see if your problems don't go away.

    Tubes are noisy. Phono boost is especially noisy. If you have a moving coil cartridge, it might output 0.1mV peaks on program material - that's 0.001 volts, boosted to 50v by the time the signal reaches your speakers. 60dB down from that is 0.0000001 volts. Tubes have heaters, creating thermal noise. The laws of physics don't favor tubes + phono being "digital audio" quiet. You can tube-roll some of the pre tubes in your amp; with ample choices from a crate of tubes like a radio repair shop might have, you might be able to get the noise down significantly.

    Flamebait: This can be remedied with solid state equipment, which can deliver DC for days. Old school DAC chips in CD players, when set to a certain "bit", will output that exact voltage in DC. Noise can improved on by going high-level digital, which has consumer-achievable dynamic ranges of 110dB+. You have to really hear something special in tubes and vinyl to make up for their intrinsic and audible shortcomings.
     
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  20. BIGGER Dave

    BIGGER Dave Forum Resident

    No switch. Impedance selection is accomplished by connecting the speakers to either the 4 OHM binding posts or the 8 OHM binding posts. Refer to my post above (post #15) with the link to the manufacturer's (Jolida) page. Notice the six binding posts on the back of the amp labeled "OUTPUT". The middle two binding posts are the NEGATIVE L and R. The two posts on the left are 4 OHM L and R, and the two posts on the right are 8 OHM L and R.
     
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  21. KT88

    KT88 Senior Member

    This. Funky54 had this exact same trouble with this amp before and we discussed it. I advised him that the amp was broken and needed repair. It is and it still does. He just doesn't want to face the repair bill (not from me, but whomever, in general). There is not going to be any magic bullet solution here, and the Lone Ranger isn't going to come galloping in to swap out the amplifier. It just needs to be serviced. We can't tell how it works without the schematic, but we know that the protection / standby circuit is either faulty or doesn't like the speaker load. If the amp works without standby issues at full volume into an easier load, then we could say that the speakers may be a large contributor, but my take is that the amps protection circuit is improperly implemented as it couples with the standby circuit, or it is broken. My guess is that it was damaged or defective somehow and the previous owner just passed it along to another owner without addressing the issue.
    -Bill
     
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  22. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    I have this same question. How do you run a preamp into an integrated amp? I would also ask why but I assume it's because of the way it sounds? I did listen to the Perseus when I was shopping for a preamp and found it to be heavy on this hiss.
     
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  23. Larry I

    Larry I Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    For the shut off on lifting the arm, my guess is that static discharge is triggering the protection circuit. The discharge could be from the operator touching the cuing control to lift the needle, or a discharge between the needle and the record as the needle is being lifted away from the record surface. I have experienced static discharge triggering shutdown in several systems of friends. It usually happens in the middle of playing (after a charge has built up from the friction between the needle and the record), but, I would not be surprised with a big discharge when separating the two parts (the record and the needle), in much the same way as pulling a sock apart from another garment causes a static discharge when unloading a dryer.

    The shutdown after operating for some time has to do with the protection circuit probably detecting some kind of overheating. It could be caused by almost anything--too demanding a speaker load, something wrong with the protection circuit, something wrong with the amp, poor air circulation around the amp, etc.

    Noise problems can occur with any kind of amp. Tube gear is a bit more prone to noise problems, but, with properly working gear and proper setup, there really shouldn't be much noticeable noise, if any, from a normal listening position. I hear just a little noise with my system (not volume setting dependent), but, my speakers are much more sensitive than that of the OP (99 db/w).
     
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  24. HiFi Guy

    HiFi Guy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lakeland, FL
    The Jolida is really a high gain power amp with a passive preamp (volume control and input selection) at the input. Set the volume on the JoLida at about 1-2 o clock and control the volume with the Rogue.

    I'm thinking it's a poor match between the JoLida and the OPs speakers. That preamp really deserves a better power amp. Not tubes, but I wouldn't discount good class D either. Rogue has some nice offerings there as well.
     
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  25. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    Good deduction there, Watson.
     
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