Question About Noise Coming from Receiver. . .

Hello!

Bear with me, as I'm not the most savvy when it comes to these kinds of thing.

I have a very old receiver, it's a Yamaha RX-485 that I somewhat inherited and have been using a long time. Noticed before (but moreso today) that there is a sort of monotonously bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz feedback type sound that comes from my speakers continuously but it seems to be controlled by when I press the "Speaker A" button on and off. When I click that button to turn them "off", the noise stops. Though the buzzing is coming from both speakers, not just one of them. I understand this this piece of equipment IS old, but if I can be brought to understand what exactly I'm hearing and how I can possibly combat that, it would be a great service to me instead of me panic buying a new receiver that I cannot afford right now.

That being said, when I googled the receiver I found a listing an ebay calling it Vintage, haha.

 

That being said, if a new receiver is recommended I would love any suggestions as to solid affordable ones. I'm not particularly super eagle eared when this stuff, BUT this sound is def. irritating me.

 

If the volume is all the way down, do you still get the buzz? Given the age (looks like it came out in '93-95 timeframe), maybe the power supply caps have aged.

You may just want to look for an affordable local receiver on craigslist - something you can listen to before you buy. Ideally, something somewhat newer so you won't have the same problem crop up again due to aging components.

 

Buzz is only when the volume is up. Gradually gets louder as the volume goes up. Never overwhelmingly so, but it’s present.

Sounds about right re. Timeframe. Belonged to my dad but I think I’ve gotten more use out of it than he ever did.

 

Oh, it’s only when in Phono mode too. . . When I click anything else it's dead silent.

Actually noticing some more things----I can kind of hear an escalation when I go to touch the arm to drop the needle. It's faint, but it gets a little more intense when my finger is near it (I have a U turn Audio turntable).

 

Sounds like a grounding issue with the TT. Does the U Turn come with a grounding wire?

 

If it helps, the speakers are Polk Audio. Maybe ten years old?

 

No—-this is what it says on their site about that:

“The Orbit is internally grounded through the shielding of the left RCA output, so no external ground wire is needed (even if your phono preamp has a ground screw or terminal).”

Is this what you’re referring to?

The U Turn is only about a year and a half old with basically regular use, nothing overboard.

For what it’s worth, the sound is still present in the speakers when I unplug the turn table.

 

Gotcha. Yes, that is what I was referring to. That is nice for convenience, but some people find lifting the ground wire actually fixes their buzzing issues, so it's nice to have the option. Anyway, are the interconnects removable? If so, what are you using?

 

It’s a red/white cable, pretty simple (correct about what you’re asking about? I have to keep googling when people ask me stuff, haha). Almost positive it was included with the player.

 

So far sounds like either a grounding issue or a loose wire somewhere along the "chain."
Did you go over all the connections starting at the phono cartridge, then the arm connection, then the turntable RCA connection then the phono preamp RCA connection and then finally your Yamaha integrated RCA connection?

I doubt it is a speaker wire connection causing the hum, because those are either live or not making a connection so there would be SILENCE.
Speakers don't generally HUM unless the cabinet is wonky!
But go ahead and check the speakers anyway.

Is the turntable using a ground lug screw where the RCA cables attach?
If so that lug needs to be connected to your phono preamplifier (the Cambridge) using a separate "grounding" wire (you can use a left-over piece of speaker wire for this ground wire, any unshielded wire is fine).

Merely finally grounding the turntable outputs where the RCAs plug in will generally bring dead silence.
Once in a great while if chasing down a hum you can even try ADDING an extra grounding wire from the turntable ground lug and in addition to going to the phono amp---go directly to the amp itself ALSO.
This "extra" ground isn't always useful but once in a while it kills the hum.

By the way it also sounds to me that you may have wired your speaker outputs incorrectly.
A conductor friend of mine tried running the left channels off "Speaker A" and the right channels off "Speaker B" but it doesn't work THAT WAY!

You should have a PAIR of speakers hooked up to "Speaker A."
And a second pair (if you have them in another room) gets hooked up to "Speaker B".

It sounded to me as though YOU have one speaker hooked to Speaker A.
And the other hooked to Speaker B.
This can even result in you listening at that point to MONAURAL SOUND all the time.

The Doc

 

Yes, you are correct, lol. I'm assuming you are not using the built in preamp on the Orbit and are instead going into the phono input on the receiver? Have you tried using the preamp built into the TT and using one of the other inputs on the receiver? Those generic RCAs might not be well shielded and the low level phono signal is susceptible to noise. If that takes care of it and you like the sound of it, cool. If the problem is taken care of, but you like the sound of the phono pre on the receiver, just get a well shielded, low capacitance set of RCAs, like BJC LC-1, and bypass the turntable's built in phono pre. If that doesn't help, I would suspect it is a grounding issue, which can be difficult to track down.

 

Still looking at the other stuff, but I took a look at this and seems set up fine? It's in a square column
------ R-------L
A
B

And I have the R and L both in the speaker A column. I don't have anything hooked up to the B column at all.

 

You're good

 

I mean if I turn my amp up high enough with nothing playing I hear a hum too....I don't think I've ever used a system that was dead quiet at high volumes.

 

Yeah? It's feeling weird only cause it's not super super high when I start to notice. I am an amateur at MOST when it comes to this stuff, though. Still learning.

Out of curiosity I swapped to the Speaker B one and I hear the hum.

 

I have it connected like so---there is only the one Phono input, the rest are all labeled for CD, AUX, Tape, etc. My finger is where the Phono one is. The red is obviously the bottom of the turn table. So yeah, maybe some better cables would do the trick. Or like the other poster said, it's normal and just is part of it?

 

Does your TT not have the built in preamp? I was going off what I saw on their website and it looked like they all had pre's built in.

 

They don't, no. It had cost extra to have it built in.

There IS one that can be purchased on it own.

Pluto 2 Phono Preamp

 

I see cheap spaghetti size phono cables. Buy 100% shielded or double shield low capacitance cables.

 

Gotcha.

One other thing to consider, since the noise has increased, is if you've placed any new electronics near the TT or cables, or even anything new you've plugged in around the house...a refrigerator or something else that might make noise on the power lines.

If you decide to try different cables, make sure they're low capacitance and as short as possible. Not any old RCA cable will work well for phono. Blue Jean's Cable (BJC) LC-1 is the go to budget cable around here. I use them for everything. They may or may not help, but it's always good to have nice interconnects

 

Possibly the air conditioner which is on a plug on the opposite side of the one I use for the turn table/receiver.

I marked the cables--might have to wait a hair on that one---the 3 foot is like 50 bucks on Amazon it seems?

What's the deal with that pre-amp thing? Is that necessary? I'm slightly perplexed as to its benefit (and why me of two years ago deemed it unnecessary based on my research at the time?) Basically, could getting one contribute to a better sound?

 

Yes, believe it or not $50 for 3 feet is a budget cable in this game, lol.

A phono preamp is absolutely necessary to use a TT. Your receiver has one built into the phono input. If you plugged your TT into one of your other inputs, it would be very quiet and sound very very bad. If your TT had one built in, it would be the opposite and you'd want to plug it into any of the other inputs on the receiver besides phono. Most modern receivers do not have a phono input, so many low end TTs come with one built in so you don't have to buy a standalone phono pre.

 

THIS is most likely why I went without---at the time I wanted to replace my old crappy turntable, but I've learned more in the time since. I'm actually very happy with this turntable on the whole.

Would you say picking up one of these might be a good move?

Also, hah on the cable price as budget! Like I said, learning every day!

 

I agree - it could just be cheap unshielded RCAs.

I don't think you necessarily need to spend that much. Do you have thicker RCA cables elsewhere in the house that you can try? They may not be, strictly speaking, 100% shielded or low capacitance, but if you find better shielded cables that are a bit more robust, you may find the buzz/hum you're hearing has quieted down enough for you to be satisfied without spending more $. If it changes, hopefully gets better, at least you'll know you're on the right track and then you can decide whether or how much you want to spend to get it quieter or relatively silent.

But it's generally true that if you turn up a phono input loud enough (like louder than you'd have the volume if actually listening to music), then you'll generally hear more noise on the phono input because it's amplifying a low level signal so there's a lot of gain there.