Aesthetix Calypso and Berning ZH270 combo noise.

I have a friend here who has the Calypso and his setup is by far the most critical of cable placement than any other I have heard. He has to go through a lot of effort here to get rid of the noise....but when he does, the sound is outstanding. He feels that his Plinius may also be the culprit but perhaps it is both of these in combination. One thing for sure about the Calypso over my Callisto, the Calypso is more critical of needing ultra-quiet tubes.

Nr9: You have EXACTLY the same issue as my friend with the Calypso and Plinius 102 amp. When he adjusted the volume on the Calypso, everytime the volume display value was a multiple of 8, the noise was much higher. There must be some kind of stairstepping/multiplying going on here with a bank of 8 resistors being switched with the 8th one causing some side-effect (impedance issue?). He said that after he rearranged his cabling, the problem was gone. He has felt that the Plinius may be the problem of his system being so susceptible to cable routing and such noise issues. But if you have this with the Berning, the commonality here is the Calypso. He does not used balanced cabling in his system. But he does use a Hydra 8.

So verify this for yourself: Notice the increased noise level at the various multiples of 8 and then notice how quiet it becomes as you decrease or increase the volume by one setting from these positions. This sounds like a design problem with the Calypso and a call to Aesthetix may be of value to you.

John

"What do you mean with this? 'He said that after he rearranged his cabling, the problem was gone.'"

His system is hyper-sensitive to cables touching each other, crossing over each other, sitting on the floor, etc. Such a situation would drive me crazy but he is used to this. Once he re-arranged the cables to not be in contact with each other and routed them in different ways, the issue of higher noise with the level at multiples of 8 was gone. Inexplainable black magic! Maybe he resolved it for the moment, but it is an inherent design constraint here.....and it will return as you have observed it as well. Calling Aesthetix is the answer.