My gut reation to you situation is that you have a pre-amp with high gain, and amp with high sensitivity and/or very efficient speakers and you are hearing the noise floor of your pre-amp line stage. I recently got some higher efficiency speakers and had to put in-line attenuators to quiet down the line stage from my ARC SP10. As to whether or not its the tubes themselves - tube "noise" is usually not a steady low level hiss, but takes on a more crackly-spitty sound, however light. Don't know about the BAT but I suspect it may be a matter of its output voltage as seen by the amp. Hope that helps a bit...
ARC Reference 2 MkII Preamp white noise levels
Hi,
Just acquired a Ref2 MII preamp. The level of white noise is much higher than my BAT VK-50SE. It does not change with volume setting and is definitely not the amp noise. By muting and unmuting the preamp, you can discern the difference. The noise is quite audible from the listening position 8 feet away. For those who have this preamp, is the noise characteristic? Could it be the tubes? The difference between the BAT and ARC is remarkable. Thanks- William
Just acquired a Ref2 MII preamp. The level of white noise is much higher than my BAT VK-50SE. It does not change with volume setting and is definitely not the amp noise. By muting and unmuting the preamp, you can discern the difference. The noise is quite audible from the listening position 8 feet away. For those who have this preamp, is the noise characteristic? Could it be the tubes? The difference between the BAT and ARC is remarkable. Thanks- William