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High Pitched Frequency From Speakers, tried everything - - - Driving me crazy, help!

Hi All,

I've been having issues with a high pitch frequency coming from one channel of my speakers intermittently throughout listening sessions. It's a very high whine, think like the sound of a fluorescent light but higher in volume. It comes and goes on its own, does not change in volume when I change volume. It seems to only come on when a source is playing through it. If I mute my preamp it goes away. 

Sometimes I'll have a great hour long listening session and it won't come on but sometimes on the first record it does, same if I'm playing through my dac.

It started in the left channel but now seems to have moved to the right channel only. I thought it might have been tube noise/old tubes in my preamp so I swapped left for right. It went away for a day and then started in the other channel, great just need new tubes. Bought new tubes,  but nope, still present in right channel, swapped left right channel tubes, stayed the same. The new gold lions sound so much sweeter than the JJ's, so I'm very pleased about that, but still extremely frustrated! 

Here's my setup -
VPI Prime Scout
Musical Surroundings Phonomena 
Rogue Rp1 Tube Preamp
Rogue St90 Power
Vandersteen Model 3a sigs
Cheapo Schiit Dac for movies
Panamax Power Conditioner

Here's what I've done (to no avail) to troubleshoot the issue - 
-powered preamp and amp on different circuits (note I usually have them in a power conditioner)
-plugged amp preamp directly into wall
-bypassed phono stage and used one in preamp
-swapped speaker cables
-swapped interconnects
-did channel testing swaps (did not move the noise from one channel to the other)
-replaced and swapped preamp tubes
-replaced and swapped power amp tubes
-swapped out tube power amp for solid state (also was a a nice surprise how much better it sounded)
-separated all power lines from interconnects and speaker cable
-cleaned all connections
-appears with either source playing

I recently downsized my audio gear so I do not have an extra preamp or set of speakers to swap out.

Any insight, advice, help would be greatly appreciated! I am truly going mad over this.

Thanks in advance,
Sammy


128x128sammyshaps
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sammyshaps's avatar
sammyshaps OP
43 posts
 
@mijostyn

Thanks, unfortunately my DAC does not have a volume control. I could possibly connect a laptop to it and monitor the output volume of that, but not sure how safe that is for the amp/speakers?
oddiofyl's avatar
oddiofyl
3,450 posts
 
Unplug everything throughout the house .   My ex would put those Glade Plug In air fresheners all over the place.  I was getting a strange noise like you described and it was a plug in freshener.  Every time it cycled or what ever it was doing caused the problem
sammyshaps's avatar
sammyshaps OP
43 posts
 
@oddiofyl 

Good tip! I have nightlights in some outlets, I will unplug those and see if there's a difference.

geof3
1,122 posts
 
It’s unlikely you would only hear the sound in one speaker if it were an external power issue. Have you tried different interconnects? They can go bad and do weird things. If you eliminate those things, most likely you have a wonky output stage on your preamp. Might be worth a call to Rogue. If it is an issue, they will fix it straight away.
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