Preamp Deal of the Century

I ordered a Chardonnay 3  January 31st and Mick said mine will have the Linlai 6sn7 tubes also. I guess the chrome plating "bling" has also caused my Chardonnay 3 to be delayed. He did mention the supply chain and sourcing tubes is beginning to cause many delays. Patience is still a virtue.......

Chuckie

Hello all - loving the Syrah! What a big beautiful robust and inviting sound and stage! I'm using it with a Plinius SA201 to drive a pair of Tannoy Stirling GR's and couldn't be happier over all (beyond some noise issues which I'm confident can be solved....). The phono stage is also just superb with the Hana SL cartridge - I was told by a member that would be the case and he was spot on!

It was brought up to snuff by @jslateiv - it looks and sounds terrific. I have a couple of noise issues that I could use some help with. The low gain pass switch setting is very quiet.

1. The Rush. The higher gain pass switch setting has almost a tube rush sound that's pretty loud and doesn't change - same pitch and loudness with manipulating the volume up or down. The tubes are all NOS (and have settled down/opened up SO nicely) - I have some others coming from Brent Jessie that I'll try once they arrive

2. The Hum. The phono has a hum in addition to the rush sound that's there with high and low pass switch and does change with the volume. I wonder if it might be proximity of the gear to the TT or to each other?  To be honest, grounding my modded Thorens 150 with the captive wires (including two ground wires) of the SME M2-9 has always been vexing and I've never gotten the the hum to totally go away, so there may be some of that going on.

Would switching the placement/proximity of the Syrah units to each other and/or the TT help with either the 'rush' or the the 'hum'?

I put a pic on my profile page to help out if anyone cares to take a look, but the TT is mounted to wall with the Syrah linestage 4 inches away and the power unit four inches from that.

My DAC could switch place of either one of the Syrah units. That Syrah unit could then be moved to another shelf and 8 inches or so from my amp.

As an aside, the power for my system is very clean and isolated with a subpanel, ground/line scrubbers, 3 dedicated lines, and a noise suppressing conditioner between the main and subpanel.

Any and all help is appreciated!

Enjoy the tunes,

Art

I turned off the high gain switch on my just-received Cabernet for the reasons you mention. Mick’s design does draw a fair amount of current in start up, although the manual says the noise is ok, i.e., won’t damage the speakers. I blew a pair of 3.15A SR fuses because of it after merely adding ICs for subs, without the latter even having AC cords attached.

I don’t have a phono stage, so adjusting the dac’s volume has been able to compensate. Likewise, I am getting a 60 Hz buzz, just loud enough to be heard at my listening position when everything else is off. That led me to limit the gain knob adjustment to the 12 o’clock position, vs. the 4 o’clock I previously had with the Chardonnay, even with the dac at roughly half volume (I have a regenerator). I haven’t yet rechecked all the connections and ports used. That might be the best first step. The Cab manual does admit the possibility of hum and tube noise issues in finding the best gain settings. Ggod hunting in finding the culprit.

My Chardonnay 3 may function differently (not sure), but I realized that when the gain knob is active, I get noise/hum between 8am and 4pm on the dial, pretty much the entire spectrum except for the very beginning and very end. Hence, I decided to turn off the gain function and instead reduced output by my Hifi Rose RS150B to 500mv. Quiet as a church mouse now, but still have more than enough gain to play loud music.

I humbly suggest you take a close look at how all your cables are dressed. Where they cross, where they parallel each other, how they are seated in the rca inputs & outputs. That has always been the key to getting my system hum-free.