I've always noticed hiss in any system I've had. The difference is in the past I only heard it at high vol during quiet passages. I wasn't looking for hiss with the 950 it was looking for me. No way I should hear hiss at 5 feet with low volume. Not acceptable. Didn't know about it until I read the posts after I noticed the problem.

My amp is an ATI 1505 which clips more easily than I thought it would (has no gain control).
My mains are PSB silveri's. Surrounds old polks that impressed me the other day. They actually get louder than the PSB's before the amp starts clipping (god help my tweeters). The speakers stand about 18 inches tall and have a tweeter, driver and passive bass radiotor. I was actually shocked at their output.
My old NAD stuff is about 18 years old now and they are seperates. I don't actually remember ever making my NAD 2200PE clip. If it does it has soft clipping which I appreciate more now that I have an Amp with out this feature.

I just hooked up my old preamp to the ATI to compare sound and hiss in 2 channel with the 950. My old preamp will put a huge hurt on my ATI and speakers if I crank the vol half way. Sound if fuller and hiss on same CD much worse. This is NOT MUSIC HISS it is unacceptable floor noise. NAD was doing it better 18 years ago and I wish outlaw would have made a $1100 prepro that doesn't have these problems and had better 2 channel sound.

I LOVE THE 950 FOR MOVIES!!!! IT ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!However, I like music better and I don't know if I can take the hiss. Also, maybe it is just my imagination??? but my old preamp just sounds richer. 950 is a little thin???


Quote:
Originally posted by Davis S:
bbpj - have to ask, what amp/speakers are you running with your 950. By reducing the gains on my Parasound 2205 (by 1/4), I greatly reduced the hiss. Does your amp have manual gains?

Also,"when it ended I heard hiss from my speaker about 5 feet away". So during playback you heard what, hiss or the music?
What CD? I think we all can agree the some cd's hiss (Some louder than others) between tracks. You should continue to experiment/play around with things to try and lower your noise.

Hiss from 5 feet is far, how loud where you listening(you were studying, hence assume low). Have you calibrated your system since adding the 950?

Was your NAD a receiver or seperates? My Denon 3200 receiver is probably less hissy than my 950/2205 combo, but at the same time hiss was still there. Thing was I never even thought about it until this cropped up on the 950.




[This message has been edited by bbpj (edited October 19, 2002).]