Wow, this is really looking like a mystery. You might call Outlaw and talk with them about the hiss. How hissy was it with your old preamp? Like I said before, your Klipsch speakers likely have horns, and as such they will really hit you over the head with any crud originating upstream. You might try bypassing the 950 altogeather and plugging your components directly into your power amp one by one (carefully!!) and first turn the connected component, then the power amp and see if there is much hiss. To get an idea of the playback level with this type of connection, plug your CD player into the power amp directly, and put on a QUIET cd, and play a bit of it (be ready to turn the power amp off if the level is really loud). It will probably be a good level, but not extremely loud. If there is no hiss with this type of connection, even with the VCR connected, the 950 might be defective. One other thing - if the VCR is not tuned to any particular channel, and has it's input set to tuner input, and you are not playing a tape, you will get all manner of static and hiss out of it because it is passing noise from an open channel. Try setting the input of the VCR to 'line' input. Hope some of this helps...

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited September 15, 2002).]