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JBL LSR305 hiss

B

Bladestorm

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 10, 2006
Messages
1,232
I recently purchased a pair of JBL LSR305's, and have them connected to my Soundblaster Z with a TRS to 3.5mm cable. When the speakers are at idle there is a audible hiss coming from both of them. From my limited understanding would, would a external sound card with balanced XLR outputs fix this problem? I'm looking at this one.

http://www.teac.com/product/ud-h01/
 
I'd try a cheap external DAC first, preferably using optical out. I was getting tons of odd noise out my onboard soundcard at first. Used my optical out to a cheap DAC and all noises are gone.
 
Had the same problem with my LSR308's. Initially was using 1/8" TRS -> 1/4" TS splitter cable from the internal sound jack.
Switched to a USB DAC and shielded XLR cables. No more hiss at idle, sounds cleaner when playing.
 
I do have a cheap USB DAC I can try. If that does the trick I'll probably end up buying the TEAC unit I linked to.
 
going from unbalanced to balanced is a good way to wind up with noise..

I had to do this and at first i had noise after consulting some people tried a different shorter cable, initially had 20ft TRS to RCA cable swapped it for a 6ft cable and the noise issue was resolved if your cable is >10ft might want to try a shorter cable if possible.

not sure how much that teac thing is but you might also consider a DAW many of them have balanced outputs.

I have a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 I received as a gift it has TRS balanced outputs cost about $140~

http://www.amazon.com/Focusrite-2i2...ts&ie=UTF8&qid=1412485625&sr=1-1&keywords=daw


there are many other's to chose from of course, I'm pretty please with my focusrite however....I'm using my scarlett right now (fidelify WASPI output) > scralett > Pioneer SX-3600 (circa 1980) > NHT SuperZero's and it is rather nice sounding indeed.
 
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If your speakers hiss with no signal cable attached (only them powered on) it's a normal background hiss of the amplifier. Nothing you can do about it except perhaps try to lower the input sensitivity if the hiss is coming from the pre-stage amp.

If the hiss starts when you connect cables then you may resolve this by buying stuff.
 
There is definitely a hiss on my LSR308s using balanced connection too. But it's not audible from where I sit (about 70cm from the speakers)
 
M76 said:
There is definitely a hiss on my LSR308s using balanced connection too. But it's not audible from where I sit (about 70cm from the speakers)
Click to expand...

If the hiss is audibly loud and your speakers have been standing without use for extended periods its possible that the capacitors have dried out in the amp. That causes hissing. Good news is a skilled technician can replace them for half the price of a pair of 308's or DIY guy for 3 dollars.
 
No set of LSR30X's has existed long enough for the caps to dry out yet.
 
I literally just got my pair of LSR305's last night. The hiss is there, but it's really not an issue. Unless you are sorta weird and enjoy sitting a few inches away from the speakers with no source playing, these little suckers are amazing.

I have a set of Energy RC-10's powered by a Parsound amp and these mofos are incredible sounding and no fatiguing.

At first I thought I would need to hook up my Outlaw LFM-1 C sub, but these put out plenty of clean, tight bass to keep me happy!

Oh, and that soundstage doe. These have a pretty large sweet spot.

My setup:

LSR-305's.
Cambridge Azur 540 (Using as a pre for now, as to be able to hook up multiple sources).
AUDIOTRAK Prodigy HD2.
 
Kueller said:
No set of LSR30X's has existed long enough for the caps to dry out yet.
Click to expand...

I had a stage amp that sat for 3 years without use and its caps dried out. Are LSRs only 2 years in production?
 
well cnet's review (such as it is) of these speakers mention hiss at idle.. but they seem to be using unbalanced cables with them, and no mentioned if they tried them without the cables hooked to see if they still hissed or not?

personally it would drive me nutz (the hiss)
 
B00nie said:
I had a stage amp that sat for 3 years without use and its caps dried out. Are LSRs only 2 years in production?
Click to expand...

Yeah bro. Less actually. The LSR305/LSR308's with the Image Control Waveguide, based on the JBL M2 Master Reference design that JBL debuted in January 2013, were announced August 2013. The oldest examples are only about a year old.
 
I can only hear the hiss if I put my ear within a few inches of the tweeter. I can't hear it at all at my normal listening position about 2ft away with the normal ambient noise floor of the room.
 
I ordered the TEAC DAC I linked to in my first post, and it came today. I have some questions. I will be using the optical out on my mobo. Obviously I'll need to enable on-board audio, but will I need to install the drivers? How about with the DAC? TEAC has drivers for it, but I believe their only needed if you're using it with USB.

As for the LSR305's, now that I'll be using them with balanced XLR cables, will I need to change the input sensitivity, LF trim, or HF trim?
 
Kueller said:
Yeah bro. Less actually. The LSR305/LSR308's with the Image Control Waveguide, based on the JBL M2 Master Reference design that JBL debuted in January 2013, were announced August 2013. The oldest examples are only about a year old.
Click to expand...

LOL no wonder I didn't hear about them then until on this forum.
 
atarione said:
well cnet's review (such as it is) of these speakers mention hiss at idle.. but they seem to be using unbalanced cables with them, and no mentioned if they tried them without the cables hooked to see if they still hissed or not?

personally it would drive me nutz (the hiss)
Click to expand...

Why if you can't hear it during normal use? Before these speakers I had all kinds of multimedia speakers and I had an annoying noise from them that was clearly audible sometimes even from 5m away. Now that drived me nutz.

I couldn't be more satisfied with these speakers. Yes there is a hiss if I hold my ear 5cm from the speaker, and nothing is being played, but I don't care about that.
 
from what i can see it is rather common for active studio monitors to slightly hiss, fortunately it does not seem affect their playback so most of the time it can be ignored

My cheap-ish BX8 hiss (i just ignore it), and I read that even some fancy pants monitors like Genelecs and Equator Q series etc... also hiss
 
Bladestorm said:
I ordered the TEAC DAC I linked to in my first post, and it came today. I have some questions. I will be using the optical out on my mobo. Obviously I'll need to enable on-board audio, but will I need to install the drivers? How about with the DAC? TEAC has drivers for it, but I believe their only needed if you're using it with USB.

As for the LSR305's, now that I'll be using them with balanced XLR cables, will I need to change the input sensitivity, LF trim, or HF trim?
Click to expand...

It would be better to just use the USB connection so you get the benefit of a external USB dac instead of using the onboard codec and s/pdif optical to the Teac.

That Teac dac has a nice toroidal transformer PSU and well designed analog sections so I wouldn't possibly degrade it be letting some onboard codec handle the conversion to s/pdif optical unless the usb section of the teac wasn't as good as it's optical input was, and that shouldn't be the case looking at that model.

As for the HF and LF cuts / gains, you only need to adjust them if you are getting an unwanted bump or dip in the frequency response due to the placement of the monitors or the room's acoustics. You can check that by running a fft spectrum analyzer speaker calibration with a mic and a smartphone or pc with software but that is more important if you are actually doing production work and need a proper flat response from your monitors.

It is the same idea as if you calibrated your monitor for editing and / or post production using a meter and calibration software. Unless you have the tools to measure the response you don't need to change the settings except maybe you can tell by ear that there is too much or too little HF or LF and using the controls might help even it out.
 
M76 said:
Why if you can't hear it during normal use? Before these speakers I had all kinds of multimedia speakers and I had an annoying noise from them that was clearly audible sometimes even from 5m away. Now that drived me nutz.

I couldn't be more satisfied with these speakers. Yes there is a hiss if I hold my ear 5cm from the speaker, and nothing is being played, but I don't care about that.
Click to expand...


I'm sensitive to certain types of noise and if it was hissing when idle I would wind up being really annoyed if i could hear it as all... which likely i could ..for a brief time I as having hiss issues when using my Scarlett 2i2 with my vintage receiver (long balanced to unbalanced cable == hiss) about drove me up the god danged wall before I got it sorted.
 
undermined said:
It would be better to just use the USB connection so you get the benefit of a external USB dac instead of using the onboard codec and s/pdif optical to the Teac.

That Teac dac has a nice toroidal transformer PSU and well designed analog sections so I wouldn't possibly degrade it be letting some onboard codec handle the conversion to s/pdif optical...
Click to expand...
I like optical, because it doesn't connect the PC & DAC electrically. And I trust that onboard can provide bit-perfect output via Toslink; we're not really talking about converting anything.

But it's certainly easy enough to test both ways.
 
I've recently researched for a dac and from my understanding a Coax connection is preferred, followed by optical and then USB last. USB can be good but not all the time.

After reading a lot on it I ordered a dac from a DIY store in china based on Weiliang DAC 9
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/140940553466?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649
From all the reviews I've read this should compare really well to much higher(2-3x) priced dac. But no balanced output which I do no need anyway.

Will be happy to report when I receive mine.

Seems like this unit is pretty awesome for the price and there are even better dac with the ES9018 chip but I wanted to keep the price lower.

I plan to use either the optic from my sound blaster Z or i might try coax from the mobo.
 
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