I have my Denon 3805 hooked up to my Computer for playing iTunes. I used a 36 foot RCA cable from the miniplug on my PC. I can hear the music just fine but there is a loud hum present when its is set on that input.
There is an equalizer and volume control on iTunes software as well as settings on the XP OS as well. Has anyone experienced this problem? I want to try to get this fixed so I cam listen to good quality music in my living room without having to open any music CD's.... Thanks, This Board Rocks!
The problem is with your 36 foot RCA cable and the miniplug. It is prone to a lot of interference. You might consider a thicker cabler with lots of shielding plus shorter runs.
Good point, I see that that might be the issue. But, It is just run underneath the carpet. It does not go by any electrical devices at all. Would a more robust sound card make any difference?
I understand your point, but the problem is still your cable and not your sound card. Try this experiment, bring your receiver closer and use a shorter cable. Then check for the noise.
Right! I am going to buy a good one from Fry's. It is not that I don't believe that moving it closer will help. It is that I can not. My receiver is in my living room and my computer is in the Study. In hind sight I should have paid 120.00 for an Air port probably..... Any recommendations on a sound card that might help me(even though a shorter cable would be optimal) I don't know much about audio cards... Thanks Kano, Thanks Berny...
No idea on the sound card I'm afraid. However, I believe the problem has not really been identified here. Provided the cable has been put together properly and is half decently screened and nowhere near large electrical sources (fridges, freezers, washing machine etc), it's likely that the cable length is not the issue.
I believe the problem is that an earth loop has been introduced caused by different earth polarities of the receiver and computer. This often happens when two devices that are connected electrically are on different ring main circuits, since the earth of those circuits may differ (even though they go back to the same consumer unit).
One way around the problem would be to use an optical cable instead of (the admittedly superior) copper cable. Alternatively, try plugging the computer or the 3805 into different sockets in the walls. This may be enough to drop the potential difference and reduce the hum. If you see any change, then this is your problem and the guaranteed way of removing the hum completely is to use an optical link since there is no electrical connection with this.
Wow! That is really very interesting Frank. I will investigate that theory tonight and let everyone know the results. Earth loop? Never heard of it but it sounds legitimate to me. Thanks!
Dan989s8565
Unregistered guest
Posted on
It is definatly caused by using differnt circuits or dirty power, as a test goto radio shack and get a ground lifter its a jack that is missing the 3rd wire gound, plug ure computer power into that and plug it in to the wall, your computer will now share the same ground as your audio equipment through the rca cables you are using, make sure u still have it surged supressed....this is just a quick fix, though not recomended and can be hasardous but it works...
ANSWER: First of all I appreciate everyones input and I have learned alot from you....
$16.95 : Groud Loop Isolator Wins the prize.
Despite the 36 foot RCA cable, despite an on-board Audio card with just a mini jack line out.
I connected it on the computer side and it added 5 more feet to the length, but it now sounds really good! Not Hum at all! True it is in Apples compressed version of MP3 but I never have to open another CD case again. Many times I think.. "I would like to hear "Shine on you crazy diamond." For instance. But then think.." I don't know where in the CD's it will be, Is it in the car?" No more scratching CD's either.
I will keep my SACD's separate until I can play them off the Computer at a true resolution....
The Ground Loop Isolator does a similar thing to using a fibre optic cable by decoupling the two components in the electrical sense.
iTunes is a music library management system. It allows you to rip CDs to the computer's hard disc, to buy and download tracks from online music stores and to manage the music stored on your iPod(s). It does other things too. You can create playlists which are effectively compilation lists of stuff you like. For example you can create a playlist of late night music (naughty!) or driving music, or best of Jazz etc. When playing you just play the playlist. Alternatively you can stream music through your home wirelessly if you buy the Airport Express hardware so you could have multiroom capabilities without the wires with fairly good - or even very good - quality, depending on the format you've stored the music in.
iTunes understands several music formats, such as lossless compression, MP3 or AAC. This means that when you rip a CD to the disc you can choose whether to store the content as high quality lossless, or as a lower quality lossy compression of MP3 or AAC. Not only that but you can also choose what quality MP3 or AAC to store as - for example if the content is an audio book (spoken word), you could choose the lowest quality to save space. If you want the best lossy compression mechanism you'd use AAC since for the same bitrate (e.g 128k), AAC sounds better than MP3. Alternatively, if you share your music with others who don't have iPods, and therefore don't understand AAC which is iPod-specific, you'll have to choose to store the music in MP3 format which is pretty much universal. Incidentally, you can convert MP3 files to AAC if you wish. An MP3 file converted to AAC sounds better than the original MP3 file, but not quite as good as an AAC file that was created from scratch off a CD.
open iTunes Click on Edit Click Preferences Click the tab on "Importing" It will show options "import using: AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3, WAV" Click on your preferences
Then on the same tab, you have "setting", this gives different rates.
It would be of best quality if you use "Apple Lossless Encoder"
I've done some testing using ProTools and outputting either via an AudioMedia card or back to AIFF on my PC and there are definetely pros and cons to the AAC. 1 - I'm not convinced it's better at the higher Khz. If quality is the goal then there are some MP3 rippers out there that can surpass it. Or just go with AIFF, the music industry standard (but you better own stock in Maxtor or Seagate) And the incompatibility of AAC with nearly everything but iTunes and iPods can become frustrating. If it's going to stay on that PC/MAC and/or iPod, AAC is a good choice. But hey, you never know what you might want to do in the future and converting twice gets old.
With all that said I settled on 192kHz MP3. This, IMO gives good quality, compatibilty and file size. With that said, this still doesn't even come close to the original CD-Audio.