One more solution for 5si hum

Hi!

I’ve found that lots of people are struggling through the noise issues with different Naim amplifiers. Last week I acquired the brand new 5si and faced the very same thing. I should say it is a totally exhausting experience. However, I managed to find quite a working but an exotic solution.
At the moment I’m using the well-known WXAD-10 as the main source. When I turned on 5si for the very first time I heard some unpleasant noise when the volume was at 11-12 o’clock. Needless to say, I was immediately hit by the blast of fear, emptiness, and despair. When I added a sub to the system, things became even worse - an unpleasant noise at 9 o’clock. Luckily, there were no one nail in the wall and no rope that able to hold the weight of an adult pig :slight_smile:
When some thinking returned to my brain, I remembered that I have a small bucket full of smartphone chargers. I started trying them all and found that the one, from Yamaha, was the worst. Some were quite good, Sony, Xiaomi. And one, from Samsung, was just excellent - the noise significantly reduced(sic!) when I connected the streamer using this adapter.
I have no idea how come that happened, but the fact is that the noise becomes audible about at 3 o’clock which is good!

To check things twice, I dismantled the system, started from the amplifier without any input connected. The audible noise at 11-12 o’clock. Adding WXAD-10 with the Samsung adapter decreases the noise as if it produces the noise of the opposite phase. However, adding sub makes things worse.
I once tried to replace the WXAD streamer with Node 2i and had another blast of fear, emptiness, and despair. So, no more experiments with Node 2i :slight_smile: I’m staying with WXAD until I find something significantly better.

A couple of things I added later:

  1. Plus power filter and that reduces the noise a bit
  2. Minus sub. Need some time to think if I really need this guy for my Spendor 3/5.

My 5si had a really loud buzz which was stopped dead by a DC blocker. I got one from David at MCRU but I guess any brand would work.
Nice speakers by the way. I have S3/5Rs with no sub.

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A dedicated power supply and decent power lead and earth lead from dac no filters, on 5i 2

I’ve never had a problem with my 5i-2 apart from once and when i removed and re-inserted interconnects the hum dissappeared. But boy you have your system on loud as i’ve never really played my system past nine oclock as it gets too loud. i use an olsen pdu with earth point which is connected to the ac wall socket earth pin but i don’t really know if this has solved any potential issue. My system is always silent now.

Nine is just enough for me. However, I prefer to set about ten and then use the phone to control the volume as some tracks are a bit silent.

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