WHY oh WHY do monitors have hiss?!?

[Bwaslo]

Add that LF drivers can radiate HF hiss (just not gracefully) but tweeters and mids are highpass won't radiate bass.

 

[ZolaIII]

The old self noise list:

Hiss List (S&R)

Lots of discussion about hiss lately, how perceptible or annoying it is, and if it matters. I've created a sheet with Sound & Recording measurements of hiss in active loudspeakers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n62hGAdKptSSKC74_fIT_R7DxFJ60YR2_O9C8x-vYQI/edit?usp=sharing Viewers can...

www.audiosciencereview.com

In last 6~7 years all of this whose discussed more times then I can remember.

 

[DanielT]

Witch's brew consisting of 109 dB sensitive compression drivers, active crossover (no passive components), lots of thin long unbalanced RCA cables (picknup noise). Gain settings twisted wrong (both in and out dito) on the active crossover.....

Am I frying eggs in the living room? Damn it, it sounded bad.


So yup with high sensitive drivers plus wrong settings/ connections it can be a hifi hell. But it's just a hobby and noise is not the end of the world. Just switch, set the right gain, get the right type of cables. Do it right and the noise disappeared.
Or it almost completely disappeared. It was not a desktop solution so the listening distance was in its favor not to hear the little noise that was left if I listened close to the drivers.

 

[Timcognito]

Witch's brew consisting of 109 dB sensitive compression drivers, active crossover (no passive components), lots of thin long unbalanced RCA cables (picknup noise). Gain settings twisted wrong (both in and out dito) on the active crossover.....

Am I frying eggs in the living room? Damn it, it sounded bad.


So yup with high sensitive drivers plus wrong settings/ connections it can be a hifi hell. But it's just a hobby and noise is not the end of the world. Just switch, set the right gain, get the right type of cables. Do it right and the noise disappeared.
Or it almost completely disappeared. It was not a desktop solution so the listening distance was in its favor not to hear the little noise that was left if I listened close to the drivers.

Watch it, I was told a few posts back that RFI and EMI have nothing to do with the topic. But that said I agree in more than a few cases they are the source.

 

[LSPhil]

My miniDSP shows the output noise in dB. On my setup the woofer channel (K4) sits at around –90 dB, while the tweeter channel (K3) is closer to –70 dB. When I listen to music at about +70 dB SPL in the room, that noise is effectively sitting down at 0 dB relative to my listening level.
Personally, I only start noticing the hiss from about +20 dB if I really try. And yes, gentlemen, I’m afraid there’s no miracle here: with increasing frequency there will always be a bit more noise on the tweeter channel. That’s just the physics of the game.
But honestly, it doesn’t bother me while listening to music. By the time the music is playing, the gentle wind brushing against my window is already louder than the hiss. It actually adds a certain seasonal ambience — a touch of the four seasons, if you will. The rest of the magic is handled by a good drink and some Bach in the background.
So in short: yes, the hiss exists. No, it doe

sn’t ruin the music. And if it ever does, I’ll simply blame the wind.

 

[olds1959special]

All my studio monitors hiss, especially when turned up. The sound is totally inaudible unless your ear is next to the speaker.

 

[Head_Unit]

Tweeters in passive circuits are usually heavily padded down to match the mid and especially woofer's sensitivity

This is an interesting point with a few aspects. A lot of speakers these days are becoming less and less sensitive (84 dB!?!) so no you won't hear hiss. An active monitor could use a higher impedance less sensitive tweeter however I bet the designers generally do not get the budget and development time to figure that out. (And I must admit it is a long time since I made a tweeter; higher impedance would usually imply thinner wire, maybe a limit is hit at some point).

 

[DVDdoug]

Slightly off-topic hiss story -

I think it was the 70s when I was in high school that I went to a house with a high-end system. (Our family had a minimal stereo.) The speakers were full-size Empire cylindrical speakers which were "famous" at the time. The dad was playing a somewhat distant FM station and the FM hiss from the tweeters was HORRIBLE! And it was just at background-music level so not turned-up which would have made the hiss worse. I couldn't believe that's what he was listening to with such a nice setup!!! I assume he was an "audiophile" but as a kid I was a more-picky listener.

 

[popej]

An active monitor could use a higher impedance less sensitive tweeter

In an active speaker, you simply tune amplifier gain to driver sensitivity. Lower gain, then lower noise too. L-pad attenuator is not an advantage of passive speaker, but a forced solution for sensitivity mismatch.