Hi Gary,

It's certainly a strange one...

I only hear it when something is plugged into the mic socket, even if it's only a 3.5mm to 6mm jack adaptor (the one I use in the headphone socket to shut the speakers off when listening through the hi-fi).

There are 4 ways for me to make the hiss and buzz disappear completely... either switch the noise gate on, mute the mic, or reduce the mic's volume slider considerably (all within the 'overall mic settings' tab).

The 4th way is to simply unplug the adaptor (or mic) from the mic socket.

As you say though, no one operates these keyboards at maximum levels (and the noise gate would generally be on) so I don't really mind that the hiss is audible at those levels... but it's interesting that yourself and others don't hear any.

Cheers,
Rich

lol Don, just seen that!

Here's a sample recorded from the fixed level phono outs.

Hiss and buzz (317KB)

The first 10 secs is the general hiss at a higher master volume level once the mic input socket has been 'activated' (there was silence before).

The rest of the sample introduces the buzz as I gradually raise the mic trim from minimum to maximum.

For this experiment I used the adaptor to activate the mic socket, but it's the same when the mic is plugged in.

I've normalised this to 0dB... it isn't this loud in real life.

Cheers,
Rich

Don,

That's a long way to go for a groan. Good job.

Finally, after many attempts, I was able to get some hiss. However, in order to do this, I had to turn off the noise gate, as UD said, then turn the main keyboard volume all the way up, turn the front panel volume all the way up, then turn up the trim pot to where I was on the verge of feedback. Then I got the hiss. Like I said, much higher than normal operating levels. When things were set to normal level, even with the noise gate turned off, there was no perceptable hiss. Oh, I'm sure it was somewhere deep in the background, but not at perceptable levels.

Now I guess the next question that comes to mind is why would you want to turn off the noise gate? I always figured this was to provide sufficient input level to trigger the keyboard's vocal effects. "This effect mutes the input signal when the input from the microphone falls below a specified level. This effectively cuts off extraneous noise, allowing the desired sig-nal(vocal, etc.) to pass." Sounds just fine to me either way when the keyboard is set at normal operating levels.

Gary

Now I know why people are always telling me to hiss off...........I think