Hey all -
So I put together my crack more or less a month ago, it passed all of the checks, and until recently the sound was crystal clear with zero audible noise. Quick equipment overview:
- Crack w/o speedball (waiting to install speedball until it had some time to break in for reasons just like this)
- Schiit Magni 2 Uber DAC (also the Modi amp but crack is what I'm using now)
- Sennheiser HD650
Yesterday, I was playing a PC game with friends and noticed that when the game started up, there was distinct crackling in the right ear. I figured it was some kind of interference from the graphics card that the crack was more sensitive to, so I switched over to my Modi and all was well. I had noticed this before to a lesser extent with other games that put my computer at load, so I didn't think too much of it - figured I'd do some research on how to mitigate that interference. Today I wanted to figure out what was wrong exactly, so I switched back to the crack and now there is a distinct white noise hiss in both ears, perhaps a little louder in the left - it's quiet but absolutely audible, and is not affected by the position of the potentiometer. However, when I turn the potentiometer all the way clockwise, 80%+, there exists a loud hum like when you plug a guitar lead halfway into an amp that's powered on (I would never actually run the amp that loud, but I don't remember it doing that when I was testing it right after building). All of these sounds persist even with no input source attached and in a room with no large electronics, except the crackling which only happens from interference it seems.
I'm kind of at a loss for what to do right now - I absolutely love this amp and I'm pretty upset that it's started acting up when I've barely had time to use it. Really hoping I can pin down the reason and get it working right again.