Hi Kevin,
my setup is very like yours, except: I don’t have a turntable attached, and I don’t have a subwoofer. My speakers are KEF Ref3.
No distortion I can tell, so far.
Which volume level are you using on the Brooklyn ? (the number on the display)
BTW, is there any specific song you are using for test ?
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Hi inaki
This is what I posted earlier in the thread
I have noticed it with CD’s. Off the top of my head I have albums by Pavement and Echo And The Bunnymen that have songs that suffer.
The worst is track 3 called Over The Wall on the album Heaven Up Here by Echo and The Bunnynen. On my CD between about 1min and 10 secs and 1 min 30 secs approximately there are two sort of staccato electric rhythm guitar riffs, each lasting several seconds. Sounds absolutely fine while listening on headphones, but terrible on speakers, so I know it’s not the way the CD has been mastered. The streaming track on Qobuz (played through Roon with no DSP)has exactly the same faults through speakers, so it’s not just the CD that I am experiencing it with. I have never noticed this distortion before and I have been playing this song many times over the years with various amps and speakers.
Perhaps anybody who has Qobuz or Tidal could try playing this song and see if they notice distortion on the guitar in the period of the song between 1min 10 secs and 1 min 30 secs, this might put me out my misery if other people are hearing the same lol.
Volume probably about -35, there or thereabouts. Nothing too loud, but certainly not quite
Well, i have tried “Over the wall” from TIDAL master edition. Between 1:10 and 1:45 there is some guitar playing behind the drums, and the same pattern repeats again on 4:50. To me the sound is the same on both parts. Do you feel any difference between these two parts? Certainly the track is dense and full of sound so it is difficult to say anything is wrong.
Hi Inaki. I dont think there is distortion at 4.50.
I’m going to audition new speakers on Wednesday and I’ll take the CD with me and play that track, be interesting to see if still happens.
You’ve switched speaker connections left/right, but not your balanced line level connections, have you?
Hi Marlin, no I didnt switch the balanced cables.
Can you elaborate on what needs done here? Is it swap the red and black end of the balanced cables round on the terminals of the pre amp, and then do exactly the same with the red and black end of the balanced cables on the terminals of the power amp? Or is it swap the red and black on terminals of pre, but leave them in correct red and black terminals on the power amp?
I know I’m being thick, but I know how things are meant to be when they are correctly connected, but I’ve no idea what is required when troubleshooting things like this! I’ve also got a massive fear of blowing something up lol.
Try as in quote above.
What we want is changing right with left channel from pre to power amp to see if distortion moves with it or not.
And don’t forget to switch off the amp when changing connections, of course!
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Yeah, unplugging or plugging in stuff when it’s switched on can result in the “magic smoke” being released. Once it’s released, there is no way to put it back. Procurement of new devices is the only remedy…
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Still the same, distortion on track moved to right speaker, previously on left. Possibly not quite as bad, but maybe because volume not as loud as before when testing because its a bit late and neighbours next door have a baby ,so dont want to wake her up.
Be interesting to see what happens if I do get new speakers on Wednesday and fault still there when I get them home. I’m also going to take the CD along with me to the audition and I’ll get the opportunity to hear if there is distortion when playing that CD at the hifi dealer.
New devices has been my plan all along, just dont tell the wife lol
So it seems to be coming from the DAC/pre.
A last test would be exchanging red and black terminals on amp now, to verify it’s not related in any way to the cable itself.
Yesterday I removed the XLR cables and used RCA analogue cables instead and was getting the same distortion, so that would rule out fault with XLR’s?
Most likely, yes…
Unless you can think of anything else, I guess we just need to shelve this till Wednesday and see what happens with the new speakers, assuming I like them and bring them home.
If the fault still exists with the new speakers it’s back to the drawing board I suppose, and at least I’ll have new speakers. I hadn’t planned on getting them till nearer the end of the year, it will just have brought the purchase of them forward.
I’ll still have the problem, but I would still have the problem regardless of what speakers I had 
Personally I would have solved the problem first. Your current speakers may surprise you as it doesn’t appear to be them.
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Yeah probably, but like I say it’s just gave me the excuse to buy speakers now, instead of a few months down the line.
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That was tried about two or three days ago, somebody on another forum suggested it but as you can guess it didn’t work. Thanks for another suggestion though, much appreciated.
Running out of ideas, so keep buying new equipment until fixed…
I’d start at DAC/pre, though…
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The same is true for many hobbies. Back in the days when I did a lot of road cycling/mountain biking, many of us would squirrel away parts and components in the shed over a period of months only to eventually appear with a brand new bike build. The appearance of which, when questioned by SWMBO as to whether it was a new bike would be met by a reply of “No, silly, it’s just that you probably don’t remember seeing it as I haven’t used it as much as my nine other bikes”
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