Noise floor

[Beethoven]

Hey everybody!
I am proud owner of a PB for a few weeks and really really love it!

The only thing i am not happy about is there is a big hearable amount of background noise an nearly every preset. It varies a little between presets (due to the selected voice output level), but it is always there and hearable.
I just wonder if my device is defect or this is a normal behaviour and i have to live with it. Have you noticed background noise on your machine too? A good example (if you kept some factory presets) is 1.B3 (cinematic strings).

The noise is present on the main outs (connected to mixer) as well as on phone output. And i tried different headphones of course.

all the best
alex

[StudioDeutz]

I know what you mean and put it to the analogue technology of the synth - but I am not sure.
Let's see what DrJustice thinks about it....

[DrJustice]

Heh,.. I don't have any authoritative info/opinion on that. IME, it's not a particularly noisy synth, as in noise not being an issue at all for me. We all have different tolerance for these thing though. Of course, if I crank it and listen to it in isolation, I can hear hear some noise - no way around that with an analogue poly - but it's nothing that affects the normal operation for me.

[Progenitor]

I also noticed a higher level of noise even when turned off and realized that the Polybrute is very sensitive to noisy power. I had it temporarily plugged directly into the wall and I was getting significant noise while the gain was cranked even when the unit was turned off. After plugging into a good power conditioner with AC noise filtration the noise dropped by a significant amount. At normal gain levels it became almost undetectable.

[tobiasphilippen]

Hi,

thank you very much for this suggestion. Actually, someone recommended the same thing, but as the proposed a device costs around 200 EUR, I did not jump at it immediately.

For me, too, the PB is extremely noisy. So much so, that I was muting its channels when not using it and sometimes thinking of using a noise reduction plugin in the recordings. Thing is, that I have lots of analog polysynth (Prophet 5, Prophet 6, Alesis Andromeda, Roland JX-3P) as well as a host of analog mono synth, and none of them comes even close to the PB in terms of noise floor (well the JX-3P with Chorus on does ...). It seemed so strange to me, that I even sent in the PB, but support told me, it worked fine.

Do you happen to have recommendations for "good power supply"? Thanks.

[Michael_G]

Could it be a ground loop ?
I would suggest you unplug all your equipment, plug your PB alone into the wall then plug your headphones into the PB itself and listen to it. Do you still have noise ?
If you have no more noise, you probably have a ground loop when all your equipment is plugged in.
It happened to me (with other gear) and breaking the ground loop cleaned everything up.

[tobiasphilippen]

Thanks for your reply, Michael. Actually, I already tried that, so plugged the PB straight into the wall before switching on anything else in the studio (apart from the light). Did not change the noise issues at all.

But I have ordered a Furman M-10x E now, which is supposed to "clean", i.e. filter, the power. I will report back whether I could get rid of the issue like that.