Hello,
New old user here – It’s been months (heck maybe a year!) since I last posted and I forgot my username
Memory is not what is used to be.
Not sure if this is old news but I’ll through it out there.
For any Rotel RB-1080 (maybe others as well) owners:
I ran into the hum from both speakers issue and had a raspy left loudspeaker. The left speaker was distorting on the high end (cymbals sounded nasty).
I got into the amp and saw that Rotel has a resistor/capacitor circuit connected to the speaker terminals inside the unit. Here’s the problem: if the speaker terminals have rotated (even a little) those RC’s have probably been broken.
My damage was caused when a speaker cable got yanked by a rabid vacuum cleaner.
It’s an easy fix if you’re lucky: just solder the resistor back to the capacitor.
If your terminals are OK be aware of that circuit and go easy on the terminals when tightening and resist the temptation to vacuum the speaker cables.
For some reason (maybe the lack of a real earth ground on my 4802R) this fixed the hum:
I used a piece of heavy speaker wire between the chassis of the Rotel (one of the split foil cap mounting screws) and the Denon’s phono ground. That fixed the hum and restored the full performance of the amp. The 1080 really came to life after the Rotel's chassis was connected to the Denon's chassis.
Cheers,
Eric
