Nord A1 "Hum" from Power Supply

[Blackbelt Jones]

Hello all,

New A1 user. I noticed my Nord A1 has a consistent low-level audible "hum" emanating from the power supply area when I power it on. It hums like this until I turn it off - it isn't what I would call "loud" but it certainly is noticeable. Is this typical of A1s or Nord Leads in general? None of my other synths do this, but none of my other synths have internal power supplies! Sorry if this is a daft or paranoid sounding question, but my A1 cost me a few $$$ and I just want to make sure it is performing as it should be.

Thanks all!

Edit - I should note that I am in North America where we use 120V, 60Hz.

[RedLeo]

Synths (and any other gear with onboard power supplies) can often exhibit this acoustic hum from the power supply. It's not harmful and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your gear. It's basically just something vibrating in sympathy with the mains transformer. It can be loose or insufficiently damped mounting bolts, any metal shielding, metalwork in the transformer itself and so on. Sometimes you can open your synth, find the offending part and dampen it, move it a bit, or otherwise tighten it down. Sometimes (eg if it's the transformer itself) you probably can't. It's just the luck of the draw whether your gear hums or buzzes, what frequency it's vibrating at, and how loud or annoying it is. Also some brands and models are more likely to have this problem than others due to the way they were designed.

You've guessed correctly that anything with an external transformer won't have this problem, and most external power supplies don't hum themselves because they usually have plastic housings. In a particularly serious case, you could probably request (if the instrument is still under warranty) a replacement and then hope that the new one doesn't suffer from the same thing.

Edit: Actually, there is another source of annoying hum which is the front panel LCD display, but I don't know anything about why they hum or whine.

A lot of the time you just have to put up with it. I used to have two pieces of gear, a Roland A50 and a Korg Wavestation, that whined very loudly about a quarter tone apart. Drove me round the bend.

[Blackbelt Jones]

Thanks for the reply RedLeo. I got word back from Clavia support that there is nothing wrong with the unit... its just that some hum. At any rate, I feel better that this is normal. The hum itself gets lost in the white noise generated by my DAW, so at the end of the day it's not a big deal... I just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with my new favorite synth!