When the Stellar is on or off, I can hear the slightest little clicking inside the amp when I’m very close to the amp-- is this the power supply? It’s such a slight little sound that I can’t hear it when listening to music.
Reminded me a bit of when I would turn off my tube amp and the tubes would make a tinkling sound as they cooled off.
Hi windansea,
This is normal and is not a sign of an issue with your unit. When the front button is not illuminated, some supplies in the amp go into what is called a burst mode. Burst mode usually is a drastic lowering or modification in switching frequency in order to boost efficiency under light loads. The noise is caused by LF ripple exciting piezoelectric properties in certain power supply components.
When the front button is pressed, all power supplies are taken out of burst mode and the ticking will not be present.
Thank you for the explanation.
I’m very happy with this amp. I prefer it over my old Krell. In fact, I’m planning to purchase a second one.
I have two sets of maggies-- mini maggies, and MMGs. I’ve tried running both sets of speakers simulatenously with two amps and it’s great, all the perfect sound of the mini maggies (3 way with ribbon) plus the expanded sound stage of the MMGs (2 way, but more surface area). So now I’m thinking of bi-amping with 2 Stellar S300s. One amp driving the left side, one amp driving the right. But I need to split the XLR from the DAC without degrading the signal too much since the S300 has dual inputs. I’m going to try a simple Y-splitter cable first:
If anyone knows of a better approach, I’d love to hear it.
An XLR splitter will work fine and will not degrade the sound.