Beresfored headphone disortion mystery

[Lapfanne]

Hi,
I recently bought a used Beresford Caiman 7520SE and have a problem with the headphone output.

I have a bad sound and a lot of distortion when I connect my AKG headphone with the Caiman headphone output and the caiman is connected to my Marantz CD67SE. It does not matter if it is via optical or via coax, I have also tried differrent cables also. The sound is also fine using CD player DAC over the loadspeakers using the line output of the DAC, amplifier and the CD player.

The sound is perfect on the headphone if the source is not the CD player but my squeezebox touch connected to the Caiman DAC. Also using the headphones directly with the CD player offers proper sound. At least I can say, the problem is neither the headphone, nor the cable nor the selected piece of music.

Did anybody ever experienced something similar? Any idea what causes the problem?

Lars

[StanleyB]

If you unplug whatever you have connected to the output sockets on the DAC, you should find that the sound is OK then.
The reason for that is that your amplifier has an input arrangement that shorts out its inputs when the amp is OFF. And that in turn is shorting the audio to ground, which then causes the distorted sound.

[Lapfanne]

Thanks Stan, for the quick reply.Looking forward leaving the office to check.
I will let you know!

[Lapfanne]

Thanks Stan,
looks like it is working well with the workaround you recommended. :)
Also thanks for answering my question for the PSU in the other thread.
Greetings from Hamburg
Lars

[StanleyB]

I am pleased that you got it sorted now :).