Noisy Incandescent Lighbulbs

N

nicoff

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I have been replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs in the house. It has been on a need basis instead of deliberate. While in the process, I noticed that several (not all) incandescent bulbs had a very faint high frequency noise. I switched those bulbs to LEDs and the noise went away.

I have a lot of incandescent lightbulbs in my music room so I am now going to check if I need to replace those bulbs now rather than later.
 
I thought / read that LED’s bulbs are inherently very noisy?


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Swisstrips said:
I thought / read that LED’s bulbs are inherently very noisy?


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That is what I had also heard. I would have assumed that incandescent bulbs would actually put more less noise into the environment than LED. :dunno:

Note: I have replaced the can lights in my 2-channel room with Phillips HUE LED's and have not notice any impact on SQ. I just like the ability to adjust alll four lights individually via blue tooth.
 
It is a high pitch sound. You can hear it when you get close to them. They all have dimmer switches which may be a factor, but with LEDs the noise is gone.
I have 10 more bulbs (cans) in the room that I need to check.
 
The dimmers are where the noise is coming from. Incandescent bulbs (without dimmers) oscillate at 60 hz. You are fortunate the leds are quiet. Noise is their only drawback.
 
Swisstrips said:
I thought / read that LED’s bulbs are inherently very noisy?


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This has been my experience. No LED bulbs in my house now, all fluorescent. Any dimmers need to be off. My EMI meter says 40 mV on each of my dedicated lines.

Ken
 
Alpinist said:
This has been my experience. No LED bulbs in my house now, all fluorescent. Any dimmers need to be off. My EMI meter says 40 mV on each of my dedicated lines.

Ken
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The only fluorescent I have is under the kitchen cabinets, T5 bulbs on Control 4 switches - all else has been switched to LED, either bulb or fixture.

I can turn them on and off from my phone/iPad and you can hear a slight hum in the server only.

Think I’ll have that solved in the upcoming weeks.


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I attended an audio show at a local hotel about 8 year ago and one of the exhibitors told me that they experienced a sudden improvement in sound quality when the lights were turned off. They went to a local store, replaced the CFL bulbs in the room with incandescent bulbs and had better sound. More than one other exhibitor at the show had the same experience.
 
Alpinist said:
This has been my experience. No LED bulbs in my house now, all fluorescent. Any dimmers need to be off. My EMI meter says 40 mV on each of my dedicated lines.

Ken
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Flourescent are supposed to be the worst. :dunno:

There sure is quite bit of conflicting information out there.
 
A few years ago I used an Entech noise analyzer to check the effect of different lights on electrical noise. The CFL and LED bulbs were definitely the worst. I don’t recall which was worse between the two. Incandescents faired better if memory serves. I wonder if this isn’t another reason that our systems tend to sound better in the evening - fewer lights on.
 
UltraFast69 said:
Fluorescents use ballasts which get noisy as they get old


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Yes. In my experience fluorescent bulbs are the worst.

I also agree that my room is quieter when the lights are off. In my case, that can be a result of having multiple dimmers on multiple light sources.

The dimmer switch itself or the lightbulb can both be noisy. I recently replaced one of the dimmers (a 22 year old dimmer) with a new one. The noise at the light switch went away. Still need to check the lightbulbs.

By the same token, a single incandescent light connected to a dimmer switch has no noise at either place so I am leaving that one alone.
 
MPW said:
I wonder if this isn’t another reason that our systems tend to sound better in the evening - fewer lights on.
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interesting , in our house we have more lights on in the evening ............ :dunno:
 
MPW said:
Ha! Let me clarify. I meant late evening when most are in bed with lights out.
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gotcha, not to mention later at night very often less noise overall on ones AC mains

Probably has more to do with bourbon than anything. :weird:
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ahhhh, the most important 'tweak' of the all Morgan !
 
All fluorescent lamps use a plasma that illuminates a phosphorescent coating on the inside of the lamp. This plasma is a source of broadband radiated EMI.

CFL and standard fluorescent lamps using electronic ballasts have switching power supplies which conduct interference into the mains.

LED lamps have switching power supplies which conduct interference into the mains.

Incandescent dimmers use duty cycle modulation which creates high frequency noise.

I have all the dimmers in the house on one phase (leg) and the audio equipment on the opposite phase (leg) which helps mitigate interference.

All these devices are not built the same so I use an EMI meter to find and return led lamps that are noisy.

I have found Lutron dimmers to be the quietest.
 
W9TR said:
I have all the dimmers in the house on one phase (leg) and the audio equipment on the opposite phase (leg) which helps mitigate interference.
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Bingo !! ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner !!

Tom, agreed 100%
 
still-one said:
Flourescent are supposed to be the worst. :dunno:

There sure is quite bit of conflicting information out there.
Click to expand...

Hi Jim,

I measure everything with the EMI Meter. My fluorescent bulbs produce minimal EMI. The LED bulbs I tried were noisy. But this was awhile ago. Maybe the new ones are better. Which LED bulbs do you recommend?

Ken
 
There are a few types of noise in lights
1- dimmer it makes two kinds
RFI and physical noise to the bulb and it’s self.
2- bulbs old Incandescent bulbs are bad at acoustical noise the filament vibrates. A heavy duty bulb makes less noise as it has more supports inside
led are both acoustical and RFI as well.

most systems have no filter for the RFI much less what’s going onto the power lines
a balanced iso fixes this.
there are specs on all ul listed products to help you but in the end it’s trial and error
to me fluorescent is best. No acoustical or RFI I ever head.
dimmer emit less acoustic and rfi.
of you go led you Need a 4 wire system
this means 2 wires 120 volt
2 low voltage 0-10 volt to dim the leds.
This is best it’s being used in my ausio room
 
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