This is incredibly surprising. I've run some very careful tests with headphones, and my headphone amplifier turned to the maximum position and I was not able to find hardly any noise. Obviously at some level there has to be perceptible noise, but I couldn't hear any with music at any volume. My setup has the volume at 0.0dB using an external volume control. I didn't check for noise using the empeg's digital volume control. The empeg has less noise than my Technics CD player, and my Ah! Njoe Tjoeb 4000 (vacuum tube output amped). The 4000 is considered audiophile quality and it's perceptible noise levels are a thousand times more than the empeg.

Calvin