Interesting question....very subjective....with no possible correct answer.
House is wired partly with BX...is the circuit in question wholly BX back to the panel with proper and tight connectors?
Not all breakers trip you know, sure U.L. says they do but it doesn't mean it is so. I was foreman on a 12 million dollar addition/remodel to a sears store. You could take any hot from any panel and weld it to the box from the fault current and then sit there and watch it hum.... (btw before we pulled grounds in all the conduits the fault current to ground could be as little as 4 amperes)
26 panels in this building, the grounding conductor rang at 3 ohms to earth from the farthest. Explain it?....how can I?..except to speculate about 40 year old breakers and how they were built....
An audible hum in my experience can happen far below the trip threshold of most breakers but only when the ground reference is compromised otherwise the fault would trip the breaker almost instantly.
Wires can start "singing" with as little as 5 amperes of current when they are not balanced with a neutral enclosed in the same conduit.
Anyone working with the early hydraulic elevators will tell you about hearing the wire "slapping" against the inside of the pipe each time the motor cycled. (the wires actually try to straighten out each time the load is applied, but are restricted by the bends in the conduit.)
anyway if you choose to give more information we can try to give a better answer...but right now all I can say is that I doubt there is any "mega" current flow going on. If there is you should verify it with an amprobe, then you will have a documented fault and ask the place to pay you to fix it.....:)
