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How to guarantee to lower noise- ground loops in your system

I have been through many problem area where noise in the  audio chain was a problem.
my friend Who is a Electrician solved the problem . All too many times people add a dedicated 20 amp circuit 12awg is standard 11-10awg even better lower resistance , also most important 
you need a Isolated dedicated ground, this is totally insulated right back to the earth ground in the 
breaker box this will dramatically lower your noise floor and remove ground loop problems .many people just put a dedicated line and think 
that’s it ,not so, if you are going to go through the trouble, then  for maybe $100 more the isolated dedicated ground  to the dedicated circuit is a must. I can tell you without question .
my Audio has a noticably quieter background .in songs i now hear low level musical artifacts like reverb off a guitar fading cymbals and clearer seperation of instruments .well worth the effort .Hopefully 
this will help others .this is a essential system upgrade .
128x128audioman58

Showing 3 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,632 posts
 
What many people don’t realize no matter how good your equipment design is if you are feeding ground off
the same circuits you can pickup noise
@audioman58  This actually isn't universally true. Its only true if the audio equipment puts current through the ground connection, which if its properly designed, it won't.


What sends up a red flag for me is, if doing this made a difference, then we know that some equipment in the system has a problem. When we then know that the designer blew it when he/she designed the grounding scheme, how many other aspects of the internal grounding are correct? The thing about ground loops is even if you don't hear them as a buzz, they still affect the sound via intermodulation.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,632 posts
 
Yikes! a topic like this certainly brings out a lot of ... stuff.

It is this simple:

1) the house wiring should be to code2) you will not experience a ground loop unless your equipment has a grounding problem.


Despite an enormous amount of information available, an amazing amount of 'high end' audio manufacturers exercise poor grounding technique in their products (put another way: don't know what they are doing).  If the chassis and circuit ground are the same thing, that causes the device to be vulnerable to ground loops introduced externally (IOW, from other equipment).


If adding alternate grounding systems causes an improvement, its a good sign that equipment in your system employs a poor grounding scheme.




atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,632 posts
 
Eliminating ground loops has more to do with product design than electrical wiring, the latter of which should simply be to code.

If messing with already code wiring makes an improvement, that points to problems in the equipment itself.

The balanced line system has as one of its goals the elimination of ground loops, since ground is ignored when sending signals in interconnect cables. Most 'high end audio' products ignore this simple fact though- buyer beware.
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