Mains sockets and star earth - can anyone explain?


The vendor of my mains isolation strip advised me the following by email:

To avoid any unwanted grounding problems and to get the best performance out of your system you should power all electronics of your system, no matter if they are wired with or without a grounded cable  out of one wall socket (starred earth reference)

Can anyone explain what this means, especially with reference to starred earth?

I now have my amp plugged directly into one socket of my 2-socket wall plate, and my isolation strip (for my sources) plugged into the other socket.  What difference does this make to earthing?  Surely, a neighbouring wall plate will have its earth connected to every other wall plate in the room by parallel wiring between the plates.

Note: all my cabling is shielded with the shield connected to the earth pin.

128x128lollipopguild

Showing 1 response by cleeds

lollipopguild

Surely, a neighbouring wall plate will have its earth connected to every other wall plate in the room by parallel wiring between the plates.

In the US, it's much more likely that the wiring is done in series, and that's the problem. A dedicated line avoids all those extra connections.

What's important to avoid ground loops is keeping all grounds at the same potential. Plugging everything into one outlet is only one way to achieve that.