It could be a ground loop created by having your basement equipment plugged into one electrical circuit and the stuff upstairs on another. Perhaps as a test you could temporarily run an extension cord down to the basement so that all of your equipment can be plugged into the same electrical source.
RF picked up from cable
I just upgraded my preamp (from Superphon Revelation II to VTL 2.5) and was picking up annoying RF interference--a radio station I don't recognize--on phono stage only, loud enough to be really irritating. I wondered whether this might be entering from a couple of long RCA interconnects that I use to connect with a second system in my basement study. Disconnecting the unshielded 40-foot Radio Shack interconnects I am currently using (while looking for something better but still cheap) from tape out to my downstairs integrated amp did nothing; but disconnecting the shielded cables that carry the downstairs output back to Aux in stopped the noise. Weird! Any suggestions on how to kill the noise while staying connected? (I once had this problem with long speaker cables to a second system, and the only solution I found was to install knife switches and just live with the noise when I wanted to run the remote speakers. But that was many years ago on a cheap receiver.)
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