static charge


The ground in the female receptacle of a DAC I am auditioning is not conected (by design, to help eliminate the possibility of hum). My listening room has alot of static, probably because of the synthetic carpeting and all my equipment. Whenever I touch any metal (the DAC, the rack, other pieces of equipment) I get a small static shock. However, with the DAC in the system, everything now shuts off for a second or two, and then comes back on. If I remove the DAC I still get the shock, but nothing blinks off. Is there a quick fix for this? (I'm still waiting to hear back from the company). If the DAC didn't sound so good, especially for the price, I wouldn't keep it. But the sound is fantastic. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
darosenb
Ground the metal rack,via the third prong on an AC cord.Make sure to contact the grounded rack and discharge yourself.
The DAC probably has a mute when it loses sync. Try Toslink?

FWIW - Ground Loops are a common problem particularly as most audio gear uses ground for the signal (RCA) and many power supplies are leaky to ground - resulting in an imbalance in the signal wires with respect to a ground/shield signal. Even a modest resistance in a shield can induce signals in your interconnects with mere microamps of ground loop (the difference in ground between one socket and another in a house).

In your situation I would go all XLR with properly grounded gear (three prong).
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Holding a quarter between your fingers and then touching the rack with the quarter to make that ground contact before you touch your equipment helps with coping with the snap crackle pop ouch!

Unless, of course, shocking yourself into attention before you listen to music is a requirement for enjoyment....

:) listening,

Ed

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Ground the chassis of the DAC via the power cord. Ensure that all of your chassis grounds are made to the same point. That is, don't use separate ground wire runs back to your panel. If you have shielded interconnects, attach only one end of the shield to chassis ground, float the other end, in each case float the end at the forward part of the path (i.e. between the preamp and the amp, float the amp end).
Mad props to Shadorne. Switching to Toslink did the trick.
Thanks to all for your suggestions. I greatly appreciate it.