Which gear to ground?

I would only ground the gear that was misbehaving, it doesn't seem prudent to punish gear that is acting perfectly fine. Sorry couldn't resist!

To add to what Stehno is saying.....there is a good quality audio power strip called the "PAC-IDOS". It is not a surge protector. The "Digital" AC outlet is grounded and the outlets for the rest of the components are not grounded.

So the noise created by the digital source is sent to ground. The other components are not grounded, so they are protected. There is some minor filtering also I think. I have played around with one, and there was a reduction in the noise floor.

From a safety perspective, it's important to ground your components.

With that said, you should notice significant improvements by floating/disconnecting the ground from every component.

Grounding has a way of introducing much noise into the AC.

Not sure why, because the typical ground wire is usually connected directly to the neutral bus at the service panel. Since the neutral wire is already connected to your component (opposite the hot wire), as a non-electrical engineer I am perplexed that the ground wire would introduce any ADDITIONAL noise over and above what noise the neutral wire may already contain.

-IME

I would recommend grounding either your preamp or poweramp. The other equipment connected to these components are technically grounded through their interconnects. However, if you can ground all components via their power cords and you don't get any ground loop noise in your system, by all means ground all components.

Lall, I prefer to never chassis ground any component with and external wire. If a component only has a two-prong power cord, such as TVs and CATV boxes, then an external ground should not be needed. I also prefer not to use cheater plugs on 3-prong equipment, such as amps and preamps.

Many ground loop problems can be traced to two pieces of equipment being plugged into different outlets. I use a power conditioner for my entire system, so that it has a single power cord and a single ground connection.

Another source of ground hum is the CATV box. By code, the incoming shield must be grounded to the house ground at the point of entry. This results in the house ground being passed through the audio and video interconnect shields. The cure is to use a video isolation transformer, such a MAGIC, between the CATV outlet in the room and the CATV box.

This method preserves all electrical codes, without bypassing the ground prong your equipment. There is ZERO hum in my system.

This setup was recommended by an electrical engineer who visited my house and explained the situation clearly.

Good luck with you DIY project!