Should I redo the AC power in my house?

Jea48, I think you need to re-read what I wrote.

’’FWIW the main purpose of the electrical service to earth connection is for lightning protection.It does nothing for the sound of an audio system.’’

Agreed!

ditusa

392 posts

11-19-2021 10:33pm

’’FWIW the main purpose of the electrical service to earth connection is for lightning protection.It does nothing for the sound of an audio system.’’

Agreed!

JUUP!

The ground that can have an effect on the sound of an audio system is EGC (Equipment Grounding Conductor). Therein, Ground loop hum. AC noise.

The EGC, when used, is connected directly to the chassis of the audio equipment. Also connected to the chassis is the power supply B - and signal ground. (A well designed piece of equipment does not have the B - and signal ground connected directly to the chassis, when an EGC is used. Usually it is in series with a low ohm resistor or some other series component device.

A good read about the affect of the EGC on audio equipment.

Read pages 16 thru 36. Then go to page 196 and so on if interrested.

FWIW the main purpose of the electrical service to earth connection is for lightning protection.

Kind of. That’s why the ground rods, but the reason there’s a ground wire in equipment is for short circuit protection, not surge.

It does nothing for the sound of an audio system.

I dont’ think this is proven, or even well investigated. If you wanted to show this, you’d have testing done with say, an elevated ground and measurements of noise on the ground wire in a home, and then also do some testing to see how well this noise can or cannot couple to audio systems.

In my mind there certainly are simple engineering explanations for how poor grounds (i.e. high resistance to the earth) cause noise to be shared in the home, and then capacitively (spelling? ) coupled to an audio signal. What’s sad is that these test would be easy for a lab to do, but I havent’ really seen any done.

Perhaps in Fremer’s case, the real need was to improve the ground farm and have a dedicated ground wire from his sub panel to it. Of course, the rest of the house would be bonded there as well. That would have been far less expensive than moving the service breaker outside, where it is subject to accelerated corrosion, and pulling a new sub panel from there.

I remain open to the possibility that good overall house grounding reduces noise in audio signals. I also think that even if it is proven, people will charge far too much for the solutions. :-)

BTW, while the house ground may be there