Tube PHONO preamp interference - RFI, EMI, bad grounding?

When you squeeze them, you create a ground via your body. I have a table radio in my kitchen. It reacts to the lighting over our sink, which is on the same circuit, and also to a Canary detector plugged into the same outlet. If I hold the radio antenna in my hand, the RFI noise over the radio gets much quieter. The EAR is not balanced, is it? Looks like you have an ARC linestage sitting on the floor; is that unit internally balanced? I presume the 834P is inside the green thing.

Incidentally, maybe you wrote in haste, but I would not encase individual tubes in foil. Bad for cooling. That's the beauty of well designed high quality tube shields; they draw heat away from the tube and actually extend tube life, besides blocking interference. If you’re going to use foil, I would suggest just wrapping the whole chassis in foil; of course, you will eventually have to figure out how to allow for the whole device to stay cool, unless you install shields.

Can I ask what you are using the Chord Qutest for? 
I had an issue like this caused by a streamer.

@filipm 

From your experiment, the cables might be more an issue than the EAR.

Try some Gotham Audio Double Reussen shielded interconnects - TT to phono and phono to ARC. - fairly cheap, but good quality and very good shielding, much better than many audiophile cables.

+1 on the Gotham interconnects. They are very good and can be bought directly from the manufacturer on line at a very reasonable price.

The best tube shield by far IMO is the IERC. They have ”fingers” inside that connect to the tube, reducing microphonics and leading away heat. 

@lewm That’s for sure - I’d only wrap the tubes or the unit into the foil for about a minute. It takes a while, about ten minutes before the tubes are warmed up. Sonically even longer, the real listening with the EAR starts after half an hour and then it’s just getting better.

Yes, that’s an ARC LS16 mk1. It’s balanced, I’m using Nordost Red dawn XLR cables. There are different cables on the picture, balanced as well, about 20 feet long - I was trying to move it on the other side of the room to see if the noise changes.

EAR 834p isn’t balanced.

I have tested the EAR with several components, Bryston B60 for example - same results.

@dover Thanks for the tip but is the issue is shielding, I’d rather just add shielding to any cable than testing different brands. That could get quite expensive. If it proves to be the shielding then I’d gladly buy one of these cables.

A simple shielding test could be again the aluminum foil. I have tried this before and it kind of worked but the noise didn’t disappear completely. The shield should be grounded, right? Maybe a piece of wire between the shield and the ARC preamp?

It would be the best to share the recording of the noise on some radiophonics forum. The sound is very specific so eventually I could find the source.. or am I being naive? I have tried googling things like "wifi noise" etc.

If there’s about 4 to 6 wifi networks, they may be overlaping.

A sound sample at 1:00"

@plumptonvinyl The Chord Qutest is connected to a streamer right now. I’m using a Allo Shanti linear power supply with it and it sounds very good. My streamer is a Raspberry Pi plugged into the router with an ethernet cable. I haven’t got the soundcard for it yet but I will upgrade it soon. It’s also powered from the Allo Shanti. I have had this problem before I bought the streamer