Earth/ground connection on amplifer

Admetos · 15 May 2017 at 00:52

My amplifier has a earth/ground connection on the rear, it's the type that takes a small fork connection. I've never used this but wondering if I should ground to earth.

Under my amp I have a HTPC and was considering using a fork connection from the amp to one the HTPC's PSU screws, this would effectively ground the amp to the earth ring main.

I do receive a small amount of background noise from speakers, but it's with volume very high (it's a 120w RMS 8ohm amp) on analogue source , when using amp with S/PDIF any noise can't be heard.

Does anyone have any experience on earthing amps?

Rroff · 15 May 2017 at 00:58

I think this is more relevant if you have the amp chained with certain types of equipment like turntables and some mixing equipment really - eliminating hum, etc. you'd probably get better results with a ground loop eliminator connected in the right place.

Kei · 15 May 2017 at 14:17

It's generally for a turntable ground. Normally it's located near an input labelled as Phono.

Admetos · 15 May 2017 at 17:37

My turntable has no ground, yet it was the one originally sold with the separates.

I must be honest I don't understand much about grounding on Hi-Fi, I was just trying to see if I could squeeze a little more performance from it by grounding in some way.

kitfit1 · 15 May 2017 at 22:08

JasonM said:
I must be honest I don't understand much about grounding on Hi-Fi, I was just trying to see if I could squeeze a little more performance from it by grounding in some way.

There is now and always has been a lot of confusion about "grounding" in the wold of HiFi. Ground and earth in hifi terms are not the same thing, although a lot of peeps think they are. Put simply, earth is a safety measure for the power supply. Ground is a means of linking all the various parts of a hifi system so that hum and hiss don't happen. In the main it only ever affected turntables and still does. But it it only really ever affected a turntable with a MM cartridge that hadn't had the ground tag removed before it was fitted. Most modern turntables and arms, if they are fitted with MC cartridges and are supplying a good phono stage, won't suffer from hum and hiss anyway. Remove the ground tag from a MM cartridge and it will not hum and hiss anyway.