[musicgeek]

Hi everyone!

I recently got back into a vinyl system, and bought a mofi Studiodeck. I hooked it up to my phono-1 that was sitting unused for a year but this time, I get a very loud hum/buzz from the speakers (tt off, nothing playing). I guessed it was a ground issue so I connected a grounding cable from the tt to different parts of the chassis (screw, the box directly at the seams), to no real avail. It went down a little bit on one screw, but still very high.

To test further, I bought a cheapo art dj-ii that has a ground lug to see if that was the issue. And yes, the ground noise reduced a lot with that. But I miss the sound quality of the Vista.

Is there anything I can do to ground it? Is there an "upgrade" function to the vista 2 with a trade in of sorts?
I'm trying to stay in a fixed budget, and have only 20-30 hours on the vista -1.

Thanks!

[Audiovista]

Hello and great to hear that you’re coming back to vinyl and Vista 

You can try connecting the grounding wire directly to your amplifier chassis, or the grounding screw, if available. If your amplifier has a 3-pronged power plug it is likely to have chassis grounded and that will most likely solve the problem.

If not, we can think of the next steps.

All the best,
Boris

[musicgeek]

Hi Boris!

Thanks for the prompt reply! I just tested the ground on both my connected power amps and the preamp(a classe preprocessor) -straight to different points of the chassis and screws, to no luck. Still a very loud hum/buzz that increases with volume, keeping to almost half the level of the music playing.

[toocool4]

Have you got your phonostage near any power supply or near your amp or something? Try moving your phonostage to a different location.

[musicgeek]

So far I tried a couple different positions (as far as cables allowed me), different power socket and strip, same electrical point as the rest of the amps etc.

The art in the same position is giving significantly (but not zero) lower hum/buzz.

[toocool4]

With everything you have tried so far, the problem appears to not be the phonostages.

You will need to trace everything else to pinpoint where the issue is coming from.
A few things I would check is , are you connecting your phonostage to the same input on your amp, if so try a different input. By the way what is the amp?

If you try that and you still get the same issue, try removing the phonostage and turntable from the equation. Once that is done if no issues. Try connecting your turntable directly to your amp, I guess it’s an integrated amp? Yes I know it will not produce any meaningful sound but it may or may not produce the hum / buzz. You are just trying to pinpoint where the hum / buzz is starting from.

[Audiovista]

All the good advice in the above posts. If it doesn't work we have a bit of mystery.

Is it safe to assume that there is no hum when TT is not connected to the preamp? There may be some noise if the inputs are not shorted,  but no hum.

One thing to try is touching the TT grounding wire to the ground on the input/output terminals, or on the preamp connectors, just to see if that changes anything.

[musicgeek]

Thank you all, I'll try to connect straight to the amp.

There's no hum when the TT isn't connected to the vista. Dead silent.

The preamplifier in the system is a Classe sigma ssp, it has had zero issues playing dead silent before. I played a full record on the cheapo phonostage yesterday with no issues, it just doesn't sound like the vista. Power amps are Odyssey Khartago mono blocks, and speakers I've built myself.

@Boris, if I were to open the chassis of the Vista, could I ground my TT straight to the PCB somehow easily, without having to solder/do any permanent changes?

[nlitworld]

With everything else connected properly, if you disconnect the ground wire from the phono stage, does the noise increase or decrease? I have seen some turntables simply ground to the - rca where introducing a proper ground cable then creates the ground loop.  Worth a try.

[musicgeek]

Ok I ran some more tests:

- lowest noise (but still very high) is if I touch the ground wire to the rca terminals ( output), or under the screw just above it on the Vista Phono.
-noise is high when no ground is connected at all (from the tt)
- no significant reduction of noise by trying to ground against chassis of the later system (classe and odyssey), but since those are painted/anodized I'm not even sure they are conductive?
- noise increases significantly if I ground to the input terminal (outer shell of rca cable), and especially on the right terminal!!

Tried same and different sockets.

Quite bizarre..meanwhile art DJ is working in the same system.

[Audiovista]

Sorry to hear that no remedy was found so far.

I was making several sketches trying to figure out if there is a ground loop somewhere in the system, and the only way would be to consider some anomalies, but then the DJ would have the same issue.

I wonder if it is possible to ground the TT directly to the grounding prong at the wall outlet (with due care, of course).

It is also worth checking if some of the wires from cartridge do not have contact with the GND, a visual inspection and a basic DMM would be needed for that. In the lab, I would also try inserting a small resistor to break possible ground loop that way, but it is not something easily done at home.

I'll give it more thought as this is a very intriguing situation.