[AliG]

I hope someone have the patience to teach me something. I just bought an Esoteric DVD/SACD/CD player and on the back panel there is a "signal ground" pin, see the picture below, it's located at the lower right corner.


The manual says that I should connect this "signal ground" to the "signal ground" of my amplifier. However, my amplifier do not have such "signal ground" pin, but I know that the chassis of the amplifier is grounded through the ground prong of the AC power cord.

I have a battery-powered preamp and there's no such "signal ground" pin on it too. The preamp is supposed to be grounded via the interconnect to both the CD player and the amplifier. And I'm using single-ended (RCA) IC from the CD player to the preamp to the amplifier.

So what should I do? Should I just take a piece of wire, connect the "signal ground" on the CD player to the chassis/body of the amplifier?


Thanks for sharing.
barry

[Daryl]

Hi Barry,

You shouldn't need the ground connection.

The shields of your RCA interconnects should pull all componet grounds to the same ground potential.

It is best to use interconnects that have coaxial wire (you want the tubular shield).

There are twisted pair RCA interconnnects available for car use where amplifiers have floating inputs.

Then you have fancy boutique interconnects that use regular wire for the ground connection with no shield.

You don't want either of these unless your componet has floating inputs (if you're not experiencing ground loop issues with them and you're not worried you might then they are fine).

The tubular shield of coaxal cable has lower resistance and more importantly lower inductance than a wire which gives the greatest possible 'pull' upon all componets toward the same ground potential.

You want all of your componets to be isolated from ground as much as possible with unbalanced systems so that your interconnects pull their ground potentials together but their is nothing to pull them apart.

I see that your disc player has a three pin power connector and you've said already your amplifier has a three prong cord.

The ground for both of these should not go any farther than the transformer (maybe a shield between the windings).

Everything after the transformer should be isolated from ground.