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Is ground noise really normal? If so, why?

I was playing my turntable for my kids tonight and remembering how amazing it is. But the ground noise between tracks was really bothering me and my kids asked what “that noise” was. I can’t imagine it’s not there during the songs. Am I missing something or is audible ground noise completely normal? I’ve had the tech over and I recall he thought it was normal. My turntable is a Clearaudio Performance DC and my phono preamp stage is a P-5xe Twenty. 

If this is normal, why? And are there companies out there that make phono stages that have no ground noise? It’s 2019 for godssakes. 

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Showing 1 response by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,575 posts
 
'Ground noise' sounds like a bad ground connection to me.
If you have a balanced preamp then the ground of the arm should also be the shields of the tone arm interconnect cable and tying to pin 1 of the XLR connections on your preamp. The '+' and '-' outputs of the cartridge then connection to pins 2 and 3 of the XLR input connectors.
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