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Another "kinda-newbie" head scratcher

No matter what Phonostage I use, no matter which cartridge or cables, I get an annoying distortion sound from my speakers kind of like the sound of AM in between stations if anyone here is old enough to remember that sound. Doesn't happen on the digital side. 

 

Any ideas? 

ericrhodes1
ghdprentice's avatar
ghdprentice
9,425 posts
 

My condolences. You have a frustrating problem.

ericrhodes1's avatar
ericrhodes1 OP
256 posts
 

@yogiboy @retiredaudioguy @audphile1 @larri @lewm @imintohifi 

 

I found the culprit. Power line ethernet extender. Soon as I unplug that the noise disappeared I thought I had it relatively isolated on an entirely different outlet but apparently it’s breaker dependent or something so . Thanks for your help guys I’ve got a new trouble to figure out. Namely how to get internet into this room. 

mark200mph
842 posts
 

Great discussion great input great diagnostics

retiredaudioguy
286 posts
 

If your streamer can accept WiFi try that.  If not there are WiFi to Ethernet adapters (e.g. IOGear), usually WPS enabled so pretty easy to set up.  Plug it into an AC receptacle within a Cat5 of the streamer.  I used this for an Aurender streamer.

sfgak
210 posts
 

I had your exact issue with a sensitive tube preamp. Traced it to the powerline ethernet adapter. I tried moving the adapter to a more distant outlet, using a long (~25 foot) ethernet cable, but still had the problem. I concluded that it was the modulation of the powerline. It might work with the powerline adapter on the other phase, but it's rare to find both phases in the same room. 

If you have coax TV cable, you might look into using the ScreenBeam MoCA Adapter which sends ethernet over the RG6 or RG59 TV cable. I found this did not have noise spill over to the preamp. Maybe it will work in your situation.

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