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grounding the amp


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I have a Rane MA6S amp connected to a Yamaha RXV630 reciever. There is a buzz coming from all the speakers, I spoke with tech services at Rane and they said to ground the chasis of the amp and that should cure the problem. There is a chasis ground terminal on the amp, the equipment is in the room over the garage. What is the best way to get a good ground and is there anything else in a system that should have this type of ground?

Thanks, Jack.

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buzz's and hum's can be a real challenge.....

I spent the most time hunting down a buzz that ultimatley was caused by the ground prong of the pre-amp between an amp and a pre-amp.

I found it when I realized the buzz occured only when the pre-amp was connected...even if the pre-amp was off.

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There is a screw next to the plug on the back of a MA6s that would let you determine if the chasis ground is causing the buzz. I personally would not remove the screw other than to find the root cause. This ground should be on for personal saftey, less than an amp can kill you or someone that touchs the chassis.

I do not recommend running a sperate earth ground from your panel since ground loops can cause a buzz.

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It is usually your best choice, adding another ground opens up the oppurtunity for ground looping - buzz.
I have seen some funny, read scary, things with garge wiring. Does your grage have a seperate ground?
I am a little anal and have a Stereo Only Outlet. Sometimes other things on the same circuit, usually dimmer switches, can cause a buzz. There are no buzz dimmers out there but I do not want one on my stereo circiut. Sometimes I am really anal so I also ran the ground conductor outside of and away of the conductors supplying the outlet and also routed away from all the other wires in the house and brought through it' s own access hole in the panel straight to the ground bar to minimize any eletromagnetic interferance.
Even with all this wiring I had the same problem with a pre-amp as speakerfritz, I replaced it and the problem went away.
Let us know how it goes.
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I'm in a bonus room over a two car garage, it's a finished room with correct wiring. I think I'll try and tap off the ground terminal of a receptacle first, if that helps then I'll see if I can run a dedicated conductor from the ground bar in the electricial panel. Thanks for the help.

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I ran into a severe hum issue when I added a second Yamaha power amp to my system. Grounding to the nearest outlet didn't make any difference. What did solve the problem was grounding the two power amps to the receiver.

I ran a cable from the grounding screw on the receiver to one of the screws on the back of each power amp. I picked one of several screws that looked to be screwed into the power amp chassis. Since I couldn't tell whether the screw would be supporting something on the inside of the case, I just loosened it enough to attach a small forked connector attached to the cable and re-tightened the screw.

The hum immediately went away and hasn't returned.

I'm not sure if it matters or not, but the power amps and sub are plugged into one outlet, while the receiver and the rest of the electronics are plugged into a different outlet. However, the whole system is on a single circuit.

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Your equipment should be grounded at only point.

The simplest way to do this is to use a power strip/surge protector, or some other single "power source", which is grounded via its three prong plug into the wall outlet. ALL of the other equipment should use a two prong plug. Use a 3to2 prong plug adaptor if you need to. This will avoid any ground loops. It "lifts" the ground from the components and let's the ground "float" to seek it's own lowest level.

If you're still having hum/buzzing problems after that then something else is wrong somewhere else.

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