Acceptable Level Ground/Earth Noise


Hi Everyone
I have a dedicated earth for my audio system.  I was digging a bore for water and lost the rod so decided to dedicate that bore for Earth.  It is about 100 feet deep an is in water.  The line runs straight to my dedicated audio room and is shared among the various audio components.  
I am running a Clearaudio DC preformence through an Avid Phallus phone stage hooked up to a ML No.  38s pre.  The cartridge is a clear audio virtuoso MM.  The ML volume level goes to 92 and the hum appears at 60. Previously when the earth was shared the hum was almost unbearable at 60 but now is significantly reduced. 
My question is that is the hum just part of the analogue experience or should it be absolutely quite? 
srafi
I have tried to disconnect the earth to worse results. The reason I have put in this separate earth is so that the audio equipment would be isolated from the rest of the house. It gets pretty hot here so we pretty much use AC year round and the load in the house is pretty high. I did forget to mention it gets louder when I touch the tone arm so could be something else. 
Genuinely looking for help not trying to invent a new system or any thing. I may have done things wrong and any help would be appreciated I wish I could post pics to give a better idea. 
I live in Pakistan and the earth supplied by our utility is useless. All houses have there own grounding sunk about 12-18 feet into the earth into a copper plate with bare copper wire coming out of the ground and providing earthing to the main distribution of the house from where this is run throughout the house.

Not that that much different from what we have here in the US. Here we basically have a bare minimum of 2 earth connections called grounding electrodes that connect to the main incoming electrical service entrance neutral conductor. The minimum depth of the electrodes must be a minimum of 8ft for a ground rod and 10ft minimum earth covered metal water pipe if provided. One other grounding electrode that is required if the house has concrete footings is a concrete encased grounding electrode. (Started sometime around 2008)

No matter how many grounding electrodes there are they all must connect to one point. The electrical service entrance neutral conductor.

Your electrical code apparently requires the grounding electrode to be installed deeper into the earth. I would imagine because your soil moisture content is less and you may not get as much rain/moisture as we do here in the US.

I have simply taken another connection point that is sunk further into the ground and which is not shared by the rest of the house.

That does nothing for the sound quality of an audio system. If anything it just adds noise. If you want added lightning protection, by installing an additional grounding electrode, connect it to the main grounding electrode system of your electrical service.

Again the mother earth does not possess some magical mystical power that sucks nasties from an audio system.

If you want a direct mains power feed for your audio equipment I would suggest you install a dedicated branch circuit from the electrical panel to an electrical receptacle outlet for your audio equipment. The new branch circuit equipment grounding conductor is also part of the branch circuit. It should connect to ground bus in the electrical panel the brach circuit is fed from.


I do have a lightning rod connected to the main earthing system.

That is a no, no, here in the US. Lightning rods do not connect to the electrical service grounding system. Lightning rods have their own driven ground rod/s. Going from memory they must not be driven near ground rods/electrodes that are connected to the electrical service entrance neutral for obvious reasons.


At the moment what I have done is takes the separate earth and connected it to the earth wire that is supplying the various resecptales that are being used in my set up.

That sounds like an Auxiliary Grounding Electrode to me. I would not recommend one.


I have also taken another wire and connected it to a copper bus bar to which the analogue equipment is grounded through individual wires such as the earth wire attached to the RCA wire plug the earth plug at the bottom of the table as well as the earth on the phono stage. All the 3 pin sockets are also grounded in the sockets as they would be normally.


Does absolutely nothing for the sound quality of your audio system. If anything it adds noise. Which you have now.

Did you try what I suggested in an earlier post. Disconnect your "dedicated earth" connection from your audio system then listen to it.


Here is a video for you to watch. It basically relates to what you have now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuDqXFvRv94


.

I did forget to mention it gets louder when I touch the tone arm so could be something else.
Sounds like you need to run a wire from the Turntable to the chassis/ground terminal of the phono preamp.   
I have also taken another wire and connected it to a copper bus bar to which the analogue equipment is grounded through individual wires such as the earth wire attached to the RCA wire plug the earth plug at the bottom of the table as well as the earth on the phono stage. All the 3 pin sockets are also grounded in the sockets as they would be normally....

I did forget to mention it gets louder when I touch the tone arm so could be something else.
What I would suggest trying, if you already haven’t, is disconnecting everything in the system from the copper bus bar, and connecting the earth terminal on the bottom of the turntable directly to the earth terminal on the phono stage. With that connection between the turntable ground and the phono stage ground being as short and direct as possible, and in particular not routed anywhere near your power amplifiers.

Also, if the power supply of what I presume is the Avid Pulsus phono stage (I’m guessing that your auto-correct software changed "Pulsus" to "Phallus") is located right next to the phono stage unit itself try moving them a foot or two apart. And make sure that all power cords are separated from the cable carrying the phono signals by at least several inches, and preferably more. If a power cord and the phono cable must cross at some point, have them cross at right angles.

If those things don’t resolve the problem, as an experiment try putting a cheater plug (a three-prong to two-prong adapter) on the AC power plug of the phono stage's power supply, to temporarily defeat its safety ground connection. Let us know the results if you do that.

Jim (Jea48), thanks for posting the Henry Ott writeup. I’ve seen that before and I always get a chuckle out of it, especially no. 8. For others who may not be aware, Mr. Ott is one of the world’s leading authorities on grounding and various other aspects of electronic design that often tend to be mysterious even to trained EEs.

Regards,
-- Al
Connect that ground to where the house ground and lightning ground are connected thereby creating a star ground. This way the voltages across the ground rods will be the same in the event of a lightning strike. As a bonus, the (somewhat) equal voltages will deter stray currents into the neutral and lower that hum even more.