Help with buzzing from phono setup??

[chairman_lmao]

Hi all,

I've moved into a new apartment have a new setup with my record player where, out of necessity, across the room from my receiver and speakers.

I've got a Music Hall MMF-5 and a Rotel receiver, with B&W speakers. I've run about 25 feet of extension RCA cords to connect the record player to the receiver. The receiver and record player are plugged into different outlets, completely across the room from eachother.

When I turn the receiver to the phono input, it generates a loud buzzing, regardless of whether the record player is on or not. No other input for the receiver has any buzzing and other things work fine on it.

The MMF-5 has a ground cable (a little horseshoe-shaped metal thing) that I used to have screwed into the ground screw on the back of the Rotel, but now I can't because of the distance. I assume that is what is causing the buzzing.

I tried to fashion a "ground extension" cable by using speaker wire to connect the ground to the receiver, but it did not fix the problem at all.

Can anyone help? Thanks very much in advance.

 

[TLS Guy]

Hi all,

I've moved into a new apartment have a new setup with my record player where, out of necessity, across the room from my receiver and speakers.

I've got a Music Hall MMF-5 and a Rotel receiver, with B&W speakers. I've run about 25 feet of extension RCA cords to connect the record player to the receiver. The receiver and record player are plugged into different outlets, completely across the room from eachother.

When I turn the receiver to the phono input, it generates a loud buzzing, regardless of whether the record player is on or not. No other input for the receiver has any buzzing and other things work fine on it.

The MMF-5 has a ground cable (a little horseshoe-shaped metal thing) that I used to have screwed into the ground screw on the back of the Rotel, but now I can't because of the distance. I assume that is what is causing the buzzing.

I tried to fashion a "ground extension" cable by using speaker wire to connect the ground to the receiver, but it did not fix the problem at all.

Can anyone help? Thanks very much in advance.

You absolutely can NOT run a 25 ft cable from a turntable. A phono cartridge develops about 3mv and the input is high gain. Your phono cartridge can not cope with that length of cable. A cable that long will induce hum into a high gain circuit.

If you have to have the turntable that far apart, then you will have to buy a phono preamp and place it close to the turntable and run the cable to a line input of your receiver, not the phono input.

You will still have to ground your turntable to your Rotel.

 

[highfigh]

In some cases, noise can still be present with a phono preamp because of where the cables are run and where noise exists. If you can find a preamp with variable level, you can adjust it so the level is high enough to overcome the loss from the added cable length but not so much that it overdrives the phono input (or whatever input is used).

 

[chairman_lmao]

Thanks very much for the info. New to this and learning....

 

[markw]

TLS guy said it. A bit tersely, but extremely accurately. You cannot run that weak a signal that length.

Even using that method (which will make a very noticable improvement) you still might benefit from extending that ground wire. Virtually any wire will do for a ground, even non-shielded skinny wire.