Origin Live Ground Anchor

Ground Noise in Tonearms

Vinyl playback creates brand new electrical energy every time your cartridge stylus touches the groove. In contrast, the rest of the audio chain takes electricity from the mains, which is inherently noisy. Resolving this noise is a primary focus for every audio electronics engineer in every component in the audio chain. Because vinyl creates an electrical signal, truly great vinyl replay can deliver better transient performance, since the interference it faces is mainly mechanical and less tied to mains and system noise.

Yet, ground noise is a problem for the tonearm. At 5mV for MM Carts, and as low as 0.1mV for MC, the vinyl signal is the most vulnerable to airborne interference. To get internal cables through the armtube, without disturbing the arm’s mechanics, you generally use thin, unshielded wires. The armtube then covers shielding duties. Because of this, it needs to be grounded to prevent noise from entering the system.

The issue is that, while shielding, the tonearm’s tube and external cables essentially act as antennas for RF and EMI, which affects the signal within. Additionally, although most phono stages’ inputs are followed by a capacitor or DC blocker (which prevents much of the system noise from reaching the cartridge), some AC and microphonic noise still reaches the tonearm’s grounding and interferes with the signal within.

Standard grounding reduces this considerably, removing loud phono hum. But standard grounding is far from a perfect solution, leaving low-level noise behind, which lowers the fidelity of your audio signal. This is where the Ground Anchor comes in.