Hi there, my first post, I have searched but can’t quite find the answer.
I’m new to proper HiFi and I’ve started with a Uniti Atom. Absolutely love it to pieces.
I also have a Sony PSHX500 turntable. It has a built-in Phono stage and came with a cable which includes a ground connection. There’s a switch on the back of the turntable which selects either Phono or Line and a connection point for the ground cable.
Can I check I’m correct in saying that I select “Line”? Then, what about the ground cable? Do I bother with it? If I use it, where would I connect it to on the Atom?
Looks like you have a few options.
Digital from the TTs ADC to the Atom.
Line from the built in phonostage to the Atom’s analog inputs, which connect to the Atom’s internal ADC.
I suspect neither of these would use the ground wire.
Phono out to an external phonostage, this would probably have a grounding post for it but if you were going to use an outboard phonostage from the outset you wouldn’t have bought a USB turntable.
I suppose what I’m really asking is - what is the importance of the grounding wire and when should it be used? Yes there’s no grounding post on the Atom, but being new to proper HiFi gear, I was wondering whether I should be just unscrewing one of the many screws on the back of the Atom and using it to ground the wire.
I purchased the Sony TT as I thought I’d like to digitise our record collection, for regular listening I presumed I’d keep the signal analogue and wire via RCA. Why does the Atom digitise it?
So it can feed a multiroom system. Not sure who’d want that when running a turntable as you can’t turn a record over from another room but such is the wisdom of market research.
The earth wire can sometimes help if you get hum through the speakers but if the turntable’s internal phonostage is already grounded it will form an earth loop and may be the cause of hum when using line out.
I would expect the Atoms ADC to beat Sony’s but that assumes the inbuilt phonostage is purely analogue.
When there’s a hum. If you need it, you’ll know about it. So my advice would be to just hook it up without the ground wire first and see what happens.
If you have a hum, you’ll need to ground to something. Not sure how you would do that with the Atom, perhaps connect to the outside of an RCA socket? I would check with Naim support if it arises.
We use the turntable multi-room feature quite a lot - streaming from the Nova to the Qb in the kitchen. Means we can both listen to the same album when working in different rooms. One person’s doing all the disc-flipping, of course, but then they’re enjoying the better-sounding system, so it evens out!
You only need the ground wire if your connecting the TT to an external phono stage. If your using the internal and feeding the Atom a line out it is not required.
Than you all so much for the advice, I’m learning loads here which is fun in itself. So when using an external phono stage, what is going on that requires that earth connection?
