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Clean Earth sockets

I’m just wondering about how clean earth sockets (Some of you may call these high integrity sockets) fit into the requirements of BS7671 in terms of their use in domestic homes.


One of my clients has asked me to look into the use of some clean earth sockets to be used to power audio equipment in their home studio, the basic idea is that a completely separate Earth helps eliminate what’s known as an earth hum on audio equipment caused by functional earth leakage of other equipment connected to the same circuit and disturbances originating from the suppliers earthing arrangement. The basic concept seems to be to insulate the cpc from the earth terminal of the socket outlet which then has its own independent Earth electrode, high integrity sockets seem designed to accept and insulate a cpc and a separate earth. 


My concern is that this sort of thing is usually used in a restricted access environment where only IT or audio engineers are going to be around and might be considered trained and competent to understand the risk of introducing an earth potential to the equipotential zone that is not in itself connected to the equipotential bonding. It wouldn’t be a problem if I could guarantee restricted access or that the socket would only supply class 2 equipment, but as this is a home studio it seems a bad idea to have an earthed metal casing of some piece of audio equipment that may be completely separate from all other earthing and bonding in the property? 


id appreciate your thoughts and advice please, I’m confident a separate clean earth will resolve the earth hum problem which I’ve seen work well in theatres (essentially restricted access) before but never in a domestic property.


Edit: I should add that the property is a TT property but because the street is a hodgepodge of TNS and TNCS (I have other neighbouring clients really close by) you should assume the gas and water pipe are throwing in a bit of PME related disturbance.
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  • I'm sure it is measurable, audio amplifiers take signals at sub-millivolt levels and amplify them to many amps in the voice coil of the speakers. As such anything that introduces a voltage gradient at the millivolt level between the audio source and its the amplifier input. That could be hundreds of microteslas of stray magnetic field thouh wiring loops of a few square metres, or stray tens of milliamps through hundreds of milli-ohms of cable resistance or both effects in combination.

    In the days when a HiFi installation was all separates, this was common - the fact that the modern box is all in one small box reduces the problem for normal uses. There are ways of routing supplies to minimise both inductive effects and voltage gradients, but it is almost impossible to eliminate totally.

    There are also various nasty techniques like inserting impedances or nonlinear devices antiparallel diodes in the  CPC to reduce low level  circulating currents, but while OK inside a sealed box it is very easy to create a really dangerous system if this is done badly in a distributed system.
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  • I'm sure it is measurable, audio amplifiers take signals at sub-millivolt levels and amplify them to many amps in the voice coil of the speakers. As such anything that introduces a voltage gradient at the millivolt level between the audio source and its the amplifier input. That could be hundreds of microteslas of stray magnetic field thouh wiring loops of a few square metres, or stray tens of milliamps through hundreds of milli-ohms of cable resistance or both effects in combination.

    In the days when a HiFi installation was all separates, this was common - the fact that the modern box is all in one small box reduces the problem for normal uses. There are ways of routing supplies to minimise both inductive effects and voltage gradients, but it is almost impossible to eliminate totally.

    There are also various nasty techniques like inserting impedances or nonlinear devices antiparallel diodes in the  CPC to reduce low level  circulating currents, but while OK inside a sealed box it is very easy to create a really dangerous system if this is done badly in a distributed system.
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