the closet light coincidence is really bugging me. in theory, it should have zero effect seeing how it's not tied to the HT circuit. current travels in the direction of least resistance. electrons WANT to find ground. that is why I do not think a separate circuit could affect this as any odd voltage / stray current will seek ground through that neutral buss.

whatever is causing this phenomena, it is common throughout the home, so it would be at the main distribution point. when thinking about this, I believe your main feed MAY have an improperly grounded meter base / service panel. it wouldn't hurt for you take a look at that with a VOM (volt/ohm meter).

just out of curiosity, does this static go away when you turn on any other light? or is it only with this closet light?

Thanks guys for the ideas. I'll see what I can come up with, I do have a multimeter? Is this what your talking about, not sure how to use it or what setting to use, or what to hook it to. It has pin cables and little clamp cables.

I think the 80's being efficient are the cause of some of the faint pink noise I'm hearing. I even hooked them back up to the Denon, and turned the Denon on and nothing else and I can still hear a hint of pink noise and a very very slight amount of hum in the woofers.

Thought I would try to turn one breaker off at a time and see if one eliminates the problem. Also, I'm going to recheck the hookups on the light switch, unscrew the bulbs with the light switch on and see what happens.

I know they are on seperate circuits, but as you have all said, the neutral and ground wires all meet back at the bar in the breaker box. It appears there is a bar on the right side for the rightside breakers, and one on the left side for the left side breakers.

The electrician, for the most part has the neutral (white) and ground (bare) wires seperated and screwed down to seperate screws on the bare. There was a few togethor in the same screw, but most were seperated.

The two lines I ran, 20amp HT breaker and 15amp light/outlet breaker were done similar, however, I did place the ground and neutral under the same screw. I may recheck those and/or seperated them to their own screw. I've heard it is important those screws are tightened down good.

Keep ya posted.... I wish you guys lived closer.

You have grounds and neutrals on the same bus bar???? Tell me, is there a jumper between the right and left bars?

Randy, you better find another electrician with a current fitness card and get that looked at. If I understand correctly what you are describing, it sounds as if you have no ground protection in your home right now. In other words, if you have a short on an appliance and your kid just happens to have one hand on it, and one to a ground source (like a metal sink), he just became the path to ground.

I don't mean to scare you or be mellow dramatic Randy, but I'm beginning to get very concerned about your wiring. Without being there to see for myself what's going on, I'm encouraging you to seek professional, and LICENCED help.

I'm not an electrician by any means but I don't know that I recall ever seeing nor hearing about the neutral (white) and the ground wires being terminated on the same screw. I agree with Mike, I'd certainly be getting a licensed electrician to look at your wiring.

Also, if you are hearing a very faint pink noise I don't know that I'd tear myself ragged trying to locate the source. I had a ground loop problem whenever I placed everything in the new room and still had the slightest of a faint noise from the 80s even after the ground issue was taken care of, such a faint noise that I had to put my ears right up against the speaker to hear it but now I don't even bother trying to locate the source because the noise is that faint ... matter of fact I don't even know if the noise is still there or not, maybe I ought to go see.

Guys, we have a brand new house that is not even 4 years old. The only unlicsened wiring that was done was by me in the basement. The rest of the house, breaker box, outside meter, ground rod, etc was done by a professional licsensed electrician. Stratford would not use some fly by night outfit.

I can tell by the wiring job in the box, the guy knows what he is doing. I can try to take a picture, but I'll try to describe it.

On top of the box, all the home wiring comes into little platic grommets. Then, all the white(neutral) wires seem to be bunched togethor down the back two corners of the box and then are bent into right angles into these bround bars with screws on top. There is a bar vertical on the left and right side of all my breakers, I'm guessing we have at least 15-20 breakers on each side running down the middle of the box.

Now the Black(hot) wires are also pulled togethor and bent at right angles as they go into their prospective breaker.

The bare wires (ground) also run down and then are screwed down into the vertical bars.

On the very top is the main 220 breaker. It has 2 very thick cables with black sheathing, they look to be like 3/4" in diam. There is also one that routes to the side, and is attached to the screw bar where all the white and bare ground wires are screwed down.

I really don't think we are in trouble.

Ok, for what I've tried today.

First, I shut the main 220volt breaker off. Then I seperated my neutral and bare ground wires and placed them in their own screw down location on the ground bar, to follow the electricians methods. Then I turned everything back on and and no luck, still same problem.

Then I tried turning each breaker off, one by one, hopeing that this would eventually make the static go away, no dice. The only thing I had plugged in was my amp and speakers hooked to that with 12 gauge wire.

Then I turned everything back on, but this time instead of turning the light switch off, I tried unscrewing the 60watt bulbs in the closet. This was interesting, by unscrewing one bulb until it went out, the static increased somewhat. When I unscrewed the second bulb, the static was just as bad as turning the light switch off. My closet is very long, and I have a light fixture at each end. I even tried swapping out the bulbs for 100 watters, no luck.

Right now I'm checking each switch and outlet on the 15amp circuit to make sure my wiring and grounds look ok.

Rick, in regards to the pink noise or hissing noise, it is not real bad at all. Like you said I have to get close to hear it, but I do hear it in all the drivers, tweeter, midrange, woofer. In the woofers it sounds more like a faint 60hz hum.

I'm still trying to figure out if it is normal for the amp to have a very low hummmmm when placing my ears over the vents. The Emotiva tech guy said this amp should be quiet. He described what I said as the term "your amps are singing", which he said this is caused by something in the wiring, I don't know who to believe anymore.

Dang it.

Your desciption sounds like it was done correctly, but you had stated that you had the ground and neutral under the same screw and that should never happen.

Quote:

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The two lines I ran, 20amp HT breaker and 15amp light/outlet breaker were done similar, however, I did place the ground and neutral under the same screw. I may recheck those and/or seperated them to their own screw. I've heard it is important those screws are tightened down good.

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I would say this could be the problem.

The neutral should be on the side of the receptacle with the longer prong opening and the power on the other side and the ground ,bare wire, connected to the box at least, and the ground screw on the receptacle.

Look here

Here's another pic of the correct way to wire an outlet...

>>> I'm still trying to figure out if it is normal for the amp to have a very low hummmmm when placing my ears over the vents. The Emotiva tech guy said this amp should be quiet. He described what I said as the term "your amps are singing", which he said this is caused by something in the wiring, I don't know who to believe anymore.

Randy, I've always thought it was the 80s way of letting me know that it's time to get on with the show.

On the panels I've seen- there are white/Neutral buses down each side (for all white wires only). The bare ground wires have their own bus on one side or the other. These should be separate as Jakewash said. *** So, not only should the white and bare wires not share the same screw, they should not share the same bus either ***.

It should be apparent from looking in the panel that the white and bare ground wires are kept on separate bus connecting bars. Does this look like what you see? If you have a white or ground out of place you should be able to correct that.

What did you think of trying the amp at a friends or neighbors? I know it's a pain- but I would hate to see you rewire your entire house and find out it was the amp. I would first separate the grounds and neutrals however, as they may be the problem, and should be separate anyways.

Good luck.