In message , Aidan Karley
writes
The weird thing is, some people who are actually in posession of
a functioning brain do fall for this sort of idiocy.
One of my colleagues was asking me and the drilling rig's
electrician for comments about this very site, because he was concerned
about mains hum in his hi-fi system. Even with the electrician telling
him that the whole concept is ********, and me offering to lash him up
a motor-generator set, or even a kettle/ steam engine/ generator set
... he still wasn't convinced that there were more effective ways to
get rid of his mains hum problem. He didn't *want* to be convinced ; he
wanted to spend his money (and his wife's and baby's food money) on
this sort of delusion. Mad. But still a perfectly good geologist.

There are instances when mains hum does occur due to ground loops. These
can be fixed with sensible audio cabling and on a balanced system you
can lift the screen at the signal source end of a line-level cable. For
completely awkward electronically induced hum and noise (like a laptop
connected to your hi-fi!) you can use a pair of audio isolating
transformers as available form Maplin (Bleurg!) at a modest price. (Go
for the car audio ones where they are paired in a plastic tube with a
pair of phono connectors at each end.

There are some in the professional audio industry who are so utterly
clueless that they actually believe that "lifting the ground" means
cutting the earth wire in the mains plug! This is a great way to kill
people.

--
Clive Mitchell
http://www.bigclive.com