hey guys,
so i recently moved to a new temporary apartment, and also bought a new interface which for the first time for me is not usb powered, but goes into power adapter.

and when i turn on my monitors, i get electric shock when im touching my laptop!

from your knowledge/experience would you say its an issue with the interface or the electricity/grounding in the apartment?
both things are new for me so i cant really tell

before this interface, i used a USB powered interface and didnt get electric shock when turning on my monitors, dont know if that can help diagnosing the problem

 

It's a grounding issue in the apartment.

 

yea thats what i thought, luckily its a temporary place for me,
but is there any easy way to solve this?

 

1 Be sure you isolate yourself from ground. Use shoes with synthetic soles.

2 Change the wall socket where your speakers are plugged, as sometime there is a defective ground in one socket but not in all of them.

3 Try adding an adapter which dont include ground to your speakers.

 

i think i saw Warren Huart put his product demo speakers on top of his mixing console which has some kind of rubber mat on it, i've no idea why until i saw this thread. that make sense..

 

heh...

are you married, or living with anybody?

are they pissed off with you?

Do they have a dark side?

Are they electically minded?

Do you have a life insurance policy?

 

Half the time, when ive dismantled or replaced a wall socket, the earth is either unnatached at the appliance end, or theres a break somewhere within the grounding cable at the socket end.

which is usually pretty short n immediatley apparent when you take a wall socket apart.
Its usually a yellow n green , fairly thick cable, with a metal tag at the end, it can be screwed to different areas to ground it, but its usually easy to see when you take the socket apart..

so check theres a grounding cable attached at the plug end of the mains power to the amp first.
And if it is, move to the wall socket you use , and see if theres a problem within the cage that houses it all. so youl have to shut the power off at the mains in case theres a problem just to be safe of course.

Should be easily sorted out though , but fuck mee , turn the electricity off in the meantime, and go diagnose coz it could be dangerous yeah.

I wouldnt have thought its the ground at the Actual main supply to the building though.

 

Last edited: May 18, 2020

it can be lethal.
also damaging for the equipment.

 

Not a good idea, this is to prevent any exposed metal from being at mains voltage if for whatever reason some of the wiring becomes loose. Exposed metal includes speaker input connectors and the audio interface's metal chassis - though mid-tier audio interfaces usually don't power directly from mains and use a DC adapter which is an isolated switch mode power supply (floating ground). It does apply to top-tier audio interfaces that are directly mains-powered, though.

An electric shock means that ground on your laptop's chassis is not really ground. This could be a faulty installation in the building, but it doesn't hurt to check if running all your devices (laptop, audio interface and speakers) from the same outlet (use a power strip). This forces all devices (except the ones that are floating) to have the same ground.

Actually, the issue you mention (getting a shock from the laptop) sounds like possibly a knockoff charger for your laptop, delivering bad-quality, noisy power. Have you tried if the issue persists when running just on battery?

 

Easy peasy. Tie all your devices with metallic wire and tie the other end to the apparently most badass metallic pipe you can found in your place.
And above everything else, try to avoid tripping with the wire after.

 

yea the issue actually happened when the laptop was on battery, i only use the original charger

letting you know that for now the problem seem to just disappear somehow, im not sure what happened, i just tried to re-connect everything again and so far so good, maybe i didnt plug something all the way through, hope it wont come back

 

I would definitely get that fixed soon or "I get a shock" is going to become "I fried all my sh*t". A short or grounding issue shouldn't come from not plugging stuff in all the way... even if it's intermittent it's still luring about waiting to happen again so be careful!

 

In this case, if you live in a building with more appartements, it could be due to bad grounding in the whole building.
I once had a problem with ground that appears and disappeared depending on what my neighbor would plug.

 

it can be lethal.
Hmmmm... that's a nuisance.
also damaging for the equipment.
What?? This is terrible news!!!