Really confused about umbilical cord connectors

[jordyyy]

Ok, I think the easiest way to do the umbilical cord, would be to have 2 neutrik 3 pin cords. One green to 1 pin, one blue to another pin, and one green and blue to the third pin on each neutrik connectors. The red and black wires go to the IEC input (with a fuse in the red). People are concerned with ground loops, which I have no idea what those are, so I'm still going to stick with the monoblocks. There is no reason not to after reading the discussion on AndrewT's post in the "The new "My Ref" Rev C thread" thread

[AndrewT]

I don't remember what I said in there.

But, I do recommend that you learn by building a mono.
When that is working as best as you are able to achieve, you then decide whether to continue building monos or to rise to the challenge of building a stereo.

[jmillerdoc]

Originally Posted by jordyyy

...... People are concerned with ground loops, which I have no idea what those are, so I'm still going to stick with the monoblocks. ......

If you are going to be building even mono blocks, or any other design for that matter, I highly suggest you learn about ground loops as your projects are likely to be plagued with all sorts of nasty hums and buzzes if you don't understand this concept well and follow it's dictates. Even copying another persons design could lead you into creating a ground loop that will cause problems. I have seen plenty of designs and schematics that left enough room for self determination that ground loops could be inadvertently created. This is a very basic concept that needs to be understood well. I would even go out on a limb and say it is probably the number one cause of hum in a diy audio circuit. When I began building amps and such I frequently had a nasty hum that I ultimately identified as a ground loop problem.

Good news is it is not a difficult concept to understand at all. I am not going to try to explain all the details here as a quick search should bring up plenty of easy to understand info on this topic.

Good luck with your builds.

One last thing, you really should read some articles on safety precautions while working with these circuits....this can be a deadly hobby of you're not really careful. I single charged capacitor on a circuit that is even unplugged from the wall can really hurt you....please be careful and observe safe diy practices, we want more of your questions in the future!
Jeff

[jordyyy]

thanks for the advice