No ground in electrical system at home and PC connected to the same outlet. Will a DAC resolve the issue of noise?

[Jenko32]

I have headphones (beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO 80 Ohm) connected to a Dedicated PCI Sound Card and a generic 2.1 system connected through an Amplifier(analog to analog) to the On-Board audio.

My problem is that I have a background high pitched noise because of the high load from an air conditioner caused by the fact that I don't have a ground in my electrical system and both air conditioner and PC are connected to the same outlet. I rarely use the speakers so I can ignore the problem with them but it feels like having tinnitus with the headphones on when there's no sound, my problem is that I think that a DAC may not be able to solve my issue, being that the ground of the DAC is probably the PC. From what I read analog and digital converters have their ground connected in a way or another to give the point of reference to the circuit or other/s motivation/s.

I'm either going to end up buying to test it, since I realize this question propose not a really common scenario, or I'll try detaching the ground from the electrical plug of the air conditioner (I don't think it's going to solve the issue but worth a try and nothing to lose)

[Biomecanoid]

34 minutes ago, Jenko32 said:

I have headphones (beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO 80 Ohm) connected to a Dedicated PCI Sound Card and a generic 2.1 system connected through an Amplifier(analog to analog) to the On-Board audio.

My problem is that I have a background high pitched noise because of the high load from an air conditioner caused by the fact that I don't have a ground in my electrical system and both air conditioner and PC are connected to the same outlet. I rarely use the speakers so I can ignore the problem with them but it feels like having tinnitus with the headphones on when there's no sound, my problem is that I think that a DAC may not be able to solve my issue, being that the ground of the DAC is probably the PC. From what I read analog and digital converters have their ground connected in a way or another to give the point of reference to the circuit or other/s motivation/s.

I'm either going to end up buying to test it, since I realize this question propose not a really common scenario, or I'll try detaching the ground from the electrical plug of the air conditioner (I don't think it's going to solve the issue but worth a try and nothing to lose)

You need a power conditioner which is like a fancy big power strip or a small ups

[biohazard918]

Have you considered getting a blue tooth adapter for your headphones? It would provide total electrical isolation and there are decent to high end options for them.

[startrek03]

If you're electrical system isn't grounded, you should worry about that first... Isn't that mandatory in any building? Especially in Europe?

Anyways, does the noise go away, if you turn off the air conditioning?

[shoutingsteve]

4 minutes ago, startrek03 said:

If you're electrical system isn't grounded, you should worry about that first... Isn't that mandatory in any building? Especially in Europe?

Anyways, does the noise go away, if you turn off the air conditioning?

Yes.  Absolutely that is the larger problem.

[Jenko32]

39 minutes ago, startrek03 said:

If you're electrical system isn't grounded, you should worry about that first... Isn't that mandatory in any building? Especially in Europe?

Anyways, does the noise go away, if you turn off the air conditioning?

Yes the noise goes away from headphones but tiniest bit remain only at max volume on speakers, probably because the cable going from the speakers to the amplifier is passing near the monitor power cord, but that can be easily ignored since it's only at max volume.

Measuring with a watt meter at "turbo" function the air conditioner takes about 900w and the noise is really evident in both audio system, at minimum power setting it's only about 250w and that's lower noise but still very annoying

[Jenko32]

46 minutes ago, startrek03 said:

If you're electrical system isn't grounded, you should worry about that first... Isn't that mandatory in any building? Especially in Europe?

Anyways, does the noise go away, if you turn off the air conditioning?

Here in Italy grounding is only mandatory (for big building where people can live like apartment complex)  from 1991 law was fit to be retroactive with building built from 1989 or something like that, the electrical system probably got replaced once since 1960 (around when this apartment complex was built) since the cables are not too old, some outlets and light fixture miss entirely the ground cable cause the installers knew it would been useless since there was no ground in the first place

[Jenko32]

51 minutes ago, shoutingsteve said:

Yes.  Absolutely that is the larger problem.

Unfortunately grounding this flat would cost a lot and would mean ripping every single wall to get to the cables, cause the electrical system is so old that to be legal the electricians need to verify and put inside law limits things that were possible back then but now not so much, only renovation could justify all this work unfortunately, I am planning to move around 2022 so it would be kind of wasted money to renovate anyway

[Jenko32]

1 hour ago, biohazard918 said:

Have you considered getting a blue tooth adapter for your headphones? It would provide total electrical isolation and there are decent to high end options for them.

I'll look into that thanks for the suggestion

[Jenko32]

1 hour ago, Biomecanoid said:

You need a power conditioner which is like a fancy big power strip or a small ups

Never heard of them, I'll look into that, thanks.

[shoutingsteve]

16 hours ago, Jenko32 said:

Never heard of them, I'll look into that, thanks.

I could be wrong, but i believe a power conditioner requires a ground.  If you want to be SUPER ghetto, you could ground to a cold water pipe (assuming your pipes are copper all the way to the source.)

It wouldn't be hard, and wouldn't' really be unsafe either, just not up to code nor would it be pretty.
https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/water-pipes-grounding-purposes

[Jenko32]

31 minutes ago, shoutingsteve said:

I could be wrong, but i believe a power conditioner requires a ground.  If you want to be SUPER ghetto, you could ground to a cold water pipe (assuming your pipes are copper all the way to the source.)

It wouldn't be hard, and wouldn't' really be unsafe either, just not up to code nor would it be pretty.
https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/water-pipes-grounding-purposes

Yeah that's really really ghetto, I don't want to do that because I think other flats here ground to the water pipes and I've read of some things that can happen when two flats or more share the same ground. I'll see if I can find articles or testing regarding grounding power conditioners