Unwanted noise is often caused by a missing ground or ground loop:
Missing Ground: Elevate uses a 2-pin power adapter, and by itself, is ungrounded. Connecting only to headphones leaves Elevate ungrounded, which may result in noise, especially at high-gain settings. Connecting to other gear that has a 3-pin power connector, including a PC via USB, connects Elevate to ground.
Ground Loop: A ground loop may result when multiple pieces of equipment with a common audio path have different grounding points. A ground loop typically sounds like hum or buzz. Using Elevate's Line Outputs can avoid this issue:
- An unbalanced connection is ground-compensated.
- A balanced connection typically disconnects ground on one end, breaking the ground loop.
In some cases, noise is unavoidable (single-coil pickups, no convenient ground connection, noisy system ground, etc.). For this reason, Elevate implements a sophisticated and transparent noise reduction algorithm.