Widespread parts of the Adelaide Hills and metropolitan area have been shaken by an earth tremor, with one radio listener describing it as "like a train coming through the house".

The quake reached a magnitude 3.2 about 8:30pm, with an epicentre near the township of Palmer, north-west of Mannum, according to Geoscience Australia.

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ABC Radio Adelaide listeners inundated the station's switchboard with reports of the tremor from as far afield as the Barossa Valley, throughout the hills and into the southern suburbs.

"I was just lying in bed reading a book and I felt the whole room tremble," Andrew from Hahndorf said.

"The cat shot under the bed and hasn't come out yet.

"This one seemed a bit like a train coming through the house."

The tremor was recorded at a depth of 13 kilometres, Geoscience Australia said.

Other listeners reported the tremor lasted about 10 seconds, and rattled windows and shook the floor.

Senior seismologist David Love said there was a chance of small aftershocks.

"I felt the windows of my house shake in Payneham," he said.

"We wondered quite what it was. It was just a gentle rattling of windows, no sound of any plane or anything, and I thought 'oh it's going on a bit long for an earthquake'."

Adelaide is basically 'sitting on a hotspot'

Geoscientist and associate professor of geology and geochemistry at the University of South Australia, Tom Raimondo said events like last night's tremor actually happened all the time.

"The reality is that we are subject to these events all the time, they are much smaller, too small to detect," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

"Occasionally we have these larger magnitude events like the one we had last night that can be felt.

"If you look at a seismic map of Australia you'll find that we're sitting on a hotspot basically.

"The Flinders Ranges and the Mount Lofty Ranges that connect into this spine of mountain belts that run through Adelaide, that's active continuously."

Earthquakes are not unusual throughout the Mt Lofty Ranges and the Flinders Ranges.

In May, a magnitude 3.0 quake hit Mount Compass on the Fleurieu Peninsula.