Grounding Box Q

Some of these grounding boxes cost many thousands and the ground wires can go for 300.00-400.00 a pop.  No thank you, my system is quiet enough without it.  IMHO, it's a money grab from the manufacturers.  I guess they just figured out another way to get money.  I am not saying they do not do anything as I haven't tried them, but can you really and truly hear the difference and is the cash outlay really worth it?

I heard a demonstration of a Nordost grounding box at a dealership.  The room had several dedicated power runs for a dedicated subpanel, and in terms of audible noise when no music was playing, there was none.  Yet, with the grounding in operation it was easy to hear an improvement in soundstaging—solo singer and instruments seem to be floating apart from each other, and the sound was a bit less artificially edgy.  It was a worthwhile improvement in a high end system.  I would rate it a bigger improvement than power conditioning.

I have the Synergistic Research ground box on my reference system and it works.  I think the improvement in my system is well worth the money.

More confirmation that audiophiles are nuts!

I tried the Shunyata Altaira Grounding box and I actually got hum from its use. However, I do own the Entreq Silver Tellus and I have made several DIY versions that work quite well.

I think the Shunyata usage is more of a star grounding scheme, that may or may not benefit your system depending upon your system ground. The others I own/built try to drain away line borne distortion which travels on the ground. Which when reduced does surprisingly result in a much deeper and cleaner sonic image.

Most of the commercial products are way over-priced based on what I put into mine and how it performs.

ozzy

I wasn’t really talking about the sound. I just don’t understand how any currents can flow into the box without both a + and - wire attached. I wonder if you attached the ground wire of your turntable to a ground box instead of the phono preamp ground it would work. 

I don’t know how they work, but the Nordost unit I heard at a dealership had to be wired to an unused input.  I told the manufacturer’s representative that my amp had only one input, but I could wire it to the chassis ground.  He told me that would not work, it had to be wired to an input; I took this to mean that the hot side was also in the circuit.

Some of these units are designed to be used as chassis ground and some are signal ground. Typically, the chassis ground units are also connected to the wall AC ground, sorta like a "Star" ground. Strange as it may seem it does make a difference.

ozzy