Do better ingredients make a better Ground Wire?


We have all heard the slogan "Better ingredients better Pizza". If this is true with Pizza, how about applying this Principal to a DIY Ground wire I pondered. So I set off on a journey to find out if using better ingredients (wire) would make a better ground cable. My finding of course only apply to my system in my listening room using my ears (my wife and my Beagle dog don't count). But they heard the difference as well. To say this was a short trip is an understatement. To say that the two versions I made more than held there own is an even BIGGER understatement. One version uses solid core Silver wire. The other version uses a silver & Palladium mix. I made 4 of each kind, both versions terminated using a pure 8 awg copper spade. Do better ingredients make a better Ground wire. In my system, a very understated YES!!!
jejaudio
Hi, Bud. I have the DIY JPS AC In wall cable on both the negative post of both my speakers (spade connections). I also have the DIY JPS AC In wall cable on the negative post of the right and left channel of my power amp( spades). Now back to the speakers, I also have added the Silver-Palladium DIY Ground Control to both speakers negative post using a banana plug. Combining both the JPS wire with the Silver-Palladium wire give me the best of both cables. The JPS wire brings out background sounds betters. Brushes have more shimmer, and the sound stage is wider. The Silver-Palladium is very good with the mid range and has a very solid bottom end. So the sound stage is wider but still in focus. PRAT is very good. The DIY solid silver wire is not as good with the DIY JPS wire. I have even tried PCOCC copper and it seemed a little slow sounding at first listen, maybe needed more time to burn in. TEASER ALERT: I have been working (USING) on a DIY Control wire that can be used on the POSITIVE POSTS of your speakers and power amps. I guess I should have taken the RED pill instead of the BLUE one. (THE Matrix).
How did you fix the various combination's together. I have found it unusually important to have similar metals, even if there is a tin/lead solder in the connection. The best so far had been all copper with a tin coating and no lead anywhere.
Just an update on my DIY Ground Control spades. I have replaced the solid silver DIY Ground Controls spades on both of my speakers with a pair of DIY Ground Control spades made with JPS Power AC In-Wall cables. This is a 10 awg cable used in home wiring to your electrical service panel. It is $18-$20 dollars a foot. I cut a 5" piece, stripped about 1" off both ends. Then twisted the stripped ends together. Then I put the two twisted ends into a Pure copper spade lug (no plating). There was a greater since of spaciousness with the music, but everything was more infocus. But what stood out to me was the noise floor was much lower now with all kinds of musical cues coming out in songs that I knew. Yes I heard them before with the Silver DIY Ground Controls. But now there is a more shimmer in brushes, male and female voice have more throatiness. All this with no edge or harshness, just a flowing ease with full dynamics. I still have the Silver-Palladium mix DIY Ground Controls on my poweramp. I have another set of DIY JPS AC In-Wall Ground Control that I will put on my amp in place of the DIY Silver-Palladium mix Ground Controls. But for now just by replacing the DIY Silver Ground Control spades on my speakers with the DIY JPS AC In-Wall Ground Control spades. There is a very very noticable step up in musical flow and sound across the board. So do better ingredients make a better Ground Wire, once again the answer is yes.
Koestner, My equipment has both balanced and single ended input/output. The RCA Ground Controls are used on the RCA's.
Koestner,

I have just been reporting what users have forwarded to me. The one user, with a fully differential system, reported no change at all, neither better or worse. A balanced system is not always fully differential, there can be a ground reference in the system and that is all that is known to be needed for GC's to perform. Obviously, Ozzie is having great success with his balanced system.

To date we have seen two GC's up for sale and none have been returned to us as unusable, other than the fully differential system rejection.

The RCA's do seem to take longer to charge than the spade lug items. I ascribe this to signal level and relative current levels involved, with the RCA's not normally seeing more than 3 or 4 volts peak and only ten's of ma in current.

I have noticed that the louder you play the system, over what you will normally listen to, the quicker the spade lug versions charge. This does not seem to be true with the RCA's though, or at least not in my experience. Again, I think it is related to the signal levels involved as

I would suggest that you try out a pair of standard lugged GC's. If they don't work out for you, return them and please report back in either case. The more different styles of systems that use them, the more data points we have and all information is good information.

Bud
Ozzy, where do you place them as both leads are hot, only 180 degrees out of phase from each other?

John
Koestner, I run my system balanced from CD Player, Preamp, Amp and the Ground Controls work fantastic!
Bud, I think it was stated before, but I don't understand why. I have a fully balanced amp (Wyred 4 Sound) that I run in full balanced from source through preamp to amp. Why will the GCs' do nothing in my case?
Well I just posted my Review of the Ground Controls in the standard and the Reference versions in spades and RCA.
Pixelphoto,

My system is pretty humble also, so don't feel bad about yourself! I have a friend in the hill country in Texas with a massively expensive McIntosh / B&W 802 system. Before GC application I wasn't overly impressed with anything but the sheer scale of the reproduction, compared to my system. After Standard GC's were applied, her system was the equal of mine in all categories and firmly trounced it in scale. But who cares? I still have torrents of music to listen to at home and so does she.

Do experiment a bit further with what I mentioned to Lacee above and then treat yourself and get a pair of the real thing. I doubt you will be sorry you did and you will have a reason to experiment further, in other locations in your system. Everywhere there is a commercially viable piece of electronics gear, there is a potential for improvement in your overall system's musical values by correcting the ground side information retention.

Thanks for your comments by the way, it is good to hear that more and more folks are digging into this relatively unexplored area and coming up with gold. You might want to explore EnABL speaker processes at some point..... and yes, it will work on your system and yes, you can learn how to do it successfully. Anyone with fingers attached to hands and stereoscopic vision can do so.

Bud
I cannot answer your question Lacee. I have zero experience with the Bybee devices. I think they, along with the Walker devices, are used to strip RF signals and their down sampled resonances from speaker cables, but that is the extent of my, most likely misunderstood, knowledge.

I think I would recommend getting a pair of the standard GC's and trying them, first on the speakers and then on the amplifier ground connections. I use the standard GC on my amplifiers, a reference there just does not provide the balance between resolution of sound source retained information, versus resolution of sound stage information. This allows me to use the reference GC on the speakers to retain that source specific information there, without compromising the sound stage.

Since you have had some success with a DIY variation I suspect the standard GC will work well for you. If I were you, I think I would experiment a little further with the DIY devices, before spending any real money. Try both longer and shorter loops of the original materials and then deliberately change the type of plastic on the wire jacket. Lamp cord is PVC, Monster Cable is often polyurethane and some other cables utilize polypropylene, Teflon and pure (smelly) raw vinyl. You can also take some bare stranded wire and put it into a polyolefin shrink tube. The reason to bother is to find out how your system responds to the various dielectric constants of these materials.

If the best sound comes from the shrink tube covered cable, then you will probably want at least one set of Reference GC's in the amplifier / speaker circuit. If the PVC sounds best then don't bother with Reference speaker or amplifier GC's. Instead use the reference RCA on your preamp and standard lugged GC's on your speakers.

This is a pretty rough guide and you can expect that even the standard GC is going to outperform an ad hoc experiment, but at least you will not just be guessing about the direction to take.

If you do further experiments do report back please, your information will be welcome.

Bud
Bud since I did have limited success with my DIY GC, before I go and get the REF version, I would like to know if you have any comments about using your devices on speakers(Ref 3A GrandVeena)that already have bybee devices inside.

Would there be any kind of cancelling effect?
Could this be why I didn't experience the night and day differences that others are experiencing?

I know that using the Walker devices Utra links, did interact with the Zoebel network(bybees)inside my speakers and this cancelled out any improvements.

Thanks.
Wow! I took a 20" piece of Monster speaker cable, split it, looped it, twisted the bare ends and attached one each to my Def Tech STS speakers and zowie. After two days of listening to familiar CD's I can say vocals are more real, cymbals really shimer, guitar, drum, sax, you name it and all has more presence. This is the best tweak yet to my humble system.
Just to increase the Agony of those still on the fence over these small Ground Control items, here is a new review.
http://www.stereotimes.com

Bud
Gswaul,

Thanks for your comments. The wire loops are a surprising change, as silly seeming as the idea is. Even more surprising is what the full Ground Control device brings to a system.. My recommendation, of course, is that you should buy a set!!!! :=)

You still have tonal vividness an even more clearly locked in dimensionality, a bit faster response and a general sweetness to the sounds still to be obtained from the standard commercial GC's.

As Jejaudio points out, better materials are important and the Reference GC is noticeably more capable than the standard units. And then there are still the amplifier, preamplifier and source GC's to explore.

Bud
I normally don't contribute much to these types of discussions, but I felt my personal experience warranted some comment. After seeing the GC devices advertised in several magazines and catalogs, I became curious. I found the review for these in The Stereotimes and then this discussion. I decided, from the comments above, that testing this "tweak" as too simple to pass up. I took a short piece of my existing speaker cable, Kimber 8TC, and stripped it into 2 loops approximately 8-10" long. I installed them on my speakers and then ran some errands. When I returned, I was surprised to find music pouring out all over the room. The music had a greater ease and flow to it with improvements in both separation and soundstage. I have never had this experience with any other "normal" tweak and am most impressed. I don't know if this works with all systems or just some but it is certainly worth the effort to try. My electronics are Audio Research and my speakers are Dynaudio for those who might be interested. Many thanks to the developer and those of you who contributed to this thread!
I think you may know quite a bit more than nuthin Jejaudio. Thank you for your appreciation of our efforts and, by the by, the Reference models do use solid silver speaker lugs and solid silver internals for the RCA connectors and both use Wonder solder for the connections. The "standard" units have gold plated over pure copper for the lugs or copper alloy for the RCA units

Bud
Hi, David. I have not tried any other way of hooking the DIY Ground Controls up except using spades on the outside negative post on my speakers and power amp. Now is a good time for me to restate that I am no way connected to Audio Prism in any way shape or form. I want to thank all those at Audio Prism for doing the research & development, putting the time in and spending the capital to bring there Ground Control to the market. I have just rode there coattails to make my own version of there discovery. So in other words I don't know nothing about nothing. But I am very glad your out there adding to conversation. This is what it is all about improving one's sound.
David,

When I provide EnABL'd drivers to folks wanting 40 to 60 db down in coherent information, below the typically available 40 db down, I do provide partial GC's attached directly to the drivers. These are not intended to provide all of the benefit of a full on Ground Control, as is available commercially. Primary function is to make certain that the driver has access to the back half of the wave form for information that provides spatial clues and removes the starved, sick sound, of densely recorded material, when the ground side is starved of carrier electrons. These GC's typically do not have cotton sleeves or attachment lugs and as Jejaudio has pointed out, both of these are important portions of the GC approach to information retention.

Just attaching a piece of wire, in a loop will likely have some effect. Not necessarily a positive effect, but for proof of principle it should show that while somewhat silly, the concept does work. I would suggest a 2 foot long piece of lamp cord, split into two pieces. Strip about an inch of insulation off of both ends of one piece, make a loop and twist the wires together. Insert this section of bare wire into your speaker box lug connection, on the return side, black, connector. Do the same for the other side. Then sit back and listen carefully as the wire begins to alter what you hear. I doubt you will like it initially. A few hours into listening, not necessarily all at one sitting by any means, remove the wires and listen for a short period, then reattach them and listen again. I am pretty sure you will "get it".

The GC is a carefully controlled "generalist" tuning of what you will find in the lamp cord loop. It is aimed at the sweet spot for the vast majority of speakers and electronics and while they can be further refined for a specific system, it is an agonizingly tedious business and most often well into the "placebo" realm of wished for improvements. The commercial versions will provide you with more than you hoped for. And, until you delve into EnABL'd drivers, a very clear improvement in tonal richness, transient correctness, tonal vividness and coherent information, that allows your brain to reconstruct the space that the sonic event occurred within.

EnABL'd drivers will respond just as stock ones will, but a specific set directly on the drivers, will add even more to what the commercial units bring.

Bud
To Jejaudio and Budp, have you tried the ground control units attached directly to the negative post of each speaker driver within the speaker cabinet? Have you tried the ground control units attached to the speaker cabinet's terminals as bare wire and not with spades or banana connectors? Thank you both for sharing your experience with this approach to improving one's sound.
David Pritchard
Replacing the direct silver-plated Audioquest CF spade with a pure copper spade made all the difference in the world on both the all silver DIY Ground wire I made, and the Silver & Palladium DIY Ground wire. There was no location where the Audioquest Direct-Silver plated CF spade sounded better than the pure copper spade.I agree that if you never heard the two side by side you would not find fault with the gold plated or silver plated spades. But there is a significant step up in performance in pure silver and pure copper spades over plated spades.
Sounds like what we found the first time we used the XShadow 100% silver spades on speakers and amp posts, quite a bit better inner detail and nuance, even though it was still just from the back side of the signals. I was quite skeptical that solid silver would be better than copper / gold plated spades, but my doubts disappeared rather quickly. Careful listening showed that leading edges of all sounds were just as they had been without any Ground Control, and that the silver made more"sense" out of the rest of the signal than did the gold platted GC's. And yet, the gold platted units only sounded murky in comparison with the the solid silver spaded units. In comparison to none, it was again back to the "not ever leaving my system" mind set.

The RCA's reveal a greater difference between silver and gold plate units. The silver RCA's, on the preamp, caused me to remove the internal GC's from the Sony player and plug in two gold plated RCA's in place of them. Silver RCA's on the Sony was just a bit much, very resolving, without actually curing the OPAMP ground side starvation. The gold units seemed best there.

Still learning about these little jewels.

Bud
Hi, Bud. I used the $150.00 dollar set of Audio Prism Ground Control as my reference before I started this post. So I have directly compared them to my DIY version. And in direct head to head match ups with the DIY versions I made, the Audio Prism Ground Controls were a behind the two versions I made(solid Silver - Silver Palladium mix) I would love to compare my DIY to the Audio Prism Reference Ground Control. But they are priced much higher. I do have my eye on the RCA ground control for equipment(preamp). Thanks for the suggestion.
Probably not such a simple tweak really. Just does a number of things with the least amount of stuff. You really should buy one of the $150 sets and test it out against your DIY item, just to make sure you have all of the benefit. Not dissing your efforts at all, you have just left out aa couple of descriptions of the changes wrought by the full package. You can always return them, claiming lack of change....

I do find it very interesting to discover just how good the equipment we have really is, once the back half of the wave form is properly supported. Neat to know that even Red Book audio, out of a cheap Sony CD / SACD player, can sound wonderful and that a Nikko Beta I SS preamp from the 80's is an incredibly delicate and nuanced preamp, not the hissy, hashy high end, thing that most people find with them. You really do need to explore the RCA Ground Control devices.

Bud
I took my Classe amp S-700 out of my system. And put my modded dual-mono Adcom 555-MK11 in it's place with my DIY Ground controls on the amp negative speaker post just like I did with the Classe S-700. There is an even greater improvement with the Adcom than with the Classe. I have bragged about this Adcom in other posts, but it never sounded better than the Classe, until now! With the DIY Ground Controls the Adcom is visceral, open, wider sound stage, bass now has not just very deep bass, but low bass, mid bass, upper bass. The mid range has more presence to the voices, they just sound live and real. This is laughable how much this already overachieving amp has been improved by this simple tweak.
Hevacel,

I couldn't agree more!!!!!!!

Everyone, please note that bare copper wire not only will not provide any benefit to your listening experience but is a safety issue, just as it would be if you were using bare copper wire as your speaker cables.

You should be protected from the power grid by your amplifier, with particular protection provided by current limiting devices in solid state amps and output transformers in tube devices. The voltages in your speaker cables are not considered to be lethal by the worlds safety agencies but using bare copper wire will still cause destruction of your equipment.

However, as an added safety note, you should not at any moment interrupt the connection to safety ground in your equipment, unless you know for a FACT that it is "Double Insulated". All two prong plugged electrical equipment must be double insulated to pass UL, CSA or CE and thereby are safe to use without a third prong connected to safety ground. You should never use a safety ground defeating plug, period. Use isolation signal transformers from Jensen, Sowter, O-Netics, Lundahl and others to break the ground loops in your equipment, if you are suffering hum problems. You will not suffer a degradation in sonic qualities by doing so.

Our Ground Control has as much protection from accidental exposure to safety ground as does the typical speaker cable, with only the prongs of the mounting fork or body of the RCA plug being uncovered by a suitable dielectric material. Even the 140 strands of four nines copper wire are insulated, individually. You can use these devices without fear of death or destruction, RF noise or self levitation.

As for experimenting, if you don't use an insulated wire, you will get no benefit, so don't bother.

Bud
Thank you for doing that Lacee.

As for our implementation of this novel idea, we use 140 strands of wire and control the amount and types of dielectric materials used. Anyone could do the same research, ad hoc as it was, and duplicate our results. Or you can buy our results for quite a bit less cost than the amount of time it will take you to learn the relatively subtle things you need to know.

I am a transformer engineer and I am aware of wire and dielectric investigations, as it is part of my professional career. None of the thoughts behind Ground Control are collected as a single concept in the scientific literature I am aware of, but each of the component understandings is well supported.

What we have developed in Ground Control will not leave you with a "feeling" that the reproduction has changed for the better. The changes will be quite obvious, as information retention improvements, and they won't be on the leading edge of the signal. It is still surprising to me how much information is lost to corruption of the back half of all wave forms, after they have passed through the "load". This portion of all signal information is then pulled back through the load, after a vector change in the field event has expossed the signal holding electrons to local dielectrics, somewhre between your speaker cables, the safety ground outside your building and the power sub station down the road.

Bud
Thanks Bud, here's my take on your suggestion and also the results.

I used simple solid core hook up wire from the Source(Radio shack)22 guage.
I cut 4 x 24 inch lengths.
I cut about an inch or more of the plastic covering off all ends.
I braided each pair of wires together,formed an arc and then twisted all the bare ends together,inserted the ends into a banana plug and put the one finished ground wire into the neg speaker terminal.
The same was done to the other two lengnths of wire for the other speaker.

I powered up my amp, took a deep breath,and nothing bad happened.
No electrical arcing, no electronic shock, no amp shutdown, no speaker blow ups, nothing but a "feeling" that something had changed for the better.
Massed violins on a Harminia Mundi cd seemd to be less harsh, more pleasant to the ears.
I heard nothing else, no humm,hiss or any type of sonic degradation, but no boost of any treble or bass frequencies either.

So ,as much as I can't be 100% positive that my system has improved,what I am certain of is that this will not harm anything either as some have implied here.
That is , if you do as Bud has directed,and if your experiments with different wires conforms to his recipe, I can't see anyone having any problems that would result in harm to your gear or most importantly to yourself.
If you are a tinkerer, tweaker type, here is something to try.
If you are from the camp that think this is folly or that it can harm you/your gear,all I can say is that you should try it before you jump to conclusions.
Messing around with electrical grounds can do only 1 thing, make you or your loved ones the easiest and less resistive path to ground. Leave it to the professionals. This should not be a tweek but can be life or death.
Lacee, after poking around Google I finally stumbled onto the web site for the Walker Links. From their description I would have to say no, they do not perform the same function that Ground Control does. You can test this by obtaining a 2 foot long length of inexpensive lamp cord,. Split it into the two halves that make up this sort of cord and strip both ends of both cords of plastic insulation for about 2 inches. Make a loop out of each cord, twist the wires together and insert this twisted grouping into the hole in the stem of your black lug speaker terminal. Play music and allow about two to three hours for the full effect to show up. This is not as refined as Ground Control, but will give you a pretty good idea of what is available from our product. I suspect these loops will work very well with the Walker units and the commercial Ground Control will perform quite a bit better.
I won't tell you to try them, I don't know what they are. Can you provide a link to an informative article please?

Bud
Here's something to comment about.
I have the Walker magic links(oh oh-magic).
They are silver wired and silver spades.

Do you think if I just plugged the neg spade into my speakers neg terminal I would do harm or would it be a quasi, albeit more expensive ground control?

Don't tell me to just try it,I want to read about all the pros and cons first before I do.
My Postulate

Electrons move at about 1 meter per second in an AC impressed signal cable. Mostly they just jitter back and forth, under the control of an information packet we usually call "signal". A signal is comprised of E Field and B Field, with E Field being the moment when the signal changes vector. At this moment the electrons holding the signal twist the axis of an electron, attached to a dielectric end atom, to the obverse of the spin and axis of the holding electron. This in turn causes the equivalent electron on the other end of the open chain of atoms, comprising the dielectric molecular structure, to twist to match the holding electron. Incidentally, this his is how AC signal is transferred across a dielectric barrier.

This momentary hold for vector change is controlled by the charge threshold of the dielectric material and the subsequent release threshold and the time between these two appears to be affected to a degree by how many electrons can be signaling within a given area. This later is referred to as "dielectric constant". Holding electrons, without sufficient charge to affect the electron on the end of the dielectric molecule's atom, are lost from the coherent signal. The release threshold also provides a time interval to the resumption of the AC signal as a B Field event. These three events all contribute to the loss of signal coherency on the return portion of the signal through the load.

The loop of wire, as a shorted turn comprised of many strands of insulated wire in my usage, coated with a two part dielectric material, polyurethane and nylon, has an extremely low RAC and RDC, but it's useful path length is very long, when considered as an unterminated wave guide. The entire loop is at a lower state of impedance than the ground it is attached to and over a period of time actually fills the open orbits of the empty orbits found in the copper wire. Due to the triboelectric effect of the additional pieces of dielectric, in the official Ground Control, maintains this "filled" capacity, so long as there is a source of electrons to replace those that trickle away.

After attachment, those low level wide band signal components will be maintained in this unterminated wave guide. Meanwhile, being lost to poor dielectrics and boundaries between different pieces of metal, throughout the ground system provided, out to the local pole in the ground itself. I suppose we could claim quantum choice effects here, for the signal, as it moves at the speed of light through the pieces of wire involved in this, but I don't really think it's necessary to argue at that level.

Your notice of greater dynamic range is most likely just a drop in the noise floor and more coherence to the originating signal of information, on the back half of the signal waveform. These two are linked, since signal dropped from the "information packet" of a coherent information data stream will become a random event and cause random charged electrons to pass the information back through the load as noise.

Bud
Does 'Ground Plane' enter into any of this?
Audio Prism seems to say so, while admitting that they don't fully understand it, but that strikes me as nonsense. From the review, quoting one of their partners:
We believe it provides a ground reference. We don’t really know how but we hear the improvement on a wide variety of speakers. Some of these effects can’t be measured. Or at least we don’t know what to measure.

Magfan: I wonder just how much RF it would take to cause audible problems.... I currently live near a transmitter tower(s) but for the last 20+ years have heard NO audible effect.
Don't know, but as I said I'd be surprised (very surprised) if the effect I described were audibly significant. Although the rf situation is different these days than in earlier times, because of wifi and cellphones.

Note as I indicated earlier that the length of this thing (at least in the case of the diy versions that were described by the posters above) suggests that it is tuned to either the 2.4gHz wifi frequency and/or to some cellphone frequencies, not to radio or tv frequencies, which are much lower. The Audio Prism version appears to be somewhat different:
There is a lot of very fine wire (about 138 feet) looped inside the GC in a very special braid configuration. He added that increasing the length of the GC by a ¼ inch would mess up the sound. It’s critically tuned.
I suppose that could mean that the Audio Prism version is tuned to lower frequencies, but my knowledge of antenna theory isn't sufficiently up to snuff. In any event I don't think the ground plane explanation makes any sense, and even the Audio Prism person admits he is not sure. One of the many reasons I say that is that ground planes are not "critically tuned," while antennas are.

Best regards,
-- Al
Al,
Agreed. I wonder just how much RF it would take to cause audible problems?

I HAVE picked up radio on my non-tuner'd stereo before. long ago.

I currently live near a transmitter tower(s) but for the last 20+ years have heard NO audible effect.

Does 'Ground Plane' enter into any of this?
having read the 6Moons review and the laughable non-explanations that are quoted in its sidebar

I got the same feeling.
How could it possibly make a difference?
In a proper system it carries NO current and NO signal, right?
Hi Magfan,
Along the lines of my earlier comment, it seems clear to me that it is designed to act as a form of loop antenna, tuned by means of its length to either wifi or certain cellphone frequencies or both.

However, in contrast to a normal loop antenna the fact that the antenna's two "output terminals" are shorted together, and/or the fact that the two halves of the loop are placed together (causing the electromagnetic fields associated with the rf flowing through the two halves to interact with each other), and/or the fact that there are two paralleled loops, will presumably cause rf energy that is picked up to be dissipated.

It would surprise me if any of that were significant to an audible degree, but who knows? In any event, having read the 6Moons review and the laughable non-explanations that are quoted in its sidebar, that kind of antenna effect is the only explanation that seems remotely plausible to me, and that seems consistent with the claimed length criticality.

Best regards,
-- Al
How could it possibly make a difference?
In a proper system it carries NO current and NO signal, right?
The first DIY spades I made use Audioquest CF- spades. These are direct silver plated no nickel between the silver and copper. They accept up to 9 awg wire. I was only able to use one silver or one Palladium cables with these spades. So I had both end of 14 awg cable in a spade. It sounded good, a little thin when used on my speakers and amp. But just on the speakers it was a noticeable step up from the Audio Prism spades, nothing earth shattering, but a nice step up. But when I doubled up on the wire and put all 4 ends in the pure copper 8 awg spades it just wasn't even close. As soon as I put them in the difference in flow, and realism was dramatic. I don't know if it was the doubling of the cable or the pure copper spades, or a combination of both. I would like to try the Xhadow spades. They look promising.
Jejaudio, Yeah, I pushed the wrong bottom it is 3".
Have you tried using silver spades?
With the new wires I am using, I wonder, like all cables, do they need to break in?
Hi, Ozzy. Your post says your loop is 3 feet long. Is this correct? If you meant 3 inches for your loop than we are similar. I use a 8 awg copper spade so I could use my thicker 14 awg silver and Palladium & silver mix cable. But I do have a pair that I made up using canare copper cables which sound pretty good terminated in my Audioquest spades.
Hi, Elescher. Reading your post made me think maybe we all are putting to much into the first part of the name (Ground Control), and not realizing that the function is not to Ground but to Control. I think the secret in the Audio Prism Ground Control is that it controls the preexisting ground you already have in your system. Not creating a new one. Kind of like a reinforcement to your ground, with a fake detour that enough of the audio gremlins take and intern make the music that much cleaner. That my attempt at explaining it, fire away.
Jejaudio, I also have made some others with 21 ga pure silver. This time I used 2 sets of 24" long cable each folded 3 times each. This should be the equivalent of 15 gauge for each set 6" long. Then I made a 3' loop out of that and put the 4 wires into a banana plug. This should be more similiar to what you are using.
Hi, Almarg. Your hypothises (educated guess) is as good as I have heard. Dissipation of outside noise, Radio waves, EMI-RFI,or even absorption or filtering which is denied in the review as you pointed out is on the table. I just don't know enough about this kind of thing. But I'm with you on the length being a major part. But I do know what I hear. So there is no law of physic conflict between my right and left brain. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Jejaudio, I am using a 24 gauge pure silver wire that started out 24" long. Folded it 3 times to make a 6" length. Then made a loop out of that making it about a 3" loop. Then I used a bannana plug on the end.
Not sure if this is equivalent to yours but it sounds pretty good.
Great tweak and is easy to experiment with.
I agree with the OP in that I have experimented with different types of wire that attach to my two grounding rods outside of my house. I have a dedicated isolated ground for my system. Grounding is a very tricky subject and changes in the gauge of wire, what the wire is made of, which components in your system are grounded and which are not, all make a profound difference. There are no sure answers as to what wire is best to use for your system or which components to lift the ground are in your system because no two are the same, and neither is the electricity coming into the house. That being said, I wouldn't recommend attaching a ground wire to a speaker binding post.