Shunyata Altaira Grounding Station ........has anybody purchased this new product ?


Hello Audiogoner's - I hope all is well and just wondering if anybody has purchased Shunyata's new Grounding Station. If you have, I would appreciate your feedback. Thank you in advance and stay well.....  

garebear

Showing 5 responses by jea48

@garebear

I for one am looking forward to your review of the Shunyata Altaira Grounding Station.

I watched the video below and found Gabriel’s explanation of how it works makes sense to me.

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This from another thread I posted here on Agon: (Edited)

What I know about the Shunyata ALTRAIRA Ground System I learned from watching the video below. What Gabriel has built, and his explanation of how it works, makes sense to me. He uses individual filters that are connected, to each ground post on the back of the box that are then connected to a common ground conductor. So all the filtered grounding posts are connected together.

He has two boxes. One for the Chassis ground and one the signal circuit ground. NOTE no where in the video does he promote floating, disconnecting, the EGC from any audio equipment that uses it. If fact, as I remember from watching the video, He says, and rightly so, the electrical service connection to mother earth is for lightning protection. Not for, shunting, diverting, noise to earth...

He didn’t fully explain, unless I missed it, how he treats the chassis of Class II double insulated audio equipment where an EGC is not used. That equipment is different... That equipment the Signal ground and DC B -, is connected directly to the chassis. One mistake I caught was him saying that tube equipment designers connect the signal ground and DC B - directly to the chassis. That’s not true. Some might, but not all.

What I did find interesting, if true, is that some equipment designers dump the noise the rectifier(s) make in the DC power supply(s) and SMPS onto the chassis. That would corrupts all the audio equipment as I see it. Maybe Gabriel could show them designers of audio equipment how to install a filter between the signal ground, DC B - , and chassis. That would solve a lot problems.

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The System Ground, therein Mother Earth connection is not involved. The Earth does not possess some magical mystical power that sucks nasties from an audio system.

Please provide any credible evidence that says it does...

The main purpose of the System Ground is for lightning protection.

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Grounding Myths

From Henry W. Ott’s book, "Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering"

3.1.7 Grounding Myths

More myths exist relating to the field of grounding than any other area of electrical engineering. The more common of these are as follows:

1. The earth is a low-impedance path for ground current. False, the impedance of the earth is orders of magnitude greater than the impedance of a copper conductor.

2. The earth is an equipotential. False, this is clearly not true by the result of (1 above).

3. The impedance of a conductor is determined by its resistance. False, what happened to the concept of inductive reactance?

4. To operate with low noise, a circuit or system must be connected to an earth ground. False, because airplanes, satellites, cars and battery powered laptop computers all operate fine without a ground connection. As a mater of fact, an earth ground is more likely to be the cause of noise problem. More electronic system noise problems are resolved by removing (or isolating) a circuit from earth ground than by connecting it to earth ground.

5. To reduce noise, an electronic system should be connected to a separate “quiet ground” by using a separate, isolated ground rod. False, in addition to being untrue, this approach is dangerous and violates the requirements of the NEC (electrical code/rules).

6. An earth ground is unidirectional, with current only flowing into the ground. False, because current must flow in loops, any current that flows into the ground must also flow out of the ground somewhere else.

7. An isolated AC power receptacle is not grounded. False, the term “isolated” refers only to the method by which a receptacle is grounded, not if it is grounded.

8. A system designer can name ground conductors by the type of the current that they should carry (i.e., signal, power, lightning, digital, analog, quiet, noisy, etc.), and the electrons will comply and only flow in the appropriately designated conductors. Obviously false."

Henry W. Ott

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Read the writings, White Papers, on Earth Grounding by,

Henry W Ott

Ralph Morrison

Bill Whitlock

Neil A Muncy

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Kingrex said:

I dug around Shunyata site and did not find where Calin talks about grounding with a bar of copper and 16 awg wire. Can you point it out. I have tried a few times in the past to make this type of install work. I have a 1/2" thick OFC copper bar I drilled and tapped to accept wires. I have used 10 awg bare copper, 14 awg bare copper, 20 awg dead soft silver wire, 20 awg dead soft silver wrapped in cotton with a mylar shield that is grounded on the bar end only. I never heard a thing with any configuration. I have bonded the bar to the ground system at my house with a dedicated bare copper #4 dropped 4 feet a ufer ground bonding my entire electrical system that reads about 4 ohms. Still heard nothing. I have taken the #4 and split bolted all the component ground wires I attached to the ground stud and still heard nothing.

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I have bonded the bar to the ground system at my house with a dedicated bare copper #4 dropped 4 feet "to" a ufer ground bonding my entire electrical system that reads about 4 ohms. Still heard nothing.

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a ufer ground bonding my entire electrical system that reads about 4 ohms.

My point?

Are you saying that EMI current can be drained, diverted, to the Earth? Where’s the circuit? Through the Earth, to where? It has to return to the source doesn’t it?

 

Henry Ott, Myths:

6. An earth ground is unidirectional, with current only flowing into the ground. False, because current must flow in loops, any current that flows into the ground must also flow out of the ground somewhere else

 

Somewhere else? Back to the source?...

Why would the EMI current travel through the ufer ground, (concrete-encased electrode), to the earth to get back to the source when it can travel through the #4CU conductor, (Grounding Electrode Conductor), that connects the ufer ground to the Grounded Conductor in the service equipment panel?

 

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After watching the Gabriel interview video I posted above, here is my understanding of how the Shunyata Altaira Ground System works,

 

Each of the two Shunyata ground filter boxes has 7 grounding posts. 1 thru 6 are for audio equipment connections. The 7th ground post, identified CGC, is for connecting the common clean ground bus of one filter box to another Shunyata ground box. The identified ground post is also used to connect the CGC ground post to a reference ground of the building AC power system. (Therein the EGC contact on a wall outlet or an insulated IG conductor installed back to the System Ground of the electrical service. (The final point of connection being the electrical service Grounded Conductor.)

 

Each of the 6 grounding posts for the audio equipment are connected to individual EMI noise filters. (Therein each grounding post has its own filter. The other end of each filter is connected to a common ground bus. Supposedly there will not be any EMI on the (filtered) clean ground bus.

All of the audio equipment (grounds) are connected together by the clean ground bus... The identified CGC ground post is also connected to the clean ground bus.

 

The EMI filtering takes place in the Shunyata ground filter system box... Mother Earth is not involved.

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@kingrex Said:

Jea, quit putting words in my mouth. I never said anything of the sort.

Please provide the quote(s) from my post(s) where I did...

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The Shunyata Altaira Ground System uses actual noise suppression filtering electrical components inside each the two boxes. Not pixie dust, not iron fillings, not dirt taken from the deepest parts of the earth, but actual electrical component noise filters.

In the video I posted above in this thread Gabriel explains the noise filters used in the system, and how they are connected.

 

Earth Ground,... can be confusing. If you look an electrical wiring diagram for the electrical system of an automobile you will see the earth ground symbol used at various places in the diagram. We all know an automobile electrical system does not have a connection to mother earth. Same for a Laptop computer. If you were to look at a wiring diagram for a typical laptop computer you will see the earth ground symbol used.

The F-35 Lightning II Jet Fighter has probably one of the most sophisticated electronics systems in the world. No doubt Faraday shielding and noise filtering galore, but no connection to mother earth.

 

Of course this whole earth ground concept gets a little convoluted when you start to consider that the neutral from the utility is also a 0 potential ground. Its better than the ground at your house.

0 potential referenced point measured to where? Maybe in the sphere around the ground rod.

The Utility power transformer neutral, (The Grounded Conductor), is connected to mother earth again at the electrical service of the house.

 

There is a ground dropped at every transformer across the city and country. They are all tied together . Walk the line and look. The neutral never breaks.

And the high voltage power Line neutral, (Grounded Conductor), is also connected to the step down Utility isolation Transformer’s secondary center tapped neutral. Both are connected to mother earth by the ground wire.

 

So lifting your house ground is only loosing one ok ground. You still have a 0 ohm ground from the utility. If you lift the utility ground, all heck breaks loose. You may light your house on fire. I have done clean up after a utility neutral broke at the clients house out at the pole. He lost a few appliances. His door bell transformer burned to a crisp. Lucky his house did not go up in flames. Literally.

Yeah, an open neutral conductor connection can cause big problems on a 3 wire split phase power system. Same thing can happen on a 3 wire multiwire branch circuit used inside the home. Another good reason not feed audio equipment using a 3 wire multiwire branch circuit.

One thing that should be made clear for the laymen reading this thread. The neutral, (The Grounded Conductor), is an intentionally grounded current carrying conductor.

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Here is a White Paper Worth reading:

https://www.fullcompass.com/common/files/5644-PowerandGroundingforAudioandAudioVisualSystems.pdf

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