To buy grounded or not to buy grounded. That is the question.


I recently happened on to a highly recommended web site and looked at power cord options.  There were two basic options: grounded or non-grounded.  Below is the copied info from the non-grounded cord page.

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"Description
Non-grounded cord  (Ungrounded, the ground wire is removed from cord, with G-plug still intaked)

WHY?

Based upon measurements and listening tests; I have recommended to people, to ground only one piece of their interconnected equipment. The interconnects will provide static dissipation through the secondary ground connection & nuetral. They often look at me in extreme terror.😱

Wikipedia agrees…

Wiki; A ground loop is the result of careless or inappropriate design or interconnection of electrical equipment that results in there being multiple paths to ground where this is not required, so a complete loop is formed. In the simplest case, two items of equipment, A and B, are each connected to a wall socket by a 3 conductor cable, containing a protective ground conductor. This becomes a problem when a interconnect cable is connected between A and B, to pass data or audio signals. The shield of the data cable is typically connected to the grounded equipment chassis of both A and B. There is now a ground loop.

How can you benefit from this? Purchase the Grounded cord to hook to your preamp or integrated receiver…All other power cords in the system, such as source equipment, dacs, amplifiers, subwoofers,etc. should all use the non-grounded cord.  This will direct ground your system, removing hum and reduce harmonic distortion from your system. We’ve seen multi thousand dollar power conditioners that do not fix or address this issue. The issues of ground loops are often greater then the dirtiness of the actual AC power!



Need More?

Hot: The black wire is the hot wire, which provides a 120 VAC current source.

Neutral: The white wire is called the neutral wire. It provides the return path for the current provided by the hot wire. The neutral wire is connected to an EARTH GROUND!!!

Ground: The bare wire is called the ground wire. Like the neutral wire, the ground wire is also connected to an earth ground. However, the neutral and ground wires serve two distinct purposes.

The neutral wire forms a part of the live circuit along with the hot wire. In contrast, the ground wire is connected to any metal parts in an appliance such as a microwave oven or coffee pot. This is a safety feature, in case the hot or neutral wires somehow come in contact with metal parts. Connecting the metal parts to earth ground eliminates the shock hazard in the event of a short circuit. (KEY WORD IS SHORT CIRCUIT, Meaning your electronics are broken!)"

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What think ye of this?

Toolbox149

toolbox149

Showing 1 response by builder3

The term I haven’t seen in this thread yet is "Double Insulated". In any power tool, you might see a typical three-prong plug, or only a two-prong plug. In the latter, the tool is often labeled as double-insulated, meaning that it has been designed and manufactured in such a way to have the electrical portion entirely isolated with safety in mind. Presumably, this is also what’s done with a piece of audio equipment that comes from the factory without a grounded plug.
Cutting the ground prong off of a three-prong plug yourself is both ill-advised and dangerous.

jea48, sorry, just saw your last post, you beat me to it.