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Preliminary DIY Grounding Box Result

I live in a big, downtown high rise building. Our grounding is crap. I just took a 12 awg sliver stranded wire and stripped both ends. One end went straight into the center of a 3 pound bag of magnetite, and the other stripped end was wrapped around a spare coax rca input (outside negative) on my DAC.

Result: Highly noticeable "analogue-ing" of the sound, along with more dramatically more pronounced soundstaging. Space between the instruments seems like it tripled. Smoother, detailed highs and warmer, dynamic vocals.

I have some quartz coming and will mix it in. Plus I’ll run to other components and report back. Just wanted to try this for a quick test.
tomask6
roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
Lord save us from fuzzy-thinking subjectivists!
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
My guess is that the perceived benefit is the result of the wire + magnetite that is connected to the DAC’s circuit ground acting as an antenna, and introducing RF energy that it picks up onto the DAC’s circuit ground. Resulting in some combination of intermodulation effects, jitter effects, and/or low level high frequency noise effects which happen to be euphonic.

The fact that this is in a "downtown high rise building," which is no doubt replete with numerous sources of RF energy, would seem to add credence to that hypothesis.

Plus I’ll run to other components and report back.

Doing this with multiple components (connected to the same bag of magnetite) **might** result in ground loop issues, causing hum and/or low level high frequency buzz.

Regards,

-- Al


roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
+1 almarg! 
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Oh geez, here we go again! Audiophiles love 💕 noise and distortion. Yeah, right! The fact that roberjerman agrees with him makes it even funnier. 🤗
roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
@geoffkait: Rumor has it that you have a working example of the Dean Drive? Inertia-less force is ready to be unveiled!
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