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
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
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.
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
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
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.