Offer still open here if you can pop over to North West Surrey.
Mentioned previously and worth repeating in case anyone missed it.
I went from sceptic to full ardent fan. Rarely I have heard such massive improvements from anything in my system.
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Offer still open here if you can pop over to North West Surrey.
Mentioned previously and worth repeating in case anyone missed it.
I went from sceptic to full ardent fan. Rarely I have heard such massive improvements from anything in my system.
Thx Mike,
I hope to take you up on that offer when i have a bit more free time.
Which one made a difference?
What baffles me is that nobody can explain scientifically how they work.
Do they only work on systems in houses with a noisy environment, only in houses with a ring main fitted? What situation do do you need to be in to hear a difference using a grounding box?
ive asked twice in this thread and got no answers :scratch:
I must say, when I first heard about these grounding boxes on the forum here, I was skeptical. And, a large part of this skepticism is due to the manufacturers failing to provide a good reason as to why these things work, or not. Until I heard Alan and Marco say they have heard a difference, I had my doubts. Mainly because the sales pitch from some of these manufacturers sounded a lot like snake oil from products that don’t really work. However, the write up from Nordost I think comes closer to explaining it than others I have read.
From the testimonies of Alan and Marco, and what others have contributed here, it seems to me these products work by changing the, “Ground Potential”. And it’s as simple as that. I’m sure many here know how a laser printer works, while there is an absolute ground at the wall, the voltages inside the printer provide ground, and negative ground, the differences in voltages, and high voltages that are negative of ground make the positively charged toner particles attach to the lower than ground paper. I realize this is a very loose example and is not exactly how the grounding boxes work, but it illustrates that there can be differences in ground potential.
And this maybe why some makers are not forthcoming with the how and why of their products, they don’t want people knowing they can achieve the same results with less expensive parts? Such as, a grounding rod near the equipment. Or a resistor between signal ground and earth ground. Or whatever is causing the change in ground potential. Does the box of exotic materials on the end of the wire really matter? Or could the same results be achieved with a large block of iron? I don’t know. Or a box of wet sand? Or is it the cable that is causing the change? Simply increasing the mass of the signal ground could be affecting the ground potential.
In college I made an amplifier as my lab project. After building it, I had a pretty good hum going on. Increasing the size and number of grounds in the amp killed the hum. So why wouldn’t increasing it even more make it even quieter?
These are all just thoughts rolling around in my noggin, so please take it with a grain of salt. I have no personal experience with these products, and do not presume to know more than those with first hand experience. But being a scientific man, I need to have some idea of how something works to enjoy it. I don’t have to know for a fact this is how it works, but I at least need some plausible reasons why it could work. If there was a product that made absolutely no sense, but actually worked, I would have internal conflict, and I don’t think I could enjoy it’s benefits without at least a loose theory as to why it might work. If magic is the only plausible way something could work, I wouldn’t be able to accept that, and would probably be happier without it, no matter how great the improvement.
I suspect that once the mystery of how a Grounding Box works is out, people will be able to achieve these same results for much cheaper than they are charging for these new products. But time will tell!
Russell
Good post alphaGT.
It was mentioned earlier in the thread that some equipment may have mains Earth and 0V connected together, in which case I cannot see how a grounding box could provide a lower impedance earth path. Surely this would increase the chances of a ground loop.
While there are pictures of the internals of grounding boxes on the internet, we have no idea how genuine they are, so how much insight we can gain from these is debatable.
I am really struggling myself to see how a passive box can act as a low impedance ground for 0V, unless it is designed to act as an equipotential reference point for 0V. But if this is true then the same results could be achieved for next to nothing cost.
They don't provide an 'earth path', they are unconnected from earth. They don't act as an equipotential reference point either.
I have theories and will at some stage attempt to provide an answer (to myself at least), but at the moment it is still perplexing.
Accepting that these things work, and Firebottle has an inkling of how, would they work in a balanced system using xlr’s etc?