Grounding boxes - The real deal

[Macca]

The ASA is a self regulatory organisation i.e it is run by the advertisers in the same way as the Press Complaints Commission is run by the newspapers. It has no statutory powers.

[Firebottle]

To answer Martin first, the kit was as follows:

Nova x50d streamer, Tad d1000 dac, Coherent Systems Pre-amp, Coherent Systems digital (switching) power amp.

Most of the music listened to was Red Book (44.1/16 bit) quality on the Nova.

When assessing the grounding box influence the volume setting was untouched. The demonstrated improvements were done in 3 steps. The ONLY thing that was altered was the number of cables from the grounding box connected to the pre-amp and dac. No connections were made to the streamer or power amp.

Step 1. Connect one cable to the pre-amp, an unused input, left channel - totally irrelevant.
Step 2. Connect one more cable to the pre-amp, an unused input, right channel.
Step 3. Connect the other 8 cables to other inputs/tape loop (unused) and a spare SPDIF input on the dac. I don't know the exact connections for all 8.

On each step the improvement was NOT subtle. If I had been blindfolded that wouldn't have made a scrap of difference, in fact I could have been standing outside the room in the hallway and still noticed the difference.

Now to Simon.
There is no 'unknown' science here, it is just reducing the electrical pollutants that mask the soundstage that is already there in the music.
No changes were made to the file, delivery method or volume level.

The difficulty that anyone has, myself included, is how can this work when all one is doing is adding a passive device into a system. The problem also is that you don't hear the 'pollutants', you just hear the depth in the music that was already there once the masking effect is removed.

The ASA would have nothing to investigate, the actual levels of 'pollutants' are completely irrelevant. The perceived difference is all you need to hear.
The 'HF noise' is nothing to do with audible noise, it is all the internal and external radio frequency pollutants that cover an extremely wide bandwidth.

[Macca]

I'm struggling with a couple of things here.

presumably the system sounded acceptable before any connections were made?

Then 1 connection is made and the improvement is so great that blind testing it would be nonsense.

Then a second connection is made and again the improvement is not subtle

Then a third....

I mean there is a limit to how much sound quality can be improved (in theory up to the limits of the quality of the recording). To have three 'not subtle' jumps up in quality seems unlikely - unless the starting system was badly flawed. Was it badly flawed?

[jandl100]

There is always room for improvement.

[Pharos]

I'm also struggling Macca, a while ago a technical measurement showed a large increase in noise, and these previous posts are saying that the noise is reduced.

[Macca]

I'm also struggling Macca, a while ago a technical measurement showed a large increase in noise, and these previous posts are saying that the noise is reduced.

That measurement was of the Entreq grounding box, Alan is talking about the RTZ grounding box, they are different products so not necessarily identical in construction or operation.

[walpurgis]

I managed to remove all noise from my system. I turned it off!

[sq225917]

Alan

Could your wife hear it in the back of the van as well?

[Edward]

I fear this thread is going to cost me a lot of money if what Alan says is true.

[sq225917]

Tony makes a claim for 'unspecified reduction' in noise in his web copy. He'll have to back that up with numbers and methodology or withdraw it if the ASA chose to investigate. That's how these things work.