An aftermarket power cord, higher grade wall receptacle, or fuse built for audio purposes shouldn’t be doing anything either - but they do. I don’t understand it either but I can tell you that I listened, went and did the work to effect a good low impedance ground, then listened again and heard a difference. Without telling her what to listen for, I asked my wife if she heard anything different and she identified the same “removal of haze” as I had heard and I’m pretty sure I’ve never even used that terminology around her.
Lowering House Grounding Impedance
So, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’m pretty happy with the pieces of gear in my system. I know, I’m surprised too. Recently, however, I read about lowering the impedance to ground as a potential improvement and thought I’d give it a try. I’ve done quite a bit of tweaking to get to where I’m finally happy but I had never really looked at the grounding situation for my house, other than to make sure the utility panel was tidy and connected up right. In reviewing my house’s grounding to earth situation, I found that it didn’t have one! My house was built more than 50 years ago and they relied on grounding to the cold water pipes. This was fine while there was 100 feet of 3 inch copper pipe running to my well but when we replaced that pipe with plastic my grounding was gone. Initially, I drove two 8 foot copper clad grounding rods and bonded them together and grounded the external utility panel to them. I was really surprised that the difference the good grounding made to my system, it really removed a layer of haze that I didn’t know was there. Like cleaning a window that is already fairly clean, just added clarity. As I understand it, the lowering of the ground potential is what is responsible for the increase in sound quality. Has, anyone else experimented with improving their ground situation?
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builder3116 posts12-07-2018 8:36pm Barring an electrical issue, it shouldn’t be doing anything at all. But with the absence of the mother earth connection could it have been adversely causing a problem? Is it possible there was electrical noise being introduced on the service neutral conductor at the utility power transformer neutral earth connection? I suppose with the proper test equipment it could be checked by lifting the mother earth connection at the house electrical service again. Some background. The secondary neutral of the utility power transformer is connected to mother earth at the transformer location. In fact a mother earth connection, I believe, is made at every power pole and connected to the high voltage neutral conductor. At each utility power transformer the secondary neutral conductor is connected to the high voltage primary neutral conductor and then connected to mother earth. (Same method is used for underground high voltage power lines and pad mounted utility power transformers.) All for lightning protection as well for a hot high voltage line and or a hot secondary line ground fault event. As you can see multiple mother earth connections galore. All kinds of possible stray voltages/currents passing/traveling through the earth. Another reason Isolated earth ground rods should not be used for audio equipment. The 2 new ground rods, (Grounding Electrode), the OP connected to the electrical service entrance neutral at the electrical panel may be a lower ground (earth) resistance than the one at the utility transformer. My guess it is. What effect would, does, the lower resistance earth connection have on electrical noise traveling on the service neutral conductor from the utility power transformer earth connection? Beats me. Is the noise traveling on the service neutral conductor shunted back to mother earth at the new ground rods? Is there a closed circuit? Could it be tested using test equipment and lifting the earth connection for the test? Someone like Al, (almarg), might be able to answer that question. Jim. . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stray_voltage |
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