Entreq and Innuos?

@lollipopguild , yes you are right, my PhoenixUSB sounds best plugged directly into the wall on a circuit that is not used by any other gear. And the rest of my Innuos gear absolutely sounds best when connected to the Torus.

When the PhoenixUSB is plugged into the Torus, “bright” is one way to describe the effect but it wouldn’t fully describe what happens to the sound. Weight and bass goes away, the sound is smaller in scale, and there is less air around instruments and vocals. The midrange also is closer to you.

Interestingly my Zenith produces a more full and rich sound when connected to the Torus. Sound becomes thinner when connecting it to the wall.

Nuno at Innuos said ideally all my Innuos gear would be on one circuit. He could only speculate that the reason why the PhoenixUSB is behaving differently from the other devices is that it’s the only device that has connections to two different circuits with the two USB cables.

I told him I was concerned that while I currently have a workaround that sounds good, I was worried that this workaround wouldn’t be available for when I try the Pulsar network streamer which has a reclocker inside it.  I could only plug it in the Torus or the wall, and I wouldn’t have the ability to connect the player to the Torus and the reclocker to the wall like I currently do.  
 

Will try the demo Pulsar that Innuos is coordinating sending to my local HiFi shop and see…  

@nyev Is there any chance you could resurrect the chat with Nuno and ask him how the Phoenix could be grounded? 

Well, we had already talked about using grounding devices like the Nordost QCore.  He said he these have definitely made positive differences in people’s systems.  My issue with that approach is that I think it only makes sense if you don’t use a conditioner of any kind.  Otherwise you end up with distributors plugged into distributors (as the QCore is a distributor).

Also I don’t want to bug the guy too much, he’s got a company to run!  
 

As an aside I did just now try connecting a 14AWG wire between my Torus and my Gryphon amp, meaning all grounds should be bonded and common.  The negative effects of the PhoenixUSB plugged into the Torus still persisted.  That aside, I am not quite sure if I detected the slightest improvement with grit and firmness of the sound.  Could be my imagination, but I will leave the ground connection in place!

So I think my only hope is that the Pulsar demo that is incoming for some reason doesn’t have the same behaviour when connected to the Torus.  Otherwise I’ll be sticking with my current setup with the PhoenixUSB connected to the wall, which frankly I can happily live with.

I have all my gear going into the wall. With LessLoss Fire Wire 640X on each component. Except for my X200.  

@nyev Now that the Xmas break is over, I'm looking at this again.  

Russ Andrews offers a very affordable grounding solution.  Details are here.

I'll give it a go, starting off with the casework of my three Innuos and Hegel boxes.  As far as I can tell the casework screws on the Phoenix are already grounded, so assume the entire case is.  However, running a continuity test across the USB sockets' earth pins and the IEC earth pin produces a fail. The Zenith is grounded via the USB/Ethernet socket casings, plus the screw top centre at the case's rear.

Compare that to my Hegel H390, the continuity test passes when testing across the IEC earth pin and the outer casings of the BNC and RCA sockets, as well as the earth pin of the XLRs.

It's interesting that Russ Andrews advocates wiring his grounding box to a copper spike stuck in the ground. This is legal here in the UK. Obviously, it's not an alternative to the safety earthing of the system, which will remain in place.