Oh, the comments about how one should set up a plain ground bar were in a video on YouTube. If you search for "Shunyata Altaira" and then click on the one with "Mike & Rick," Caelin talks about it there. For a nice simple copper grounding bar I like the SMD UB-8 (Universal Power/ Grounding Bar - 8 post). |
i currently am trialling the Altaira. it is connected to analog components (power supply for TT, RIAA, Integrated Amplifier and Step up Transformer). i installed it only last night. all of my system is from audio note. i immediately noticed the SUT hum was gone entirely. the noise level has been significantly lowered. so much so that i am still getting used to it. it makes some music sound better, it makes some music sound less flamboyant (i think because it removes some distortion which can be quite fetching in some contexts). i found the accompanying literature very edifying (basic grounding concepts). i don't imagine there would be too many people who wouldn't get something out of this. i do wonder if certain components are voiced such that with the grounding sorted we lose some of that voice/thickness. the detail is beyond the pale though. last night it was Silkworm's "Lifestyle" and for the first time ever i heard overtones on an electric guitar (similar to what i hear when i play in my home). so it seems to be allowing harmonic information to come thru that i do not normally get. worth a shot is my advice. you might like it. it certainly does quite a bit in my system although i am as yet unsure as to whether or not i will buy it (slightly more to do with available funds than anything else though).
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Thanks HolyDean. That Mike & Rick interview with Caelin is very helpful. So after watching that and reading the Shunyata website I got out the Ohm meter and found screws on each of my components that showed 0 resistance to the ground input plug. I set up a star ground with 10 gauge wire that drains any voltage from each component’s chassis to the grounding lug on my Denali. Wow. The system hum is down maybe 80-90% to the point where I only hear it if my ear is within 18" of the speakers. No longer filling the room with a soft hum. But the important result is that whole system sounds better. I already though it was good and went after the hum as an academic exercise. I wasn’t ready for how it seemed to move me up from the 10th row to the 3rd in terms of clarity and palpability of the singers and instruments. (CJ tube pre/amp and dcs player) The music is more engaging now. |
Nice to know there are inexpensive ways to improve your system’s performance. @ddrave44 I started with DIY cables from my components to the ground lug on my Denali with excellent results. So much so that I went for the Altaira. The hubs are designed to be amenable to an incremental implementation. I started with the Chassis Hub and a mix of Shunyata Alpha cables and the DIY ones I made. With the Altaira in place the improvement was staggering. Rearranging the cables also proved beyond any doubt the purpose built models were far superior. I then added a Signal Hub and implemented a “segmented” framework with the digital gear to the SG hub and analog to the CG hub. The amount of noise removed from my system allowed it to reproduce music like never before. I truly heard new and different subtleties in music I had been listening to for decades. The lowered noise floor simply allows more music to get through unobstructed by noise. I thought it couldn’t get any better but I have been proven wrong and joyfully so. Shunyata has recently released a new power distributor called Gemini. It is a dual function unit that incorporates Altaira-like grounding capabilities. Shunyata states it is perfect for smaller systems, headphone systems, and “network closets” as it will allow for grounding the noisy network gear like routers, switches, and the like. I use it in the latter application. Grounding these last components provided another jaw dropping improvement. You have no idea how much garbage enters your system through its network connections, or at least I didn’t. The dual use Gemini costs less than a single Altaira hub so the grounding it provides is obviously to a lesser degree but it’s effectiveness in my system was amazing. I have read in more reviews, posts, and critiques than I can recall how the writer will always provide the qualifier, “if your system is resolving enough…” to hear whatever he or she is referring to. Before grounding my system in the progression detailed above, I always assumed that to mean, if your gear was “expensive enough to be resolving enough”… My components haven’t changed in some time but their collective performance has improved exponentially. The process is not cheap by any stretch of one’s imagination, but was significantly less expensive than moving up a rung or 2 on every piece in the system. To those who insist it “can’t work” or request hard data to back up claims like these, I can only submit to your intellectual superiority and acknowledge all of this must be in my head. Confirmation bias and all that…. Please kindly try to refrain from the usual attacks that a post like this usually elicits here. They do nothing to move the discussion forward.
To anyone with an open mind and the willingness to try, I say please do. The beginning experiment in grounding will only set you back a few bucks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You might be very pleasantly surprised. I certainly was. |
