Entreq ground conditioners - what's the theory?

Davehrab: "... as a matter of fact in high school I was so poor in math that I thought that Calculus was Julius Caesar's hair dresser".

...wait...you mean he wasn't?!? :)

Jfrech: No sweat. Do give us an update at some point, I'm curious too. The 2 Maher products I have took about a month to fully come on song, BTW.

But, what I'm trying to get at here is that I think we're more or less on the verge of a paradigm shift and that "electrical noise reduction" represents the next step.

True, true. And it does seem like Alan is an innovator. The only issue for him is that "on the surface" his stuff appears a little woo-woo and flakey. Does his technology reduce domestic violence or engender peace?

I am personally glad that Alan and Entreq and Tripoint are getting people's attention. Its about time....

Davehrab got it right. In order to pass safety requirements the equipment must be grounded. The problem is that if the electronics are grounded, ground loops can result, which usually results in a buzz of some sort.

So if the designer is using good engineering practice, the circuit grounds of the equipment will not be the same as the chassis ground. However the circuit ground does benefit from the shielding of the chassis; in order for the chassis to not introduce noise, the circuit ground is set up so that it floats at the same potential as the chassis ground, even though they are isolated.

I have found that this is not a common practice in high end audio! But for equipment that is grounded properly by design, such grounding devices like the one this thread is about will have no effect on the gear at all.

Sorry to pop any bubbles, but if you are using such devices to good effect, it simply means that the manufacturer(s) of your electronics have not done their grounding homework. It quite literally is that simple.

Sorry to pop any bubbles, but if you are using such devices to good effect, it simply means that the manufacturer(s) of your electronics have not done their grounding homework. It quite literally is that simple.

Ralph, the following manufacturers need to hire you as a grounding consultant:

AMR, Neodio Stahl-tek, Koda, BMC, Tube Research Labs, Gryphon, Accustic Arts, Tom Evans, Hovland, ASR, Emm Labs, Hovland, Karan, Exemplar, H-CAT, Boulder, Audionote, Gaku, Esoteric...just to name a few.

I guess we are faced with two paradigms here: suffocating, reductionistic thinking from a 1950s engineering textbook or a brave new frontier where all the answers or solutions for "noise" are not fully elucidated. I have repeatedly bumped into the former in regards to wire. Wire should not make a difference the engineers say...just pure audiophile witchcraft. The experiments we all know from the 80s clearly demonstrated that right? Well, newer measurement tools (http://www.stereophile.com/rmaf2010/nordost_and_vertex_measurements/) demonstrate changes in jitter with changes in cords, power conditioning, etc. Obviously there is more to the equation here.

It would be interesting to use that same software to measure effects of these magic grounding boxes, etc.

Ralph, Miguel at Tripoint loves a challenge. The next time you are at a show and have a room, an after hours demo is in order!

Agear, having had some experience with some of the manufacturers on your list, I have to agree. Others on that list did their homework.

FWIW, very few if any manufacturers from the 1950s got their grounding right. I work on Ampex stuff all the time; I hate to say it but their approach was really flawed. As you look at equipment that has been made over the decades, its pretty obvious that grounding was something some manufacturers understood and others didn't. That holds true in spades today.

That is why some people get benefit from exotic grounding schemes and others do not. So why harp on this? Simply because if manufacturers could get there ducks in a row, their equipment would perform better without a need for an exotic ground.

Power cords can have plenty of measurable effects and I have talked about the physics about why on other threads. Similarly, power conditioners can really help too (although most high end audio power conditioners are so much junk- the best one ever made was made by Elgar, model 3006, which embarrasses anything offered to audiophiles). It can put out a distortion-free 60Hz sine wave at full load of 28 Amps.