Do better ingredients make a better Ground Wire?

Thank you for doing that Lacee.

As for our implementation of this novel idea, we use 140 strands of wire and control the amount and types of dielectric materials used. Anyone could do the same research, ad hoc as it was, and duplicate our results. Or you can buy our results for quite a bit less cost than the amount of time it will take you to learn the relatively subtle things you need to know.

I am a transformer engineer and I am aware of wire and dielectric investigations, as it is part of my professional career. None of the thoughts behind Ground Control are collected as a single concept in the scientific literature I am aware of, but each of the component understandings is well supported.

What we have developed in Ground Control will not leave you with a "feeling" that the reproduction has changed for the better. The changes will be quite obvious, as information retention improvements, and they won't be on the leading edge of the signal. It is still surprising to me how much information is lost to corruption of the back half of all wave forms, after they have passed through the "load". This portion of all signal information is then pulled back through the load, after a vector change in the field event has expossed the signal holding electrons to local dielectrics, somewhre between your speaker cables, the safety ground outside your building and the power sub station down the road.

Bud

Hevacel,

I couldn't agree more!!!!!!!

Everyone, please note that bare copper wire not only will not provide any benefit to your listening experience but is a safety issue, just as it would be if you were using bare copper wire as your speaker cables.

You should be protected from the power grid by your amplifier, with particular protection provided by current limiting devices in solid state amps and output transformers in tube devices. The voltages in your speaker cables are not considered to be lethal by the worlds safety agencies but using bare copper wire will still cause destruction of your equipment.

However, as an added safety note, you should not at any moment interrupt the connection to safety ground in your equipment, unless you know for a FACT that it is "Double Insulated". All two prong plugged electrical equipment must be double insulated to pass UL, CSA or CE and thereby are safe to use without a third prong connected to safety ground. You should never use a safety ground defeating plug, period. Use isolation signal transformers from Jensen, Sowter, O-Netics, Lundahl and others to break the ground loops in your equipment, if you are suffering hum problems. You will not suffer a degradation in sonic qualities by doing so.

Our Ground Control has as much protection from accidental exposure to safety ground as does the typical speaker cable, with only the prongs of the mounting fork or body of the RCA plug being uncovered by a suitable dielectric material. Even the 140 strands of four nines copper wire are insulated, individually. You can use these devices without fear of death or destruction, RF noise or self levitation.

As for experimenting, if you don't use an insulated wire, you will get no benefit, so don't bother.

Bud

I'm glad the safety issues were mentioned.

I took my Classe amp S-700 out of my system. And put my modded dual-mono Adcom 555-MK11 in it's place with my DIY Ground controls on the amp negative speaker post just like I did with the Classe S-700. There is an even greater improvement with the Adcom than with the Classe. I have bragged about this Adcom in other posts, but it never sounded better than the Classe, until now! With the DIY Ground Controls the Adcom is visceral, open, wider sound stage, bass now has not just very deep bass, but low bass, mid bass, upper bass. The mid range has more presence to the voices, they just sound live and real. This is laughable how much this already overachieving amp has been improved by this simple tweak.

Probably not such a simple tweak really. Just does a number of things with the least amount of stuff. You really should buy one of the $150 sets and test it out against your DIY item, just to make sure you have all of the benefit. Not dissing your efforts at all, you have just left out aa couple of descriptions of the changes wrought by the full package. You can always return them, claiming lack of change....

I do find it very interesting to discover just how good the equipment we have really is, once the back half of the wave form is properly supported. Neat to know that even Red Book audio, out of a cheap Sony CD / SACD player, can sound wonderful and that a Nikko Beta I SS preamp from the 80's is an incredibly delicate and nuanced preamp, not the hissy, hashy high end, thing that most people find with them. You really do need to explore the RCA Ground Control devices.

Bud