Do better ingredients make a better Ground Wire?

Replacing the direct silver-plated Audioquest CF spade with a pure copper spade made all the difference in the world on both the all silver DIY Ground wire I made, and the Silver & Palladium DIY Ground wire. There was no location where the Audioquest Direct-Silver plated CF spade sounded better than the pure copper spade.I agree that if you never heard the two side by side you would not find fault with the gold plated or silver plated spades. But there is a significant step up in performance in pure silver and pure copper spades over plated spades.

To Jejaudio and Budp, have you tried the ground control units attached directly to the negative post of each speaker driver within the speaker cabinet? Have you tried the ground control units attached to the speaker cabinet's terminals as bare wire and not with spades or banana connectors? Thank you both for sharing your experience with this approach to improving one's sound.
David Pritchard

David,

When I provide EnABL'd drivers to folks wanting 40 to 60 db down in coherent information, below the typically available 40 db down, I do provide partial GC's attached directly to the drivers. These are not intended to provide all of the benefit of a full on Ground Control, as is available commercially. Primary function is to make certain that the driver has access to the back half of the wave form for information that provides spatial clues and removes the starved, sick sound, of densely recorded material, when the ground side is starved of carrier electrons. These GC's typically do not have cotton sleeves or attachment lugs and as Jejaudio has pointed out, both of these are important portions of the GC approach to information retention.

Just attaching a piece of wire, in a loop will likely have some effect. Not necessarily a positive effect, but for proof of principle it should show that while somewhat silly, the concept does work. I would suggest a 2 foot long piece of lamp cord, split into two pieces. Strip about an inch of insulation off of both ends of one piece, make a loop and twist the wires together. Insert this section of bare wire into your speaker box lug connection, on the return side, black, connector. Do the same for the other side. Then sit back and listen carefully as the wire begins to alter what you hear. I doubt you will like it initially. A few hours into listening, not necessarily all at one sitting by any means, remove the wires and listen for a short period, then reattach them and listen again. I am pretty sure you will "get it".

The GC is a carefully controlled "generalist" tuning of what you will find in the lamp cord loop. It is aimed at the sweet spot for the vast majority of speakers and electronics and while they can be further refined for a specific system, it is an agonizingly tedious business and most often well into the "placebo" realm of wished for improvements. The commercial versions will provide you with more than you hoped for. And, until you delve into EnABL'd drivers, a very clear improvement in tonal richness, transient correctness, tonal vividness and coherent information, that allows your brain to reconstruct the space that the sonic event occurred within.

EnABL'd drivers will respond just as stock ones will, but a specific set directly on the drivers, will add even more to what the commercial units bring.

Bud

Hi, David. I have not tried any other way of hooking the DIY Ground Controls up except using spades on the outside negative post on my speakers and power amp. Now is a good time for me to restate that I am no way connected to Audio Prism in any way shape or form. I want to thank all those at Audio Prism for doing the research & development, putting the time in and spending the capital to bring there Ground Control to the market. I have just rode there coattails to make my own version of there discovery. So in other words I don't know nothing about nothing. But I am very glad your out there adding to conversation. This is what it is all about improving one's sound.

I think you may know quite a bit more than nuthin Jejaudio. Thank you for your appreciation of our efforts and, by the by, the Reference models do use solid silver speaker lugs and solid silver internals for the RCA connectors and both use Wonder solder for the connections. The "standard" units have gold plated over pure copper for the lugs or copper alloy for the RCA units

Bud