Do better ingredients make a better Ground Wire?

Gswaul,

Thanks for your comments. The wire loops are a surprising change, as silly seeming as the idea is. Even more surprising is what the full Ground Control device brings to a system.. My recommendation, of course, is that you should buy a set!!!! :=)

You still have tonal vividness an even more clearly locked in dimensionality, a bit faster response and a general sweetness to the sounds still to be obtained from the standard commercial GC's.

As Jejaudio points out, better materials are important and the Reference GC is noticeably more capable than the standard units. And then there are still the amplifier, preamplifier and source GC's to explore.

Bud

Just to increase the Agony of those still on the fence over these small Ground Control items, here is a new review.
http://www.stereotimes.com

Bud

Wow! I took a 20" piece of Monster speaker cable, split it, looped it, twisted the bare ends and attached one each to my Def Tech STS speakers and zowie. After two days of listening to familiar CD's I can say vocals are more real, cymbals really shimer, guitar, drum, sax, you name it and all has more presence. This is the best tweak yet to my humble system.

Bud since I did have limited success with my DIY GC, before I go and get the REF version, I would like to know if you have any comments about using your devices on speakers(Ref 3A GrandVeena)that already have bybee devices inside.

Would there be any kind of cancelling effect?
Could this be why I didn't experience the night and day differences that others are experiencing?

I know that using the Walker devices Utra links, did interact with the Zoebel network(bybees)inside my speakers and this cancelled out any improvements.

Thanks.

I cannot answer your question Lacee. I have zero experience with the Bybee devices. I think they, along with the Walker devices, are used to strip RF signals and their down sampled resonances from speaker cables, but that is the extent of my, most likely misunderstood, knowledge.

I think I would recommend getting a pair of the standard GC's and trying them, first on the speakers and then on the amplifier ground connections. I use the standard GC on my amplifiers, a reference there just does not provide the balance between resolution of sound source retained information, versus resolution of sound stage information. This allows me to use the reference GC on the speakers to retain that source specific information there, without compromising the sound stage.

Since you have had some success with a DIY variation I suspect the standard GC will work well for you. If I were you, I think I would experiment a little further with the DIY devices, before spending any real money. Try both longer and shorter loops of the original materials and then deliberately change the type of plastic on the wire jacket. Lamp cord is PVC, Monster Cable is often polyurethane and some other cables utilize polypropylene, Teflon and pure (smelly) raw vinyl. You can also take some bare stranded wire and put it into a polyolefin shrink tube. The reason to bother is to find out how your system responds to the various dielectric constants of these materials.

If the best sound comes from the shrink tube covered cable, then you will probably want at least one set of Reference GC's in the amplifier / speaker circuit. If the PVC sounds best then don't bother with Reference speaker or amplifier GC's. Instead use the reference RCA on your preamp and standard lugged GC's on your speakers.

This is a pretty rough guide and you can expect that even the standard GC is going to outperform an ad hoc experiment, but at least you will not just be guessing about the direction to take.

If you do further experiments do report back please, your information will be welcome.

Bud