Do better ingredients make a better Ground Wire?

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

Pixelphoto,

My system is pretty humble also, so don't feel bad about yourself! I have a friend in the hill country in Texas with a massively expensive McIntosh / B&W 802 system. Before GC application I wasn't overly impressed with anything but the sheer scale of the reproduction, compared to my system. After Standard GC's were applied, her system was the equal of mine in all categories and firmly trounced it in scale. But who cares? I still have torrents of music to listen to at home and so does she.

Do experiment a bit further with what I mentioned to Lacee above and then treat yourself and get a pair of the real thing. I doubt you will be sorry you did and you will have a reason to experiment further, in other locations in your system. Everywhere there is a commercially viable piece of electronics gear, there is a potential for improvement in your overall system's musical values by correcting the ground side information retention.

Thanks for your comments by the way, it is good to hear that more and more folks are digging into this relatively unexplored area and coming up with gold. You might want to explore EnABL speaker processes at some point..... and yes, it will work on your system and yes, you can learn how to do it successfully. Anyone with fingers attached to hands and stereoscopic vision can do so.

Bud

Thank you Bud and to all the other great people on this site.

Marvin