AQVox AQ-SWITCH-8

[GuillaumeB]

I've spoken to AQVOX and they do not recommend connecting the ground pin to your AC safety ground. Apparently they already tried this in their testing and did not get good results, but ultimately the results will depend on your AC.

Personally I would try as a first option connecting this to the Devialet, the idea being to tie both chassis grounds together and therefore minimise ground potentials between units. The benefits may be greater if you are using separate spurs to power Devialet and switch. As I haven't tried this I have no idea if this will do anything.

If you already have a ground box such as Entreq or CAD it is certainly worth trying to connect the switch to this. I have been experimenting with the Entreq and am getting good results. At first I connected the switch to the ground box using an RJ45 ground cable (spade at one end and RJ45 connector at other) and was very happy with this (see my earlier report). Then last night I tried using the ground pin instead using a spade to spade ground cable. I am pretty sure this improved things further but given that they were already very good it is difficult to be absolutely certain. I will try going back to the RJ45 connection when I get a chance.

I think the AQVOX should sound pretty good without the grounding - certainly AQVOX don't recommend doing any of this. What they do recommend is the use of decent shielded CAT7 or higher (and preferably their cables! ). I am using AQ Diamond here which I bought a few years ago but there are now many much cheaper decent alternatives including Supra at £40 for 2M.

Guillaume