Entreq grounding boxes

[mauidan]

Entreq Tellus and Eartha Silver Cables Review:

http://www.stereotimes.com/post/entreq-t...er-cables/

[NickB]

Any one spotted this yet?

http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showt...p?t=180211

Nick

[PhilP]

Quite an amusing thread really - no punches pulled in the fishy place. i'm struggling to understand how these boxes work. Now that the contents of the box have been revealed perhaps someone can explain the technicalities? What are the black granules? Will the person who opened the box be able to replace the metal bars in the correct place again? Apparently the spacing is important.

I saw something similar a few months ago when someone stripped the admittedly attractive cover off an Entreq USB cable.

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread...post303810


EDIT: I just noticed that this thread has had nearly 29,000 hits! Incredible!

[Rufus McDufus]

To be fair it was pretty easy to predict what the inside of a grounding box would look like as they do pretty much tell you. I'd be interested what the mineral mix is.

I think there's several elements to it - one is bonding signal grounds of different bits of equipment, another I guess dispersing electrons through the copper plates and minerals, like an artificial earth. I've always found it bizarre how different grounding cables sound different though. I've measured the properties of different cables and they all seem pretty much the same in terms of resistance/capacitance etc., but different materials. Maybe my multimeter isn't accurate enough.

[PhilP]

Interesting Entreq CEO interview on YouTube.  Apparently the Silver Tellus has more silver in the mineral mix but he doesn't say what the other minerals are.  Seems a straightforward open guy but perhaps not the most dynamic salesperson in the world.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T8uGTOfmQjo

[f1eng]

I believe that both the boxes and the cables themselves act as aerials and pick up low level noise from the equipment and its cables and add it into the ground plane.
Added noise gives the impression of greater stereo depth and width.
It seems a monstrously expensive way to get the effect, but if that is what it is it is a real effect which I have had demonstrated to me in the past and liked.

I honestly can't see any scientifically sound means by which it could do anything else audible. The screens on the interconnects will most certainly be earthing all the signal grounds together very effectively without adding such boxes or cables.

[GuillaumeB]

I believe that both the boxes and the cables themselves act as aerials and pick up low level noise from the equipment and its cables and add it into the ground plane.
Added noise gives the impression of greater stereo depth and width.
It seems a monstrously expensive way to get the effect, but if that is what it is it is a real effect which I have had demonstrated to me in the past and liked.

I honestly can't see any scientifically sound means by which it could do anything else audible. The screens on the interconnects will most certainly be earthing all the signal grounds together very effectively without adding such boxes or cables.

Your theory is very interesting Frank.

For what it's worth the ground boxes were originally designed to ground their cables, which are unshielded. I believe it was by accident that someone tried directly grounding a hifi device as such.

I have experimented a lot with Entreq products and I have to say overall I am pretty impressed by what they do. In some setups and in some combinations though I concede the effect can be very subtle. Of course I have very little scientific understanding so perhaps that makes me a little more pragmatic (or stupid, take your pick!).

One notable experiment which I think I reported on here involved comparing a Linn Akurate DSM to a Totaldac d1 server with both connected to the Devialet master at the same time. Toggling between the two it was very easy to hear which one was the Akurate DSM (and I'm pretty sure I could have done that unsighted). The Akurate sounded "dull" whereas the the Totaldac sounded lively. After grounding the Akurate using an Entreq cable (connected to a ground box) it became very difficult to tell the difference between the two sources (in classic A/B testing). The Totaldac was not grounded in this experiment. I found this result to be almost a smoking gun in proving (to myself!) that the Entreq system was doing something. 

Another application of the ground boxes involves connecting an Entreq cable to each negative return on the Devialet amplifier, with each ground cable connected to a separate ground box. Unlike signal grounding whereby you connect the ground cable to a spare RCA port at the back of the Devialet the effect is pretty much instantaneous. Because the Entreq spade is a bit of a faff to connect to the Devialet speaker terminal I left it connected to the Devialet and instead disconnected the Entreq grounding at the ground box end to test the effect. Each time the ground box was connected to the box an effect was heard. So to my mind the box was doing something.

Anyway I acknowledge these experiments are not scientific and certainly do not account/compensate for experimenter's bias but I did feel that the Akurate test was significant at least.

Guillaume

[Confused]

CAD had a similar device on demo at Oxford Audio last Saturday. When I say similar, it was in fact very different. This is a simple black box, made of metal and is filled with electronics (I'm not sure what), not with soil, minerals etc. This was a one off prototype unit, which if I recall correctly, will retail for about £1400. The similarity is the claim that it can reduce unwanted RFI interference etc. Something to look out for in the future.

[GuillaumeB]

CAD had a similar device on demo at Oxford Audio last Saturday.  When I say similar, it was in fact very different.  This is a simple black box, made of metal and is filled with electronics (I'm not sure what), not with soil, minerals etc.  This was a one off prototype unit, which if I recall correctly, will retail for about £1400.  The similarity is the claim that it can reduce unwanted RFI interference etc.  Something to look out for in the future.

Very interesting...

Bit off-topic but did you get to hear the new ChordMusic cables?

Guillaume

[thumb5]

Vertex AQ also have something at least superficially similar, called Pico Grounding Blocks.  I have no idea what's inside them!  I had a chance to try them in my system recently and thought they did have some effect although I'm not sure I could have spotted it in a blind test, and there were other things going on as well (more details shortly, perhaps, in my system thread).