17-Jun-2014, 07:56
(This post was last modified: 17-Jun-2014, 07:56 by Rufus McDufus.)
I'm trying out various grounding boxes at the moment. I started with a Silver Minimus and a Tellus. The Silver Minimus is about 50-60% of the Tellus I'd say. I currently have a Silver Tellus, which I swore to myself was going too far, but so far it's proving itself and I've only had it for 4 days so it's not working to its full potential yet.
The annoying thing is that the cables do make rather a large difference, but it's not necessarily the more expensive cables which work better (with the exception of the most expensive cables). I found the Silver Eartha is detailed but can be a little harsh with gear that is prone to that. The Challenger Eartha is softer. Apollo seems to be somewhere in between but with no loss of detail.
The cables are rather basic and seem quite a lot for what they are, but the ground boxes don't seem to bad considering how much copper there must be in them (the Silver Tellus in particular is heavy). It's almost a bit like 'razor blade' marketing in that you get the reasonably-priced grounding box (the razor) and the rather-expensive cables are 'the blades'.
I've always had a problem with variability in the electrical supply and dedicated spurs, earth rod, filters etc. don't seem to have eliminated that entirely. In fact one of the prime reasons for me going for Devialet was to simplify things to try to tackle supply problems. I'd say these Entreq things have about 80% fixed that variability for me and provide much lower noise floor and just much lovelier sound all round. They seem to work in several ways - the cables connect the signal planes of the bits of equipment, and it seems to work round issues with chassis earth-bonded gear. I remember from my experiences fiddling with Linn gear that even adjusting the nut connecting the earth bond to the case could make a significant difference to sound quality and this might be tinkering in a similar area. Also there's the grounding box which seems to provide an artificial earth, a bit like a chemical toilet (!). I could be completely wrong on all this....
The annoying thing is that the cables do make rather a large difference, but it's not necessarily the more expensive cables which work better (with the exception of the most expensive cables). I found the Silver Eartha is detailed but can be a little harsh with gear that is prone to that. The Challenger Eartha is softer. Apollo seems to be somewhere in between but with no loss of detail.
The cables are rather basic and seem quite a lot for what they are, but the ground boxes don't seem to bad considering how much copper there must be in them (the Silver Tellus in particular is heavy). It's almost a bit like 'razor blade' marketing in that you get the reasonably-priced grounding box (the razor) and the rather-expensive cables are 'the blades'.
I've always had a problem with variability in the electrical supply and dedicated spurs, earth rod, filters etc. don't seem to have eliminated that entirely. In fact one of the prime reasons for me going for Devialet was to simplify things to try to tackle supply problems. I'd say these Entreq things have about 80% fixed that variability for me and provide much lower noise floor and just much lovelier sound all round. They seem to work in several ways - the cables connect the signal planes of the bits of equipment, and it seems to work round issues with chassis earth-bonded gear. I remember from my experiences fiddling with Linn gear that even adjusting the nut connecting the earth bond to the case could make a significant difference to sound quality and this might be tinkering in a similar area. Also there's the grounding box which seems to provide an artificial earth, a bit like a chemical toilet (!). I could be completely wrong on all this....
