AudioCircle
Audio/Video Gear and Systems => The Lab => Topic started by: jtwrace on 9 Nov 2010, 05:39 pm
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Reposted from a different thread that was pruned.
For those of you that want to try out this novel idea, just take a 2 foot length of common ordinary zip cord. Steal it from an unused lamp. Slit it into two lengths. Strip both ends of both lengths about 2 inches back from each end. Make two loops and twist the copper wires of each loop together. Do not twist the copper wires of each loop with each other, you want two separate loops of wire, one for each speaker. Slip the twisted end onto the negative terminal of each speaker system.
This will provide a difference in your sound field, more air and space to the illusion provided. It is ugly and it is about 30% of what the AudioPrism Ground Control provides.
Thanks for the kind words Anand, the technology, provided by the same R&D that provides that deeply rendered sound field from the transformers is what has been used to allow me to reduce the size of that 2 foot long piece of zip cord and then provide the rest of what the GC's provide.
Bud
another:
Only comment is KEEP THEM OFF OF YOUR DIGITAL GROUNDS, brought to you by the soon to be poorer inventor.
Bud
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Anyone got a diagram?
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Anyone got a diagram?
If I read things right, here and on diyaudio, what you're making will resemble hoop earrings hanging from the negative binding post or terminal of each channel.
Or you could describe each of them as a loop of wire with a pigtail. (The twisted together ends of each loop are the pigtail and are what you insert into the binding post or terminal.)
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You loop the wire and then cut the bottom loop and solder all of them together.
Then you solder all of top of the loop pieces together.
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=38356)
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You loop the wire and then cut the bottom loop and solder all of them together.
Then you solder all of top of the loop pieces together.
It looks like what you have is a wire with both ends tinned, and then formed into a loop.
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Why make a 2nd solder connection at the bottom of the loop instead of just bending the loop in half at the bottom?
Steve
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all that looks like is a loop of wire to me. All you do is loop and stic the two ends in the -?
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Virtually any length of wire that has a dielectric around it will provide some form of change, even when the dielectric is air and the nearest form of plastic molding. This is a subtle format and as with other subtle formats changes are made with every thing you do.
The Ground Control devices are a fairly high Q application of this discovery, done to get the physical size down to something reasonable and the installation hassles to a minimum. They are tuned to be useful across the widest range of ground side conditions and even so, we have to have two different ones to cover the two main needs.
The Standard covers those situations where the dearth of back wave coherence, the signal being pulled from the ground beyond the load, has caused the perceived illusion of sound stage to fall between the speakers and be fairly shallow. The Reference uses subtly different techniques to enhance the depth of information coherence in the back wave, with a corresponding reduction in stage width.
Interestingly, these two characteristics cannot be gotten out of the same device, but can be gotten from stacking two devices, one Standard and one Reference.
At this high a Q, small mistakes in materials can cause rather large changes in performance, Without an understanding of the basic principles of operation, and they are not derivable from first order approximations of LCR characteristics, any alterations made, in manufacturing techniques or materials, will be uncontrolled and the results will be unpredictable. And then there is the question of repeatable characteristics across the products manufacturing lifetime.
There are actually good reasons why we charge what we charge We build what we build in the way we build it, to provide the widest range of possible after load conditions with a useful retention of back wave information coherence. We are well aware that some situations cannot be solved by one or the other types of Ground Control we provide, that is why we have a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee.
I will point out that I can tune our devices to solve even those difficult cases, just from feedback from the end user, I do not have to hear the system in question.
And again, please, do yourself a favor and keep these devices away from digital circuit grounds. The digital device will loose clock sync and if the ground does not properly reset, with a complete power recycle, the device may never work properly again. Even a buffer resistor or capacitor is enough to protect the digital portion of a CD player or out board DAC so keeping the Ground Controls on analog RCA outputs will not harm a mixed mode device.
Bud
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Virtually any length of wire that has a dielectric around it will provide some form of change, even when the dielectric is air and the nearest form of plastic molding. This is a subtle format and as with other subtle formats changes are made with every thing you do.
The Ground Control devices are a fairly high Q application of this discovery, done to get the physical size down to something reasonable and the installation hassles to a minimum. They are tuned to be useful across the widest range of ground side conditions and even so, we have to have two different ones to cover the two main needs.
The Standard covers those situations where the dearth of back wave coherence, the signal being pulled from the ground beyond the load, has caused the perceived illusion of sound stage to fall between the speakers and be fairly shallow. The Reference uses subtly different techniques to enhance the depth of information coherence in the back wave, with a corresponding reduction in stage width.
Interestingly, these two characteristics cannot be gotten out of the same device, but can be gotten from stacking two devices, one Standard and one Reference.
At this high a Q, small mistakes in materials can cause rather large changes in performance, Without an understanding of the basic principles of operation, and they are not derivable from first order approximations of LCR characteristics, any alterations made, in manufacturing techniques or materials, will be uncontrolled and the results will be unpredictable. And then there is the question of repeatable characteristics across the products manufacturing lifetime.
There are actually good reasons why we charge what we charge We build what we build in the way we build it, to provide the widest range of possible after load conditions with a useful retention of back wave information coherence. We are well aware that some situations cannot be solved by one or the other types of Ground Control we provide, that is why we have a 30 day unconditional money back guarantee.
I will point out that I can tune our devices to solve even those difficult cases, just from feedback from the end user, I do not have to hear the system in question.
And again, please, do yourself a favor and keep these devices away from digital circuit grounds. The digital device will loose clock sync and if the ground does not properly reset, with a complete power recycle, the device may never work properly again. Even a buffer resistor ir capacitor is enough to protect the digital portion of a CD player or out board DAC so keeping the Ground Controls on analog RCA outputs will not harm a mixed mode device.
Bud
Can you please tell me what this means, exactly? :oops:
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jtwrace - Thanks for reposting and creating a new thread focused on the discussions pertaining to the BudP DIY Speaker Ground Tweak.
BudP - Thanks for the detailed response and guidance.
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Mitsuman, assuming that the bold type portion is what you are asking after.
Think of an audio system. The primary focus of all effort to date has been upon the leading edge, sustain and decay of audio signals. The part that travels directly from source to load. If we assume that information theory is correct, then this "signal" is a coherent, structured format. Careful attention is paid to keeping this "signal" chain from source to load as a proper data packet, in information terminology. Electrical engineering has done a stunningly good job of performing this task.
Now, let's consider what happens to this positive going signal, this coherent data structure, once it has made it's positive going pass through the load. Where does it go? What form of controls have been brought into play to maintain the coherence of this information packet ,up to the moment that there is an E Field moment, during which time the vector of the signal changes and this data packet is pulled back through the load, as the back half of the wave form that was so carefully controlled during it's positive going portion.
Certainly a fully differential circuit answers this question. Equally certainly, a single ended circuit with a poured ground plane, mirroring the signal components, also performs a good portion of what the fully differential circuit provides. What manner of control is there for the much more typical single ended, with respect to ground, circuit used in most commercial electronics? There are many good reasons why you do not want a poured ground plane and you will find that most competent audio designers are aware of them. A fully differential circuit is not cost effective and so, is not marketed as a common solution to a problem that is easily ignored. Strip grounds on a PCB are much more cost effective, but the signal that has passed through the load is not being held here. Rather it is being dumped into the power system ground plane and out to earth ground, or as a circulating current in the chassis or even just left to ring in the strip ground, zero signal reference. None of these common solutions can maintain the signal integrity of the back half of the wave form.
This is what Ground Control is designed to do, to provide a partial alternative that provides a local support for maintaining the signal coherence of these neglected portions of our source material. Live sound does not have this problem of information de-coherence and if you read the comments of those who have corrected this situation with Ground Control you will discover that they speak directly to this coherence issue. Most of us don't have any experience with obtaining fully coherent back wave from our audio systems and when presented with a corrected signal make comments like, more natural, a greater "ease", more rounded, with the illusion of 3 dimensions being more pronounced.
The information retained is that which is most easily lost, wide band low level, image structural information. Reflections, internal note and transient colors etc., but only those from the back half of the wave form, after the load.
Bud
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sts9fan.
All you do is loop and stic the two ends in the -?
If all you are interested in is just proof of principle, then yes, that is all you need to do. Use the zip cord though. That is enough of what is needed to cause you to become aware of what has changed. For any thing really useful, balanced and repeatable, you will have to do quite a bit of development work, or copy my work.
Bud
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Bud
Can you post a link to purchase yours? :thumb:
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The only Ground Control that I know, or knew of was to Major Tom.
Wayner
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Mitsuman, assuming that the bold type portion is what you are asking after.
Think of an audio system. The primary focus of all effort to date has been upon the leading edge, sustain and decay of audio signals. The part that travels directly from source to load. If we assume that information theory is correct, then this "signal" is a coherent, structured format. Careful attention is paid to keeping this "signal" chain from source to load as a proper data packet, in information terminology.Electrical engineering has done a stunningly good job of performing this task.
Now, let's consider what happens to this positive going signal, this coherent data structure, once it has made it's positive going pass through the load. Where does it go? What form of controls have been brought into play to maintain the coherence of this information packet ,up to the moment that their is an E Field moment, during which time the vector of the signal changes and this data packet is pulled back through the load, as the back half of the wave form that was so carefully controlled during it's positive going portion.
Certainly a fully differential circuit answers this question. Equally certainly, a single ended circuit with a poured ground plane mirroring the signal components also performs a good portion of what the fully differential circuit provides. What manner of control is there for the much more typical single ended, with respect to ground circuit used in most commercial electronics. There are many good reasons why you do not want a poured ground plane and you will find that most competent audio designers are aware of them. A fully differential circuit is not cost effective and so, is not marketed as a common solution to a problem this is easily ignored. Strip grounds on a PCB are much more cost effective but the signal that has passed through the load is not being held here. Rather it is being dumped into the power system ground plane and out to earth ground, or as a circulating current in the chassis or even just left to ring in the strip ground, zero signal reference. None of these common solutions can maintain the signal integrity of the back half of the wave form.
This is what Ground Control is designed to do, to provide a partial alternative that provides a local support for maintaining the signal coherence of these neglected portions of our source material. Live sound does not have this problem of information de-coherence and if you read the comments of those who have corrected this situation with Ground Control you will discover that they speak directly to this coherence issue. Most of us don't have any experience with obtaining fully coherent back wave from our audio systems and when presented with a corrected signal make comments like, more natural, a greater "ease", more rounded, with the illusion of 3 dimensions being more pronounced.
The information retained is that which is most easily lost, wide band low level, image structural information. Reflections, internal note and transient colors etc., but only those from the back half of the wave form, after the load.
Bud
So this information is sent to the speakers from the amp, but is "lost" due to the crossovers, voicecoils, drivers, internal wiring, etc. not being able to produce it. It is then "found" by installing a wire pigtail into the "-" terminals on the speaker, adding this "lost" information that didn't get captured the first time around, so it can then be heard?
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Bud
Can you post a link to purchase yours? :thumb:
I would think that product advertising would belong in the Industry Ads Jason,,, not the Lab Circle.
Cheers,
Robin
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I would think that product advertising would belong in the Industry Ads Jason,,, not the Lab Circle.
Cheers,
Robin
:oops: You're 100% correct! My apologies.
:scratch: Do I need to start that thread too? :lol: **hint hint**
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Never mind, I found all I need to know about the subject. :wink:
http://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=7615 (http://www.audaud.com/article.php?ArticleID=7615)
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So this information is sent to the speakers from the amp, but is "lost" due to the crossovers, voice coils, drivers, internal wiring, etc. not being able to produce it. It is then "found" by installing a wire pigtail into the "-" terminals on the speaker, adding this "lost" information that didn't get captured the first time around, so it can then be heard?
No. All that you point to is still on the positive side of the load. It is after the signal, or, data packet, has been "turned loose" to find it's lowest ground reference,and then suffers the E Field moment, with attendant losses to a variety of difficulties, changes vector and is then pulled back through the load that Ground Control does it's job. Keep in mind that the signal, not the electrons carrying the signal, is what travels at a significant % of the speed of light.
As you can see, there is quite a big blind spot in our comprehension of what might happen after the load. Not easy to wrap your mind around.
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Jason.
Pursuant to our private conversations, I have to contact AudioPrism to see what steps they may wish to take. I am not empowered to "advertise" Ground Control". I answer forum posts because I am the inventor, but the choice of marketing venues and allied topics is not mine to make.
However, as a hint, please Google AudioPrism Ground Control for a number of reviews and marketing avenues. Also there is another earlier thread here on AudioCircle.
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=79279.0
Thank you for your courtesy in starting this thread.
Bud
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Hi Bud,
Is what you label as "E Field moment" the same as "electric dipole moment?"
Thanks,
David.
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davidrs,
the electric dipole moment has to do with orientation of the dipole, that is, the positions of the charges, and does not indicate the direction of the field originating in these charges.
The above is from Wikipedia and is correct as I understand the concept. The dipole orientation appears to point to the alleged "spin" orientation of an electron, that is being manipulated by another electron.
This is the way an electron that has been aligned with the Electrostatic Field Moment or E Field, causes the end electron of a dielectric material to begin the "signal" chain across a dielectric barrier, eventually recreating the "signal" by this Electrical Dipole Moment event being applied to another "conductor" plate electron. This is how you signal across a capacitor, when it is being used as a DC blocking circuit element.
Just wait till you stumble across D Fields..... hehehe
Bud
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Bud,
No thanks.... 8)
My head Spin is already oriented in the direction of the 'Duh' field! Dipole moments non-withstanding.
Thanks for clearing that up.
- David.
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I could recommend Ralph Morrison's "Grounding and Shielding Techniques" fourth edition. A thin book, on a deep subject , without a single calculation in it, just pictures and text that provides enough of a hint to secondary and allied phenomena, to cause your brain to bubble. And the pictures are so useful that the math is not missed at all.
Bud
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Jason.
Pursuant to our private conversations, I have to contact AudioPrism to see what steps they may wish to take. I am not empowered to "advertise" Ground Control". I answer forum posts because I am the inventor, but the choice of marketing venues and allied topics is not mine to make.
However, as a hint, please Google AudioPrism Ground Control for a number of reviews and marketing avenues. Also there is another earlier thread here on AudioCircle.
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=79279.0 (http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=79279.0)
Thank you for your courtesy in starting this thread.
Bud
It's ashame that this thread got locked into another manufacturer's Circle where usually only those few product owners get to see it. It's a damn shame that this didn't make it where more eyes could have seen it. I'm on here all the time yet I never saw this particular thread back in March. Better late than never to learn something new. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
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What does the interconnect version look like - I mean, same kind of construction?
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If I understood the original post by BudP, this is what I made with 16awg zip cord to his instructions:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=38372)
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What does the interconnect version look like - I mean, same kind of construction?
I would imagine you would just use the outer barrel of a rca connector (ground) and solder the loop to it.
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Hal,
Yes, that's the ticket. You can adjust the characteristics to a slight degree by how much copper is left between the speaker lug and the insulated wire portion.
The interconnect does look like we just soldered the wire to the ground of the RCA. There is a bit more involved than this.
Bud
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Bud,
Thanks for the feedback. Will give them a try.
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Yes, that's the ticket. You can adjust the characteristics to a slight degree by how much copper is left between the speaker lug and the insulated wire portion.
The interconnect does look like we just soldered the wire to the ground of the RCA. There is a bit more involved than this.
Bud
What a cool tweak, Bud. :D
It seems to be similar to one a dealer told me about 15 years ago - just plug a 2' length of speaker cable into the -ve BP and just leave it hanging. (His explanation was ... this helped absorb back-EMF, somehow. :? )
I will try it out but I'd appreciate it if you could give me an answer to the following Qs:
1. Does the wire have to be stranded? What about 16g solid-core wire (eg. magwire)?
2. Is the insulation material important - perhaps the "enamel" insulation is no good and it needs to be PVC or teflon?
3. Does it have to be 16g wire? What effect will thinner or thicker have?
4. When you say "You can adjust the characteristics to a slight degree by how much copper is left between the speaker lug and the insulated wire portion", do you mean the sonic result of this tweak is affected by how much uninsulated wire there between the -ve BP and the start of the insulated loop?
5. Does making the loop bigger have any effect?
Regards,
Andy
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http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/groundcontrol/groundcontrol.html
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Read the above reviews and I get the impression that these don't make a significant difference.
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Don't know how you can read the 6Moons review and come to that conclusion.
Here's what Stephæn concluded in the same review / link...
After 'breaking them in' for the equivalent of 40 hours or so, I experimented with the devices in three systems in three different venues; with three different speakers, two different preamps, two different amps, one integrated, one receiver and one CD player. Over a series of sighted A/B listening sessions, I sometimes reckoned that I heard a touch more body and low-level dynamics in the mids. But the differences weren’t tenacious enough to trust. In unsighted—not double-blind—A/Bs it became clear that I could not dependably identify when they were in or out. The same held true over periods of long-term listening. Since I was unable to reliably detect the possible differences in or out of the various contexts explored, I have to say that the Ground Control devices aren’t for me. Your mileage may vary.
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I'm still interested in reading what others around here have to say. I may yet order a pair from Ric Schultz, but right now I'm trying to come to a conclusion in the matter of speaker cables and ICs and possibly a tube amp to go along with my newly acquired Druids.
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I will try it out but I'd appreciate it if you could give me an answer to the following Qs:
1. Does the wire have to be stranded? What about 16g solid-core wire (eg. magwire)?
2. Is the insulation material important - perhaps the "enamel" insulation is no good and it needs to be PVC or teflon?
3. Does it have to be 16g wire? What effect will thinner or thicker have?
4. When you say "You can adjust the characteristics to a slight degree by how much copper is left between the speaker lug and the insulated wire portion", do you mean the sonic result of this tweak is affected by how much uninsulated wire there between the -ve BP and the start of the insulated loop?
5. Does making the loop bigger have any effect?
Andy,
The main thrust of the Ground Control loops is to get the physical size down to something reasonable. We only have LC&R to work with, no elves in the hills etc. So, to concentrate the effects of what occurs in the 2 foot long piece of wire and then make manipulation of those effects repeatable you have to marginalize some things and expand others.
In the audio transformers I make, both for audio reproduction amplifiers (but no longer to any manufacturers of amplifiers, due mostly to how unstable their cash flow is) and guitar amplifier manufacturers (who are very stable financially) I use a winding format that causes the available electrons, meaning the ones that are always shuttling around in droves, seething if you will, in the coil winding wire actually collect at the dielectric barriers from primary to secondary. I use a dielectric circuit to accomplish this and it is comprised of materials with different dielectric constants used in such a fashion that it is easier for the electrons to accumulate at the dielectric barriers. This means that when a signal comes through, as a B Field, electromagnetic event and suddenly stops for an E Field Electrostatic moment the electron density at the dielectric barriers is so dense that there is a very noticeable increase in the coherent transform of signal across that barrier, from primary to secondary, while there is a dearth of electrons trying to signal from deeper within the coils. The capacitive coupling is enhanced, without also enhancing the distributed capacitance, in fact diminishing it. Net result are transformers with what my customers claim is three to four times the amount of information available when the signal gets to the speakers.
Under these circumstances I want a large area of coupling between primary and secondary and I want one with a specific amount of dielectric constant vs that found through out the rest of the coil, along with dielectric absorption that occurs at low charge thresholds and releases at the same low threshold. I want those electrons, which are going to seethe no matter what, to be doing so in an area of interest to me, for signal coherence reasons.
The Ground Control devices follow this same line of thought. I want lots of surface area, closely coupled to a dielectric material that has the above qualities. So, I will leave you to answer question #1 on your own.
Question #2 Yes, extremely so, if you want to be able to tune this high Q device to work in the widest possible set of unknown circumstances.
Question 3# Again, the surface area vs length vs dielectric coating properties vs unknown ground situation shows up. All of these are a balancing act, change one constituent characteristic and you must compensate with the other characteristics.
Question #4 Yes. However the amount of control you can exert, with a loop that is this gross, in it's materials interaction, is really very slight. It will show you that either your system is amenable or it is not, but you will spend a long time trying to improve what you get out of it.
Question #5 Yes, though you really do begin to get into radio interference issues and the extra size just dilutes what little control over the effects you have. To get control you have to raise the Q of the system that looks so simple in the GC devices and then learn how to control those much more delicately balanced interactions.
You could go and read the three year old thread here.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1213239#post1213239
What you will get from it will answer most of your still seething questions, to a point that will get you to about 50% of what one pair of the GC Standard, lugged, devices will provide. A number of diy folks experimented on their own and report their results and methods there. One of those has begun manufacturing a competing product, based upon the information found in that thread. You can certainly duplicate his efforts with a few hours of reading and laughter, at the twists and turns of the skeptic league, bless their peer review hearts.
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IMO that's a lot of variables to deal with.
I'd get your system dialed in before experimenting with tweaks.
I've narrowed the speaker cables down to Reality, Libtecs and Grover Huffman. :thumb:
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Wind Chaser, I would strongly suggest that you obtain your tube amp before you make any decision on cables. They are the most susceptible to LCR differences among speaker cables.
As for the GC reviews, one neutral to 7 positive to date, with a couple of customers who returned their GC's because they did not like what they ended up with. That is why we have been adamant about the 30 day return policy. These are not going to work every where to everyone's satisfaction. Neither will our competitors. However, the ratio is a few thousand to three at the moment, in favor of them being satisfactory.
Bud
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I'm still interested in reading what others around here have to say.
Why don't you just try it? (I mean making it - a few feet of wire is all it takes. Isn't that the idea of having this in the Lab?)
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Gave it a shot with some teflon silverplated copper had lying around that I hate. Sure enough first few minutes had that hard spc sound, but on the flip side it seemed like there was really good separation of instruments and especially vocals, more ambience (?). After a half hour I realized the spc signature had faded and I was just enjoying the music. Spacious. Subtle though, could be imaginary. Took them off couple hours later. I'll put the 'earrings' back on tomorrow night and compare again. Maybe I'll make an attempt at the proper recipe, as I could use a solder pot anyway and want to learn how to use one w/ litz wire for speaker cables, tonearm wire, etc.
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Why don't you just try it? (I mean making it - a few feet of wire is all it takes. Isn't that the idea of having this in the Lab?)
I'll most likely give it a shot but I'm always interested in learning what other people have discovered.
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Wind Chaser, I would strongly suggest that you obtain your tube amp before you make any decision on cables. They are the most susceptible to LCR differences among speaker cables.
I don't know if I'll buy one or not, just testing the waters with new speakers. I have a wonderful little SS amp that I'm very happy with but given that the Druids are a 12 ohm load, my interest in trying tubes again has been rekindled.
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I wonder if Cat 5e cable would work well since it has the teflon on each strand. Anyone?
Just a thought as I've got 1000' of that laying around staring at me. :duh: Oh yes and 500' of DH Labs T-14. :duh: Oh yeah and 20' of "Hi Fi' speaker wire. Oh yeah and nevermind. :duh: :duh:
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Doesn't sound like you're short of raw materials :thumb: :lol:
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I wonder if Cat 5e cable would work well since it has the teflon on each strand. Anyone?
Good idea, it might be interesting to compare single strands to all four pairs. And what about better quality wire like Wywire etc?
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Good idea, it might be interesting to compare single strands to all four pairs. And what about better quality wire like Wywire etc?
I don't know if you're serious or just pulling my leg. :dunno:
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Serious. I'm a big believer in the difference cables can make, so it stands to reason why wouldn't they make a difference in this context?
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Serious. I'm a big believer in the difference cables can make, so it stands to reason why wouldn't they make a difference in this context?
OK. According to Bud it will make a differnece i.e. zip, litz....
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While we're on this topic, anyone have a chemical recommendation to remove magnet wire coatings? I have tried epoxy paint stripper, lacquer thinner, acetone, and methanol to no avail. I'm probably going to try the aspirin trick as well but would like a nice hardy chemical to eat this stuff off. I'm not convinced the solder pot is going to be that effective.
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Typically a solder pot is what is used to make a connection with lizt wire in lieu of stripping the insulation. The problem you are encountering is due to the fact that the insulation now used on magnet wire is polyurethane in composition and almost no solvent will touch it. It can be physically removed or burned off. If you heated it up on the end with a small torch and then hit it with a wire brush wheel you might remove enough insulation to make a connection without using the solder pot.
Scotty
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While we're on this topic, anyone have a chemical recommendation to remove magnet wire coatings? I have tried epoxy paint stripper, lacquer thinner, acetone, and methanol to no avail. I'm probably going to try the aspirin trick as well but would like a nice hardy chemical to eat this stuff off. I'm not convinced the solder pot is going to be that effective.
I use a old fashioned soldering gun. 100 and 140 watt and Kester 44 solder. I use the higher watt (two click trigger) and pool the solder and it quickly tins all the wires.
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While we're on this topic, anyone have a chemical recommendation to remove magnet wire coatings? I have tried epoxy paint stripper, lacquer thinner, acetone, and methanol to no avail. I'm probably going to try the aspirin trick as well but would like a nice hardy chemical to eat this stuff off. I'm not convinced the solder pot is going to be that effective.
Coke? :wink:
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Diet or regular? :lol:
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Diet or regular? :lol:
powder :wink:
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The only effective cleaner, one that wont snap half of the Litz wires, is hot Boron. Not something you want to try without serious shielding and armored gloves.
However, in lieu of a solder pot, which will strip all of the wires very quickly, you can use a solder iron that will heat to about 630 deg. F. Takes a bit of time and does require reheating and reshaping to get a semi round shape back.
To properly use a solder pot you need an ablative flux. Using a liquid Kester flux, meant to be cut with alcohol, in a "weak tea" colored solution will strip the wires completely without eating up the fine copper wire. The pot should be set at a measured temperature of 520 degrees F
And, do remember, that all that is called Litz is not. If the surface area of the bundled and twisted wires is not ten or more times that of a single piece of solid copper wire, with the same copper cross section, it is not Litz, period, no escape clauses.
Everything you do will make a difference when messing about with this concept. The real trick is to have a neutral pair of speakers and , they really should be EnABL'd so that you can hear coherent sounds 50 to 60 db below the typical 40 db down, that most speakers cease being anything like coherent at. A high density of retained information amplifier, either a tube amp or a solid state amp that drives a transformer will do nicely. Then you need speaker cables that do not change any characteristic in sound from a 6 inch length to a 12 foot length. At that point, with those tools in hand, you can begin to explore the subtle and not so subtle characteristics of electrons on the ground side of an audio system. Anything else is just playing around, and you should do it to your hearts content.
When we do bring out an answer to our competition, it will have gone through the same rigor that brought the earlier models to market. We will not be providing everything that the much more expensive models provide, but they will be more than a match for our esteemed competitors.
Bud
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IF... your internal wire in the speakers were Litz. wouldn't this have the same effect ?
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Internal Litz wiring is just a plain good idea. Depending upon the type of dielectric, it will or will not mimic a portion of what the GC's do. There will be more ease to the sound and less noise. There will or will not be additional dynamic color or sound stage and, not likely a back half of the wave form improvement, again dependent upon the dielectric/ 's used.
However, it is a worthwhile thing to do. All of my speaker cables, interconnects and box internal wiring is Litz. The results are extreme amounts of information, controllable amounts of dynamic color, no loss of high frequencies to RAC concerns, very tight phase maintenance and absolute neutrality.
All of this originally done to get rid of fairly obvious coloration's, especially in speaker cables, to allow me to voice my high performance output transformers. A lot of that work could not have been done without the benefit of EnABL'd speakers and their ability to coherently express signals 50 to 60 db down, from the usual 40 db down of most drivers. Many of the borrowed cables I used, looking for neutral ones, had their coloration's down in this low level region. Did not mean they were bad cables, but since I could not reliably find their differences in the grass of a spectrum analyzer, I had to make judgments by ear alone, so my taste in music presentation did enter into this activity.
Bud
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Bud, a side question if you don't mind? would the EnABL process work on line sources with multiple midwoofers?
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Bud,
Can you tell me more about your Litz speaker and interconnect cables?
Jim D
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I used a very heavy gauge silver coated Litz wire back in the eighties, it was good stuff (and very expensive) in it's time, but easily bettered by many of today’s offerings.
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In a bit of a hurry right now but here goes.
Mike B, Yes, but you need to plan on all of the drivers, including tweeter, unless it is a RAAL or an 80's Panasonic true Ribbon. The mid woofers will easily keep up with these drivers once EnABL'd
Jim D, Sometime in the first quarter of next year we will make the speaker cables available. We are currently working on a sleeve that is something other than natural or bleached white, just to get the WAF up and to keep you from noticing that these things don't fall into line with the current fad of anaconda snakes. They are also impervious to all floor materials and power cords, but will accept an external signal when draped across the core of a power transformer. I know you all like to do this...... Interconnects have zero shielding, but have the same external immunity as the speaker cables.
Wind Cheater, Rules for true Litz are, 10 times or more of surface area, in comparison to an equal metal cross section of a solid piece of wire. Also must have either type one or type two multiple twist braiding. The third Litz law is to have an RAC that is less than a .01% more than the RDC per foot, at 3 times the highest frequency of interest. Not a hard and fast rule and more useful in RF than in audio, but you are still looking for that equivalence to a single crystal of metal, with length being of little or no issue to the signal. So many "Litz wires" from that period did not meet these limits, some exceeded them to no great purpose.
For purposes of cables it is actually better to have each wire coated with a dielectric, rather than a bulk covering and for silver the less the better for most dielectric materials. In addition, silver is really tough to deal with sonically. It has a faster transient response and more upper mid range support than copper, even the 5+ nines copper we use in our Litz. So care must be used with that metal and I don't recommend it for general usage, just to hard to control.
Bud
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Where is the post on the speaker cables?
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Where is the post on the speaker cables?
Dunno, don't want to know, those things are just pure poison.
Bud
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Bud,
I have a pair of near field studio monitors (Klein + Hummel 0300s) which are internally tri-amplified. Would this tweak have less effect when the speaker wires are as short as they are likely to be in this instance?
In a similar vein, would it have effect at microphone levels?
thanks, Russell
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By golly... they really work. Using two 20" single strands of CMP CAT 5e, I twisted them into loops as per the first post. To be honest I wasn't expecting much, but the difference on my system is considerable.
I’m going to investigate this further with different lengths and types of wire. The combinations are really endless. And this is such a simple, quick and easy tweak to do.
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By golly... they really work. Using two 20" single strands of CMP CAT 5e, I twisted them into loops as per the first post.
Pics?
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(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=38928)
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=38929)
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Thanks.
So you use one twisted pair from a Cat 5e cable...
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Exactly, one twisted pair makes two GEs. Keep in mind this is CMP... not CMG or CMR.
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Looks like the solid core copper wire version.
The CMP CAT5e plenum wiring can come in different insulation materials for the conductors. Do you know what type you have, FEP, PTFE, etc?
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Looks like the solid core copper wire version.
The CMP CAT5e plenum wiring can come in different insulation materials for the conductors. Do you know what type you have, FEP, PTFE, etc?
What do we have?
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24awg solid core, FEP insulation. :D
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Looks like the solid core copper wire version.
The CMP CAT5e plenum wiring can come in different insulation materials for the conductors. Do you know what type you have, FEP, PTFE, etc?
J MPP
This is one seriously very impressive tweak. I'm flat out astonished - they certainly work well in my system.
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You really need to follow Bud's recipe and see how good it can get. Small gauge litz wire with very little added dielectric.
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J MPP
This is one seriously very impressive tweak. I'm flat out astonished - they certainly work well in my system.
When I checked MPP CAT5e Plenum cable, most are 24awg solid core, the insulation is FEP, same as what we have! :)
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The stuff I'm using is just a matter of what I happen to have on hand. As you can see in the above picture, they are open loops. My first thought was I hope they don't pick up RF and act like an antenna. At some point I'll try different lengths, twisted and non twisted, multiple strands and different types of wire. The possibilities are.... endless.
There's nothing subtle about what this tweak does, at least in my system. The difference these little wires make is night and day! Hands down, bar none the best tweak I have ever tried. :thumb:
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There's nothing subtle about what this tweak does, at least in my system. The difference these little wires make is night and day! Hands down, bar none the best tweak I have ever tried. :thumb:
And that's not based on a cost to performance ratio either. If these little wires were concealed in an 'air tight' box and someone made some BS claim like - they contain a top secret military compound, I would have believed him.
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One just needs to be certain that they use the white / orange for the very best sound. :lol:
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According to one cable manufacturer, red is the best color.
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According to one cable manufacturer, red is the best color.
Oh, so you're giving up a little performance...
Who is that btw?
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Oh, so you're giving up a little performance...
:lol: Not the least bit concerned!
Who is that btw?
Reality Cables. They do offer white and black sleeves for those who cannot look upon red cables, but they don't advise black. Read the FAQ... http://www.realitycables.com/faq.html (http://www.realitycables.com/faq.html)
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Reality Cables. They do offer white and black sleeves for those who cannot look upon red cables, but they don't advise black. Read the FAQ... http://www.realitycables.com/faq.html (http://www.realitycables.com/faq.html)
:o :o :o :o
Why do you not put sleeving over your cables?
In listening tests we determined that the black or colored sleeving that other cables
manufactures use degrades the sound of the our cables. We heard a collapsing of
the soundstage as compared to no sleeving at all. Also, by not using the sleeving it
helps us keep the cost down so that we can provide you with reference caliber
cables at near entry level pricing. We will put sleeving on if you ask. Our feeling is
that the cotton sleeving does the least amount of damage to the sound. We only
recommend the black sleeving if you require it for cosmetic reasons.
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Given how much impact a silly small piece of wire can make, nothing surprises me any more.
This is a terrible time for electrical engineers who cannot measure or find any scientific explanation for these things. The safest thing for them to do is deny that these things make any difference at all. :lol:
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Most black colored compounds use carbon black as the pigment
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So in other words don't bother painting your black cables red.
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Bud,
I have a pair of near field studio monitors (Klein + Hummel 0300s) which are internally tri-amplified. Would this tweak have less effect when the speaker wires are as short as they are likely to be in this instance?
In a similar vein, would it have effect at microphone levels?
thanks, Russell
Can you get to the drivers involved? If not and the input is an unbalanced RCA cable and there is a spare RCA female input, an RCA GC will work very well with the amplifiers in question, especially if they have a common signal return amongst them.
It is entirely possible to provide GC's to apply directly to the negative lug of the individual drivers, at the join between selvage wire from the voice coil and the lug itself. As soon as our web site is up and running, for the Ground Plain units we intend to market through it, we can provide this sort of custom, individual service. We should have this completed by mid December.
As for color in polyolefin dielectric, red is best in one place and black is best in another.
You are quite correct Wind Chaser, this is a very mutable technique. You will want to keep copious notes and teach your self to recognize all three categories of change available. I will strongly recommend that you purchase a pair of the Standard Ground Controls, just you you have a yardstick to go by.
Also, please note that it is extremely easy to overdo these improvements, the result is a suddenly murky and dulled sound. No damage done of course, unless you have spent money on products where the folks responsible for the manufacturing decisions and controls were not aware of this possibility. Even GC's can be used to an extreme, with no more than two being recommended for any stage in the reproduction chain, but their use will not interfere with any other stage in that chain.
This Ground Control thing is amenable to engineering solutions, with repeatable results, but the phenomena involved are very subtle in nature and gross changes in any constituent part of the controlling device is not usually beneficial.
Bud
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This is a terrible time for electrical engineers who cannot measure or find any scientific explanation for these things. The safest thing for them to do is deny that these things make any difference at all. :lol:
I'm getting very tired of the constant slurs and misrepresentation of my profession. Stop it please.
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... they don't advise black
Black insulation is often black because carbon black is used to make them black. Carbob black is conductive.
Other colours will use different colouring materials, each with their own properties.
dave
Edit: got beaten to the punch :)
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Can you get to the drivers involved? If not and the input is an unbalanced RCA cable and there is a spare RCA female input, an RCA GC will work very well with the amplifiers in question, especially if they have a common signal return amongst them.
It is entirely possible to provide GC's to apply directly to the negative lug of the individual drivers, at the join between selvage wire from the voice coil and the lug itself. As soon as our web site is up and running, for the Ground Plain units we intend to market through it, we can provide this sort of custom, individual service. We should have this completed by mid December.
Bud
I have yet to remove the back on these speakers, but I imagine I can easily get to the drivers. The only inputs are balanced XLR3s.
In general, do you find that the effect is lessened with shorter speaker wire lengths you would find in an internally powered speaker?
Have you tried this tweak with ultra low-level signals, like ribbon microphones or phono cartridges?
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Also, please note that it is extremely easy to overdo these improvements, the result is a suddenly murky and dulled sound. No damage done of course, unless you have spent money on products where the folks responsible for the manufacturing decisions and controls were not aware of this possibility. Even GC's can be used to an extreme, with no more than two being recommended for any stage in the reproduction chain, but their use will not interfere with any other stage in that chain.
That's exactly what happened with a second pair installed at the back of the amp.
BTW, how did you come up with this idea? Do you think there could be other applications ground enhancement?
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Wind Cheater,
This novel tech can be used for every stage of the reproduction chain. I have had claims made, from people I have no reason to mistrust, that analog video signals are helped to as strong a degree as are audio signals. I have zero experience here and only anecdotal evidence. If you have a stand alone CD player, take your wire loop, solder it to an RCA male plug ground tab and plug it into a spare Analog out. You should find some interesting results. Be ready to decrease the loop size. Under no circumstances should you apply this tech to a digital ground. The CD player will have buffered grounds and so it is safe to apply to an analog output. It is not safe to apply it to the SPDIF output.
Russell,
I have applied this to both phono cartridge, just at the solder pads for the shielded cables. Also to the magnetic reader heads in my Teac X7R tape player. Both were successful, both needed far less materials than speakers or line level signal equipment needs.
I'm getting very tired of the constant slurs and misrepresentation of my profession. Stop it please.
I hear you brother. I suspect real quantifiable data will have to wait until Tom Simon (of the excellent investigation of cable differences in Audio X press some time past) can turn his extremely sensitive sniffers loose, before we begin to see what is actually going on. From logical derivation and manipulation of the various materials ratios, it does appear to be an unterminated wave guide, with extremely low RAC and RDC. Exactly why this scheme would make the difference it does is something of a wonder. I do know I am manipulating very subtle fields, that they are not related to antenna structures, as the material I use is true type 1 litz, basically immune to frequencies below mhz range. My assumptions lie around a super rich outer orbit electron density, held in slight and short stasis by the overall triboelectric charge, developed by the seething electrons slipping in and out. Certainly the true, individually insulated strand, Litz wire and tiny amounts of extra, low dielectric constant and absorption material, show a very high Q, with respect to changes in perceived performance vs changes in material type, amount or structure. I invite you to participate and would value your observations. My expertise is in transformers, very high information density audio transformers to be more exact.
Wind cheater, the above is where this investigation arose. Developing and utilizing a dielectric circuit, within the confines of a transformer coil. The development of absolutely uncolored cables and the use of speakers with coherent information capability some 90 db down from signal level (as opposed to the much more ordinary 40 db down) and untroubled by resonance echoes from the emitter surfaces, were required to allow me to learn the "voices" of differing dielectric materials and coil winding structures.
This information was then applied to developing a successful lineup of "voices " for out put transformers for guitar amplifiers and other amplified musical instruments. To apply the resulting information to extremely high information retention, audio reproduction outputs, interstage's etc, was almost trivial by comparison. To get some anecdotal information on the results, goggle O-Netics Ltd or Bud Purvine.
After all the above was finished I noticed that I still was not hearing a complete rendering of music. There were some obvious lacks in spatial presentation and the voicing of instruments. Since I was quite certain that signal side design was about as complete as anyone could ask for, and so, not the problem, I began to investigate the other half of the complete signal circuit. The development of Ground Control was really just a result of following a series of logic trees, starting with the realization that there actually was a problem to look into.
Bud
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Bud,why does the Litz wire have to be in a loop?
Scotty
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Scotty,
Works better. The loop is amenable to "tuning" for specific driver differences, a straight piece of wire, same type and length, not so much.
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I got lost somewhere along the way. Why if the Litz is better, are you selling the straight wire version?
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over here..... OVER HERE..... ah... better. We aren't selling a straight wire version. We will be selling a speaker cable and interconnect cable that were fore runners of this tech and they are, of need, straight wires and they use the same materials, mostly.
All Ground Control and Ground Plain devices use a loop of Litz wire.
Bud
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ok then. I mistook the picture, with the piece of wire coming out, to be the thing. Some of us, OVER HERE are a bit slow.
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over here..... OVER HERE..... ah... better. We aren't selling a straight wire version. We will be selling a speaker cable and interconnect cable that were fore runners of this tech and they are, of need, straight wires and they use the same materials, mostly.
All Ground Control and Ground Plain devices use a loop of Litz wire.
Bud
and when the loop is covered in cotton sleeve and terminated with spade lug for speaker level or RCA for line level, you can't see that
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Right then, one last question: is it significant to have BOTH the amp end and the speaker end "treated"? It is not clear from the glowing reports if everyone is using pairs or just singles on the speaker end.
Seems this is being answered on the other thread. I'll just sit back and wait till it's all sorted out and there is a concensus.
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In my own system and seemingly in the systems of those who get addicted to Ground Control, the following steps occur.
1. Application of a Standard GC to speakers Significant improvements in the illusion of space and coherence of sound stage, modest improvement in tonal vividness and dynamic colors (jump factor) and a noticeable reduction of noise in most systems.
Step 2 Addition of a standard GC to the amplifier speaker terminals same as above but with about half the level of change.
Step 3 Application of a Reference GC to either place, leaving the other end as a Standard. Greater transparency to the musical events, greater treble differentiation, more coherence to the illusion of separate instruments within a group. Variable by system reduction in the width and in some cases the depth of sound stage illusion. Return or retention of the Reference Ground Control per individual taste.
Step 4 Application of a Standard GC RCA to stand alone CD player: Restructuring of Red Book high frequency hash, noise and hardness into the musical event it was, before the op amps lost the back half of the wave form information required for this. General extension of "ease" throughout the rest of the FR. Differences in quality of musical values between Red Book and all other forms of information storage narrowed significantly. Greatly improved respect for the Electrical Engineers that have already provided these increasingly musical events being uncovered by Ground Control.
Step 5 Application of Standard and Reference GC RCA to preamp: For tube preamps, the combination aids all categories noted above, at about another half of the gain originally found in the speaker amp combo. For solid state preamps the grain and hashiness (if any is available) are returned to musical information and the results are stunning transparency to go along with the already fine benefits of low distortion and a lack of noise.
Step 6 A desire for even more places to hang these things and the subsequent discovery that you can have too many GC's on a particular piece of equipment.
Step 7 An investigation of EnABL speaker process and a contact of Planet 10 Hi Fi to see about obtaining pre treated drivers. A descent into the wonders of DIY that actually works better than anything you thought possible, even if it isn't for your "main" system.
Step 8 An email to Bud asking about availability of cables.
So, an 8 step plan to get you into the poor house. And if you have a home theater system, well, our first Ground Plain product will be an even greater enticement than are the Ground Controls.
Bud
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Sometimes it's better not to ask :duh:
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So, an 8 step plan to get you into the poor house. And if you have a home theater system, well, our first Ground Plain product will be an even greater enticement than are the Ground Controls.
Bud
The poor house, hea?
That said, you stated in the few posts back that it's easy to go overboard with these grounding wires and stated {Even GC's can be used to an extreme, with no more than two being recommended for any stage in the reproduction chain, but their use will not interfere with any other stage in that chain.} So would you say that from the CDP to the Preamp to be considered 1 stage, from the Preamp to the Amp being 1 stage, and from the Amp to the Loudspeakers being yet 1 more stage? And with no more than 2 grounding devices per stage, having 6 CD to loudspeaker grounding devices would be considered the optimal usage of these grounding devices? Thanks.
Cheers,
Robin
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Have to congratulate and recognize BudP for the time and energy he has put in explaining this tweak, the details offered and the direct help with the diy approach.
Hope some of us following this thread (myself included) support him with some purchases of his commercial tweak or other products he may have on offer, now and in the future.
I do not see anywhere near the support from the the other 'mind blowing' purveyor in this regard on that thread, yet there seem to be a number of purchases of that tweak.
Just saying... - support has value.
Thanks Bud.
- David.
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This question is not for nor is it against and is asked out of well meant curiosity. Seriously, :)
I've been curious as well regarding the EVS Ground Enhancers and will either try it via the diy recipe route or pick up a couple of pairs.
Am curious about another aspect - that is how much of a role we are playing in this?
I know I'm going down the psycho-acoustic rabbit-hole, but nontheless....
curious about what those of you have used them would say, in case you have wondered the same?
Maybe you find your answers here David. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
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Satfrat.
Yes, that is what I have in my system, though I do have an extra pair on the plate amps running my sub woofer boxes.
By the way, remember my mention of Planet 10 Hi Fi? My entire speaker system is from them, so I wasn't just being kind to a friend. Their finished goods are exceptional and they will sell you pre cut kits for the boxes and treated drivers to go in them. We are talking superior to world class sound.
http://www.planet10-hifi.com/
Bud
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Bud,
What are your thoughts on Cat 5e wire for this?
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Satfrat.
Yes, that is what I have in my system, though I do have an extra pair on the plate amps running my sub woofer boxes.
By the way, remember my mention of Planet 10 Hi Fi? My entire speaker system is from them, so I wasn't just being kind to a friend. Their finished goods are exceptional and they will sell you pre cut kits for the boxes and treated drivers to go in them. We are talking superior to world class sound.
http://www.planet10-hifi.com/ (http://www.planet10-hifi.com/)
Bud
An RCA ground on the subwoofer too? Now I hadn't even thought of that. :thumb: Do you recommend RCA grounds to be used as pairs, say right/left analog verses just using 1 per component? 6-8 grounding devices in a system isn't too bad, definitely a system target to shoot for I guess.
Planet 10,,, very nice Lab Circle Ad also. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
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Could there be any correlation between GC efficacy and impedance?
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What are your thoughts on Cat 5e wire for this?
That Windchasers findings are within the realm of my expectations. Too much of an insulation material aimed at different characteristics than what is in GC's and a poor control over materials tuneability, for a neutral response. Good experiment, but you can have more and better and also worse.
Do you recommend RCA grounds to be used as pairs, say right/left analog verses just using 1 per component?
Depends upon the internal ground structure. Most commercial stuff has common input and output grounds and both channels tied together. In this case one RCA will work. Two will provide more and maybe three, but probably not. For separate components, with common input to output grounds, it doesn't matter which type you use, RCA or Lugs, but two is still a max in most cases.
Could there be any correlation between GE efficacy and impedance?
Yup.
Bud
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So would a higher impedance yield a more substantial dividend?
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Thank you very much Bud. :D
Cheers,
Robin
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Have to congratulate and recognize BudP for the time and energy he has put in explaining this tweak, the details offered and the direct help with the diy approach.
Hope some of us following this thread (myself included) support him with some purchases of his commercial tweak or other products he may have on offer, now and in the future.
I do not see anywhere near the support from the the other 'mind blowing' purveyor in this regard on that thread, yet there seem to be a number of purchases of that tweak.
Just saying... - support has value.
Thanks Bud.
- David.
David,
Thanks for the clarification. So in essence there are 3 avenues to this technology.
- The first being through Bud, the innovator who has done all the work and R&D who also markets his own product.
- The second approach is through a competitor who may or may not be affiliated with Bud.
- The third approach being DIY.
Considering the significance / effectiveness of this tweak, I’d say it’s only fair that Bud receives some form of compensation.
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Bud,
You probably have already posted a link to your website somewhere in one of these threads, but could you send it to me in a PM.
John
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David,
Thanks for the clarification. So in essence there are 3 avenues to this technology.
- The first being through Bud, the innovator who has done all the work and R&D who also markets his own product.
- The second approach is through a competitor who may or may not be affiliated with Bud.
- The third approach being DIY.
Considering the significance / effectiveness of this tweak, I’d say it’s only fair that Bud receives some form of compensation.
Hi John,
I am not sure as to all the avenues, but the ones you mention sound, well, sound!
Posted what I did since I clearly noticed the support Bud was providing to the members on the diy side, as well as to some, in terms of explanations, who have purchased from the other source.
Therefore, the point. Thanks for picking up on it. I personally have learned quite a bit on this particular thread. So once again, thanks Bud.
I only speak for myself: I do put a value on support and am willing to pay a premium for it. Had it not been for this thread, I would not have been exposed to BudP's work and I, for one, will keep that in mind for any future purchases, for this tweak or another offering.
Can only hope for something similar factoring into other member's decisions.
- David.
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So would a higher impedance yield a more substantial dividend?
Nope. You want to entice those tiny electrons into your noose and a big step up is not the way to do so, remember you are competing with mother earth for primacy, or at least equality in choice of where information enhanced AC signal is going to go, dragging their favorite electrons with them. You want the hole they fall into to be wide and deep.
Bud
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Here is a report on VMPS RM40. These are a DIY. I used three runs of 40/44 Litz and followed the recipe on the circle.
First let me explain I installed Litz wire internal on the panels and tweeter a long time ago. Also moved the xovers to external units and replaced the upper range inductors with Solen Litz componets.
Bi amp BAT75 on top Parasound ss on bottom.
Now to the tweek.
Followed B's advice and installed on the panels after the xover on neg terminal. Copying from one of BudP earlier posts "the result is a suddenly murky and dulled sound." and that was exactly what I experienced. Evidently too much Litz in the system ?
Moved on and placed on the bass after the xover. nice improvement. added to amp end, again nice improvement.
Next, build more units and do CDP and tuner. May try on amp end of the BAT amp.
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"the result is a suddenly murky and dulled sound." and that was exactly what I experienced. Evidently too much Litz in the system ?
Assuming this is true Litz, where every strand is insulated from every other by a VERY thin coating (you want what is called "single build" coating) and no additional insulation on or within an inch of the wire, then yes, and cut the amount of wire by 1/3 in length, assuming you had 6 inches in a loop to begin with.
Bud
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- The second approach is through a competitor who may or may not be affiliated with Bud.
Nope, no affiliation, but as far as I know, no animosity either. In fact, I am planning that our first Ground Plain product be one that can be matched with our esteemed competitors product, to provide something quite special.
Bud
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Assuming this is true Litz, where every strand is insulated from every other by a VERY thin coating (you want what is called "single build" coating) and no additional insulation on or within an inch of the wire, then yes, and cut the amount of wire by 1/3 in length, assuming you had 6 inches in a loop to begin with.
Bud
Yes, true Litz, unserved and am not aware of single or double build.
Should I try without the cotton sleeve ? I will try reducing the six in. to four.
Thanks;
Stu
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The cotton sleeve is moderately important. Removal will make a difference in what you hear of hall sounds. So, quite subtle, until you start to add in threads of other materials, as you would find in hollow woven cords from female oriented hobby shops. Things will change pretty drastically with the addition of just 10% Orlon thread to the cotton. I would leave the cotton on personally and I would try both removal of a third of the strands or cutting them all by 1/3 in length, if you have enough material to play with. Again, some subtle differences will be found.
Bud
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Nope, no affiliation, but as far as I know, no animosity either. In fact, I am planning that our first Ground Plain product be one that can be matched with our esteemed competitors product, to provide something quite special.
Bud
Bud, I come for the academic world. There, and in most of the written and visual arts someone copying work would be called out for plagiarism. That is assuming the item was a close copy in form and function. I hope the competitor for this item makes a product with significant variations from your offering?
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Nope, no affiliation, but as far as I know, no animosity either. In fact, I am planning that our first Ground Plain product be one that can be matched with our esteemed competitors product, to provide something quite special.
Bud
When?
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Mike B,
I did make mention of this very thing, on the other thread. Not an angry mention, just a note that it was a copy. This post was removed by the moderator and reasons for doing so were given.
The product uses the same materials and techniques and accomplishes a sub set of what our Standard and Reference Ground controls accomplish, in that it provides for information retention of enough signal coherence to enhance stage width and depth, in the illusion coming from our music systems. I have provided more than enough information over on the Diy Audio "ground side electrons" thread to allow anyone who wants too, to make a diy retention device to this level of performance. We do also provide tonal vividness, dynamic color and lyrical beauty, in controlled amounts with our two devices. These categories and the methods used to achieve retention of this information, do not appear to be copied to date, though from the spread of products available, it is not from wont of trying. I will note that our esteemed competitor did not enter the market place until we had done all of the market preparation needed, i.e sales locations and third party reviews.
On the diy thread I did ask that anyone deciding to copy our products please contact me. Both for discussion of license fee and materials and techniques, so as not to dilute the products effectiveness. From the pricing and marketing speak being utilized by our competitor, I don't have any reason to expect this will occur.
Draw what conclusions you will.
Bud
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jtwrace,
I have the prototypes up and running as I type. They will retail for $40 each, provide a bit narrower sound stage than our Standard models do but also provide a good portion of the depth of internal tone and transient gradient structure that the Reference models provide. They do exhibit a small percentage of the other properties exhibited in our two Ground Control models. I am looking for a balance that will help a two channel system and also be perfect for a multi-channel theater system, where extreme stage width is perhaps not the best idea.
The availability hinges upon how quickly a web site with shopping cart can be set up and vetted. I am already involved with the folks I need to be for this and we are shooting for mid December, to be up and able to take orders. I suspect I will also offer a more direct competition with another product, aimed primarily at sound stage width. These products are already designed to be used in combination.
Bud
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As a note, this last week, I obtained several samples of the GE from EVS and installed them into my system. Previously, I have been using the reference GC on both the low freq and mid/high freq posts on my 4 main speakers along with Walker Audio Reference Plus HDL's in my HT and one on my center speaker (note - as of this writing, my CC does not have the ref GC on it pending receipt of some Cardas banana adaptors to allow for its reinstallation as I also have Walker Audio Reference Plus HDL's on this and can not fit all of them on the CC posts at present. I hope to have the Cardas adaptors tomorrow evening to reinstall the ref GC along with the HDL).
The results were extremely impressive with the ref GC on my system. No image truncation in any plane. In fact, it remained static in size from before installation but the image specificity, clarity, removal of grunge, grit and grain, dynamic color, instrumental color, vividness and "you are there in the room with the action/music/musicions" was incredibly precise in any plane horizontal and vertical providing an immensely satisfying sonic result to film and BD audio high def discs.
Late last week, I received a set of the competitor models and hooked them in place of my ref GC's on my speakers after removing the ref GC's. I also hooked them on my amp outputs. Immediately, I was not happy with the results at all. The remaining superb benefits of the Walker HDL's remained but suddenly I lost all image precision I had enjoyed, a haze and grit ensued as if a blanket had been thrown over the soundfield and it became diffuse. After two days of installation to break in, not much changed.
Later, I found out my amp has floating outputs, not negative grounded so I removed them from the amp. Things improved a great deal and almost all of the grit/grain'haze disappeared but some haze and diffuse imaging remained. I lost the incredible spotlighting localization the ref GC's provided. It was as if someone turned out the lights on the system and I was in the dark, to a greater degree, again. Out went the competitor GE's and back in the ref GC's went.
Bang! Everything I found absolutely entrancing with the Walker Audio Reference Plus HDL's + ref GC's returned. I realized I can not live without this combination ever again.
I should note that I will be installing the Walker Audio Ref + HDL's on the woofer posts of the 4 main speakers tomorrow night along with the currently employed reference GC's and fully expect an improvement over what I have gained now, according to what I have read from W/A and others that use the HDL's in bi-wire/bi-amp applications. The bass is enhanced where one would not expect so in cleaning up ultrasonic garbage entering the speaker cables. This should prove most interesting as I am extremely happy so far.
I have ordered some standard GC RCA's for my amp RCA unused inputs and one for my reference HT receiver to see how they work on that end. I did note the competitor model GE's did NOT increase my soundstage further from the reference GC's, it remained static in size, nor did the GE's truncate the soundstage, either.
I understand I am somewhat of an anomaly so far in the competitor models. Please note that I did not find them, after they broke in my my speakers after about 36 hours or more, to be bad per se. And, if I probably had heard them without trying the ref GC's I would have found their improvement, over the system without them, to be very positive. It is just once I have had the immense pleasure of the reference GC's on my speakers they are, for my system and my listening sensibilities, the sin quo non with the Walker Audio's in tandem. There is, on my system, a synergistic and cumulative relationship that is most desireable and immensely satisfying, as of today.
Lastly, let me restate - this is my system and my results. They may very well be very different from the improvement other systems may provide. So, this is in no way a negative review or consideration of either product. I just want to be clear they were good, very good, in their own right.
Best to all,
Odd
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Odd??? Yes it is. 8)
Cheers,
Robin
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Okay, in my unscientific DIY I made a pair using CAT 5 CMP as seen on page 4 of this thread. If someone would like to compare them to the 'mind blowing' product, I have another pair I'll send at no cost. All I ask is that you report back, either by way of this thread, or in a PM with the results. Assuming there is more than one interested party, I'll draw a name from a hat.
I think these are very impressive little wires, but I don't have a reference to compare them with. Also, I think it would be interesting to get someone else's perspective. So if you are willing and have the commercial product as evidenced by a report in the other thread, shoot me a PM.
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Okay, in my unscientific DIY I made a pair using CAT 5 CMP as seen on page 4 of this thread. If someone would like to compare them to the 'mind blowing' product, I have another pair I'll send at no cost. All I ask is that you report back, either by way of this thread, or in a PM with the results. Assuming there is more than one interested party, I'll draw a name from a hat.
I think these are very impressive little wires, but I don't have a reference to compare them with. Also, I think it would be interesting to get someone else's perspective. So if you are willing and have the commercial product as evidenced by a report in the other thread, shoot me a PM.
Guess I know what I need to do....Two 24" pieces of Cat 5e stripped 2" back.
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I did 20" of Cat 5e and wasn't too impressed. Ordered some Litz.
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Odd??? Yes it is. 8)
Cheers,
Robin
Nothing is truly odd in this crazy, zany hobby. It defies explanation at times what will work for one does nothing for others. I have read in other forums the AP versions did nothing for somone and the EVS versions were, to him and his system, the sin quo non of reproduction. So the answer to that is - "go figure".
Enjoy.
Odd
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I did 20" of Cat 5e and wasn't too impressed. Ordered some Litz.
Interesting.
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Nothing is truly odd in this crazy, zany hobby. It defies explanation at times what will work for one does nothing for others. I have read in other forums the AP versions did nothing for somone and the EVS versions were, to him and his system, the sin quo non of reproduction. So the answer to that is - "go figure".
Enjoy.
Odd
Just so you don't misunderstand me Odd, it's not your product review that I find odd but where you decided to post it, in a DIY thread located in The Lab Circle. Then again there are already what I perceive to be a couple Industry Ad's in here too so I guess your addition has found it's home OK. 8)
FWIW, the Equipment Reviews Circle (http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?board=24.0)might have been a better home for your product comparison but,,,, :dunno:
Cheers,
Robin
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Whoops! Sorry about that, chief. Bud gave me this thread link to post my findings here after I advised him of my findings noted on my earlier post today. I apologize to all for my goof. It isn't my first goof and certainly won't be my last I am sure. :duh:
Again, sorry about that, guys.
Odd
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Whoops! Sorry about that, chief. Bud gave me this thread link to post my findings here after I advised him of my findings noted on my earlier post today. I apologize to all for my goof. It isn't my first goof and certainly won't be my last I am sure. :duh:
Again, sorry about that, guys.
Odd
It's fine! I don't see a problem using a diy thread to do a project and then post your findings. It happens all the time IMO.
You're fine!!!
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I did 20" of Cat 5e and wasn't too impressed. Ordered some Litz.
There are different varieties of CAT 5. What type of insulation is on yours... CMG, CMR or CMP?
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Whoops! Sorry about that, chief. Bud gave me this thread link to post my findings here after I advised him of my findings noted on my earlier post today. I apologize to all for my goof. It isn't my first goof and certainly won't be my last I am sure. :duh:
Again, sorry about that, guys.
Odd
I fully understand Odd. Welcome to Audiocircle, I hope to read more reviews and shared opinions from ya. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
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It's fine! I don't see a problem using a diy thread to do a project and then post your findings. It happens all the time IMO.
You're fine!!!
Only this is a comparsion of 2 competing products Jason and has nothing to do with a DIY project. Please correct me if I'm wrong?
Cheers,
Robin
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There are different varieties of CAT 5. What type of insulation is on yours... CMG, CMR or CMP?
24ga solid CMR/CMX, used single strand.
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Bud, I have 30 and 36 ga magnet wire and a solder pot now. It appears I can melt the coating in the pot, clean off the burnt coating and expose copper and solder the wires together.
How many loops of this size wire and what diameter should I start with?
Should I then twist them together or leave them in an open loop?
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24ga solid CMR/CMX, used single strand.
Perhaps that would explain why you weren't impressed. When I tried CMR and CMG as speaker cable I couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. CMP has a very thin Plenum coating insulator which makes a very significant audible difference.
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I've been following both threads since the start of all of this. I am NOT a disbeliever in things like this, but I do have to hear the differences for myself.
A few days ago, I tried a 20" piece of speaker cable looped and connected to each negative speaker terminal. I don't think I heard anything, but I left them on because I was lazy. However, since I had some CAT5e cable lying around with nothing to do, I made some single wire 20" loops and installed them on the negative speaker terminals.
This could be in my head, but I really hear a considerable difference in the clarity, separation, and imaging. It sounds like there is a blacker (or quieter) background. Micro dynamics seem more obvious and I don't have to listen for details; they are just there. The sound stage also seems to have more depth as in sounds coming from near compared to farther away.
I also put a couple of loops on the negative terminals on my amps.
I may just have to invest in the real thing soon. I'm very surprised this worked at all with the CAT5e cable. Strange...
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Bud, I have 30 and 36 ga magnet wire and a solder pot now. It appears I can melt the coating in the pot, clean off the burnt coating and expose copper and solder the wires together.
How many loops of this size wire and what diameter should I start with?
Should I then twist them together or leave them in an open loop?
I would use the #36 AWG wire, especially if the label refers to it as #36 SN, or single coated insulation. You will need 88 strands and six inches to come close to what I use. There will be a slight increase in RAC but not enough to have to make big changes to accommodate.
Stick two smooth nails, 3 inches apart, into a block of wood and cut the heads off. Tape the end of the coil wire next to one nail, to one side and a little beyond the actual nail and wrap the thing around both nails 88 times. Then place a 1/8 inch wide strip of crepe paper masking tape over all of the wires on one side of the post where you taped your start wire down, just to the inside of the nail. Then gather up the start wire and tape it and all of the other side wires together on the other side of the nail, just to the inside of the nail, away from the actual loop curves. These should be a fairly tight bundles and both at the same end where the start wire and end wire ended up.
Remove the loop of wire and cut it between the two, relatively close together tape wraps. You should now have a 6 inch plus length of cable . You cannot emulate a Litz type 1 twist, but that should not present a problem. Tin the open ends of this cable. Use a liquid flux if you have one and cut it with 99.99% pure isopropyl alcohol from your local drug store until it resembles weak tea in color. This mixture will ablate the wire insulation and tin the wires very quickly. Dip it past the tape and when the brown goop stops rising, remove the wire and wipe it in a double folded cotton shop towel from just above the solder to the cable end. This will squeeze the excess solder and burnt insulation out, leaving an ugly spot on the rag.
Do this to both ends of the cable.
Twist the length of cable at least two full turns down it's length and try to keep it from untwisting (not easy). Now take an appropriate size of shrink tube and cut a 0.9 inch piece off, fold the cable in the middle and slip the tube over the two parts. Then solder the two dipped ends together and attach them to a short piece of tinned copper wire, either solid or stranded and go hook it up to your speaker ground lug. Make two of these of course.
Bud
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TJHUB, you are just suffering the exact same mass hypnosis the rest of us are suffering from, welcome home!
Bud
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Perhaps that would explain why you weren't impressed. When I tried CMR and CMG as speaker cable I couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. CMP has a very thin Plenum coating insulator which makes a very significant audible difference.
Which is why I ordered the Litz :D
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I had some CAT5e cable lying around with nothing to do, I made some single wire 20" loops and installed them on the negative speaker terminals.
This could be in my head, but I really hear a considerable difference in the clarity, separation, and imaging. It sounds like there is a blacker (or quieter) background. Micro dynamics seem more obvious and I don't have to listen for details; they are just there. The sound stage also seems to have more depth as in sounds coming from near compared to farther away.
That's exactly what I'm hearing too. What type of CAT 5 are you using?
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TJHUB, you are just suffering the exact same mass hypnosis the rest of us are suffering from, welcome home!
Bud
Thanks Bud. I'm just happy to be part of the group. :thumb:
That's exactly what I'm hearing too. What type of CAT 5 are you using?
It's MPR/CMR. It's all I have lying around from about 10 years ago when I wired my new home. I'm still shocked this works at all.
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OK, so at first I figure this has to be a joke, but checking the calender it's not April for a few more months. So you all seem to be smoking the same $hit?? Naw, you actually think these wire thingies can make a difference.
Only one thing to do. Grab the closest wire which happens to be 16 ga stranded automotive type, red insulation, and build some jewelry for my speakers. Get them hooked up and put on a CD I've become very familiar with will testing equipment setup lately.
Phone rings so when I come back and sit down to listen I'm shocked. My ears must be getting worse than I thought...pretty sure I'm not drunk, it's the middle of the day...the newly built speakers are breaking in...this just can't be!!
The only thing I can do is take the new hardware off and listen again. Reinstall and listen again. Repeat. Well the power of suggestion is strong with this group or there is something to this here goofy sounding wire loop. Like someone else said the difference is not that subtle.
This is the second day with this mod and I still can't believe it. Still have to unplug them and replay a song. I mean it has to be a mind trick of some kind, right? Please tell me I'm not crazy. I know I'll be picked on if anyone notices my speaker jewelry.
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Mmaxed,
You have heard of quantum decoherence right? The thing where the quantum choice fog slowly firms up into the coarse grained reality you and I experience, because of all of the choices made by those which can choose and then even more firming up, from the consequences of those choices whirling around? Well, who's to say we aren't enforcing a specific decoherence right here amongst this group?
Just keep taking the jewelry off and putting it back on, that's all we need from you right now. We will get back to you.
:D
Bud
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Mmaxed,These are not the droids you are looking for.
Scotty
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Mmaxed,
What length did you use?
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Just keep taking the jewelry off and putting it back on, that's all we need from you right now. We will get back to you.
Yes Sir!
Mmaxed,These are not the droids you are looking for.
Scotty
But I like the droids. I want to keep them for a while.
Mmaxed,
What length did you use?
Each loop is 12 in. total. Stripped about 1 1/2" from each end and twisted the ends together. Poked the ends into a banana plug and tightened the set screw. poked the plugs into the binding posts on the speaks since the wires are clamped into the posts. Sat back to learn how little I know once again.
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Bud I have to tell ya that your posts on a item that you are involved with as a product for sale is very honorable. We need more people like you around. Like Brian and Ethan, very willing to offer free advice. Much appreciated by all.
Thanks for all the tips and instructions. I have tried several wires and they all make a difference, some good some not so good.
Thanks again.
charles
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I have tried several wires and they all make a difference, some good some not so good.
Charles,
Would you be willing to elaborate on that a little?
Thanks - John.
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Solid core copper Teflon dielectric [ Mundorf], stranded silver/gold [ Siltech], Speltz speaker wire, Supra litz speaker cable.
All wires were double looped approx 12" long, not folded over or soldered.The Supra with the most mass sounded the best. It is also hollow construction so I inserted a solid core copper into the cable and made a hook at one end. No solder. The best yet. All wires used increased clarity, soundstage and bass. However the top end was either missing or stident The siltech was the second best sounding. The Supra presented no ill affect and is staying put until I try the real deal.
charles
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....... 16 ga stranded automotive type, red insulation .....
....Each loop is 12 in. total. Stripped about 1 1/2" from each end and twisted the ends together.
Mo' bettr (then Cat 5e). Used green insulation. May have to try red :green:
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I'm just going to throw this out here again. I sat down about a half hour ago to listen with fresh ears. I've been listening to what seems like a different setup. I'm not saying it's night and day, but I get a much better connection with the music now than I have recently. This for me is a sign that something is just plain better. Today, I can still say that what I posted yesterday is still true. No "break in", no "acclimation", nothing. My setup simply sounds better. The clarity, separation, and sound stage are the best aspects of the change.
I am really looking forward to getting the real thing. I am completely sold on this idea.
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I can't believe this thread is serious. :o Why no one is objecting?
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This is sort a what if. I have unused Goertz Alpha Core inductors that I have unwound for the purpose of having copper foil available for projects. I wonder what the results would be if I used a 6" or 12" piece connected to my negative terminals. I will have to try this over the holidays.
Scotty
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I can't believe this thread is serious. :o Why no one is objecting?
Well, why aren't you objecting? Seriously, conscientious objection is welcome, everyone learns from it, so long as they don't take it personally.
Do please try the loops of wire described in this thread on your own system and report back from a skeptical point of view. Providing an argument against the Ground Control and diy off shoots, from the typical first approximation derivations from Maxwell's deterministic field theories is difficult. The fields involved here are very low level and do involve quantum level choice and information theory signal coherence at that point of choice.
Or, at least those are the view points I utilize when thinking about tuning the response of these odd ducks to back half of the wave form information coherence retention. I know, lotta big words and hand waving, but I find no other useful words or areas of thought for predicting how to go about enhancing the four areas of signal retention I am currently aware of.
Bud
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Scotty,
Keep the insulating plastic on at least one side of the foil, just to play with and use a pretty good, bare, solid or stranded wire to connect the foil to the terminal and make it as short as possible. Also have a piece of cotton terry cloth to experiment with. Another person, over on the diy thread used a copper plate and found that it altered his sonic's to good effect. He did provide a detailed write up on his investigation. The thread is located here.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1213239#post1213239
Bud
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The plastic is not attached to the foil. I can fold the foil and punch a hole which will result in a make -shift spade-lug. This allows a direct connection to the binding post with no soldering required.
There might also be an improvement possible from taking the loop of litz wire and using a gas tight crimp to connect a copper spade-lug to the loop instead of a solder connection.
Scotty
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Careful control of metal to metal joints is very important, once you start into the subtle tuning realm. I use insulated strand Litz to avoid letting the oxygen have direct access to the copper as even small amounts of cupric oxide cause sonic problems. Having one material threshold in the chain of connections is best, two is acceptable, but limits what can be retained and three , while not unworkable, does begin to loose obvious amounts of information and the retained information begins to sound grainy, in comparison with the other formats.
If I could get over the fear factor I might try a hot boron cleaning of the Litz and then a gas tight pressure weld of copper to copper and a quick dip into an acrylic coating to preserve the copper surfaces involved. The price for the parts would sky rocket though.
Bud
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Bud,
Back in '07 on DIY you stated:
" .... two 300mm lengths of #8 stranded wire, with as fine a strand of copper as you can get and a decent poly-something sheath. Or a 150mm length of true Litz wire with three 9mm pieces of polyethylene shrink wrap tube, shrunk tightly by 50% or so, distributed on the length of wire. The Litz must be made from insulated magnet wire and should have at least 10 times the surface area of an equivalent piece of solid copper wire. ......."
There is no way to get 4 ends of 8 ga wire through a single speaker or amp binding post. With the statement of minimizing metal to metal joints, is it proper to use a short length of other wire as a terminus? I'm assuming that is what the "me too" product is doing.
I happen to have a high strand count 8 ga wire from work years ago, Belden 9908 (84x27).
For the Litz, could one use 7X22X36 Type 2?
Jack
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TooManyToys
There is no way to get 4 ends of 8 ga wire through a single speaker or amp binding post. With the statement of minimizing metal to metal joints, is it proper to use a short length of other wire as a terminus? I'm assuming that is what the "me too" product is doing.
I happen to have a high strand count 8 ga wire from work years ago, Belden 9908 (84x27).
For the Litz, could one use 7X22X36 Type 2?
I no longer know what the context was for the # 8 gauge wire. I think I was probably consulting with Romy the Cat about his ground connections, as he was building his six channel dedicated SE amps. Been a while indeed. Using a wire like this as your ground connection between star grounds, for signal and true ground, is very effective in retaining much of what the Ground Controls are for.
I wouldn't use any 8 gauge stranded or solid as an external loop for speakers, though I might not have been that smart in 2007. Certainly I never used it as such, don't have anything that heavy here and Romy was aiming at the ultimate, as usual, and was not interested in Ground Control type implementations. Having that little pig tail sticking out insulted him....
You might as well try that Litz. Is it made with insulated strands or bare wire? Bare wire is more difficult to get exactly what you want out of the wire, hard to properly apply a dielectric and then get a gradient change by removing and applying more or less.
Bud
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satfrat,
Start with the zip cord, 2 feet long, split and stripped on both ends an inch or two. Form a loop tie it on and listen. If you find a change you do not have to strain to hear, then it is worth investigating.
Bud
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Rommy the Cat...isn't that the guy that used a coat hanger on a SACD player and did A/B comparisons with audiophile wire...many moons ago? :)
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Insulated strands.
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I've followed the threads on this for a short time now and I've studied everyones results. I am embarrassed to admit that I'm still stuck on square one :
Start with the zip cord, 2 feet long, split and stripped on both ends an inch or two. Form a loop tie it on and listen. If you find a change you do not have to strain to hear, then it is worth investigating.
Find a change that I do not have to strain to hear. If I can't get past this step, how can I detect subtle changes in the recipe?
I really, really want to hear a positive difference because everyone else seems to be coming up with something good. I've tried a couple of times now with wire lying around the house and I even tried a twenty gage 3mH inductor just to hear something. I just can't get past that first step - A change that I do not have to strain to hear. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work, I'm just saying that I don't hear anything.
My speakers are wired with litz from drivers to crossover to amp. In fact, litz is just about everywhere throughout my system, internally and externally. Could it be that a fully litztified system does not need this tweek?
I am keeping my mind open.
BTW, nobody mentioned the parallel (no pun intended) between this and the Richard Gray concept. The results seem to be similar, even though the RG product is for AC power.
Oh yeah, one more thing....... Happy Thanksgiving to my American brethren.
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Quiet Earth ,If you recall Bud said the results could vary depending on how your equipment was designed. What gear are you using,your system isn't listed?
Scotty
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Quiet Earth:
I have experienced the same. I have Litz coils in my xover on the high and tweets as well as internal in the speakers. Don't hear much of a change on those. However I did hear the change on the bass (bi-amp) However only on the amp side, nothing much when attached after the xovers :dunno:.
Anyone have a source for Litz wire in various makeup ? Would like to
approach from that angle.
Stu
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I think some people hear the difference, because they move or rotate speakers while installing that wire loop. Sometimes even slight speaker reposition can affect imaging.
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as I think Bud has noted elsewhere (and as I remember part of our conversation on the subject way back in 2007 :D), not all components have the deficiencies in their ground planes that these little buggers are intended to remedy
in the case of the EnABLed Fostex full range drivers on which I first heard them, the difference was not subtle, and definitely synergistic with the polka dots
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I think some people hear the difference, because they move or rotate speakers while installing that wire loop. Sometimes even slight speaker reposition can affect imaging.
The tweak is easy enough to try - then your comments will carry more weight.
Seems to me the only people needing to move their speakers to install the loop have them up against the wall - do you?
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I've followed the threads on this for a short time now and I've studied everyones results. I am embarrassed to admit that I'm still stuck on square one :
Find a change that I do not have to strain to hear. If I can't get past this step, how can I detect subtle changes in the recipe?
I really, really want to hear a positive difference because everyone else seems to be coming up with something good. I've tried a couple of times now with wire lying around the house and I even tried a twenty gage 3mH inductor just to hear something. I just can't get past that first step - A change that I do not have to strain to hear. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work, I'm just saying that I don't hear anything.
My speakers are wired with litz from drivers to crossover to amp. In fact, litz is just about everywhere throughout my system, internally and externally. Could it be that a fully litztified system does not need this tweek?
I am keeping my mind open.
BTW, nobody mentioned the parallel (no pun intended) between this and the Richard Gray concept. The results seem to be similar, even though the RG product is for AC power.
Oh yeah, one more thing....... Happy Thanksgiving to my American brethren.
When I first tried this with some zip cord I had lying around, I didn't really hear much a difference if any. Certainly nothing for me to even comment on. But after using the wire from a CAT5e cable, the change in sound was obvious. Even listening today, I am still noticing differences in my favorite tracks. It's fantastic.
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I think some people hear the difference, because they move or rotate speakers while installing that wire loop. Sometimes even slight speaker reposition can affect imaging.
For the record, I'd NEVER touch my speaker positioning. I have far too much time invested in their current locations and I'm afraid to even touch them. I installed the ground loops without moving my speakers at all.
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Having Litz wire speaker cables and coils on crossovers will go a long way in providing what the simpler forms of ground manipulation can provide. All of my cables are Litz wire and I don't have crossovers. I also have speakers that exhibit extreme coherence to 90 db down from signal level and do not exhibit tertiary ringing. It is this set of characteristics that allow even the simple forms to effect their information retention on my system. These simple forms only provide very tiny signal retention, but it is audible, as more hall ambiance and clearer descriptors for the dimensions of the space, relative to the performers.
The Ground Control devices provide more of this set of retained descriptors than does a 2 foot long piece of zip cord, though it is a case of more, not deeper. The ground Controls also provide other, additional categories of information retention that loops of wire only hint at.
Having Litz everywhere an interconnect is needed, is the only choice for my personal system and the Ground Controls work as they do on my system because I have that extra 50 to 60 db of coherent information available. At some point I hope more of you here join me in listening with this much information available. It really just requires some time spent in study and a fair amount of courage and practice of a tedious art. The speakers you already own can be advanced to the levels of performance I speak of and you can do it yourself, albeit with the above caveats for courage and stoic attention to tedious details. You will not have to alter crossover design, nor change box internal parameters since none of the speaker characteristics that drive those choices would change.
Come and join me here and bring what you learn back here to the lab.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/119676-enabl-listening-impressions-techniques.html#post1460031
You needn't be worried about technical issues nor arguments from skeptical points of view, those are in another thread and while quite interesting and informative, not aimed at the doing and learning portion of EnABL, as the above thread is.
So, don't be surprised at the seemingly random failures and successes of the ground manipulations you are hearing about and experiencing. To always experience all of the available benefits from ground manipulation, you need more and other. Not hard to do, it's free to learn and no more expensive than a set of my esteemed competitors devices, and that just for materials and tools needed.
Bud
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Well, the guests have all gone home and the leftovers are in the fridge. Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Hope everyone here had a good day as well.
Scotty,
Most of my gear is Audio Note UK. For the loop experiment, I listened with my AN transport, AN dac, and AN amplifiers, all of which are wired internally and externally with AN silver litz interconnect. Speakers are AN-E with external x-over and bi-wired with their silver litz speaker cable. The volume is adjusted with a DIY TVC, no litz inside of that however. I tried a "pigtail" on one of the RCAs of the TVC hoping to hear something there, but I did not. I wish to keep trying though because I do believe that people are being honest about their experiences.
as I think Bud has noted elsewhere (and as I remember part of our conversation on the subject way back in 2007 :D), not all components have the deficiencies in their ground planes that these little buggers are intended to remedy
chrisby,
That's exactly what I was wondering. Is my ground, or ground plane, or whatever it is that has been described, sufficient enough to elude the basic version of this tweak? I guess it's more of a rhetorical question now, as it is up to me to find out.
SCooper,
I tried the amp end too but maybe I should have tried the driver end, after the crossovers. Next round I will.
AK,
I think you made a good point about not moving your speakers. I didn't move mine because it took too much time to get them where they are now.
TJHUB,
CAT5e cable seems cheap enough to try. Thanks for the encouragement. I'll give it a go as soon as I can make some time for round two. I don't want to spend too much time messing with litz until I can hear the basic effect with something easy.
I also have speakers that exhibit extreme coherence to 90 db down from signal level and do not exhibit tertiary ringing.
I usually listen to music around 85dB average peak spl, so that would put the floor of coherency at negative 5dB spl. I'm not sure what kind of an impact that would have on most of the recordings that I listen to.
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Is my ground, or ground plane, or whatever it is that has been described, sufficient enough to elude the basic version of this tweak? I guess it's more of a rhetorical question now, as it is up to me to find out.
That's quite possible. You could always try one of the commercial products and that should settle it once and for all. AFAIK they do come with a money back satisfaction guarantee.
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Quiet Earth,If you are using a 16/44 digital source by the time you get to -60 below zero dB you have about 3%THD. There isn't much to hear at -85dB in a 16/44 signal.
Scotty
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Hey Bud,
Any chance that you'd start up a 'how to' thread here related to the Enabl process? I'd love to give it a try, but don't know where to start... and the DIY Audio forum threads are SO long I've given up trying to wade through them to find the details.
I've got a lovely set of paper coned drivers (from Danny at GR Research) in a WWMTMWW configuration (using a ribbon tweeter) that I've owned for years and love (RAW Acoustics RA8s). If there is anything I could do to enhance their sound, I'd give it a go.
Sorry if this is off track and doesn't belong here.
And by the way... I've tried two different versions of the earrings (one with short pieces of Analysis Plus hollow oval speaker wire, and another with 20 strands of solid core 32 awg magnet wire) and both had positive effects, the magnet wire dramatically more so... so thanks for the DIY tips!
Neil
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-60 below zero dB you have about 3%THD. There isn't much to hear at -85dB in a 16/44 signal
Exactly correct, but perhaps not to the point, at least in so far as EnABL is concerned. Speakers have more than 3 % distortion, if they are the typical dynamic devices. Electro-stats have quite a bit less and even horns have significant amounts of distortion. Distortion is bad. Incoherence in an information rich signal is worse. This incoherence is what EnABL goes after, what Ground Control goes after and what O-Netics audio transformers go after.
If you have coherence down to that 85db down point, the amount of distortion, unless it is in the 20% and above range is ignored by our brains processing systems. Coherence even in these tiny sounds is important to our semi autonomous threat assessment correlator. Just consider the Kalahari desert children who hunt scorpions at night, by sound.
Bud
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I would use the #36 AWG wire, especially if the label refers to it as #36 SN, or single coated insulation. You will need 88 strands and six inches to come close to what I use. There will be a slight increase in RAC but not enough to have to make big changes to accommodate.
Stick two smooth nails, 3 inches apart, into a block of wood and cut the heads off. Tape the end of the coil wire next to one nail, to one side and a little beyond the actual nail and wrap the thing around both nails 88 times. Then place a 1/8 inch wide strip of crepe paper masking tape over all of the wires on one side of the post where you taped your start wire down, just to the inside of the nail. Then gather up the start wire and tape it and all of the other side wires together on the other side of the nail, just to the inside of the nail, away from the actual loop curves. These should be a fairly tight bundles and both at the same end where the start wire and end wire ended up.
Here is the solder pot:
$30 from MCM
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39166)
Kinda skanky, the dross on top:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39167)
Yes, there is solder in there:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39168)
Set-up at 3 inches using drywall screws:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39169)
88 wraps of number 36 magnet wire:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39170)
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39171)
Remove the loop of wire and cut it between the two, relatively close together tape wraps. You should now have a 6 inch plus length of cable . You cannot emulate a Litz type 1 twist, but that should not present a problem. Tin the open ends of this cable. Use a liquid flux if you have one and cut it with 99.99% pure isopropyl alcohol from your local drug store until it resembles weak tea in color. This mixture will ablate the wire insulation and tin the wires very quickly. Dip it past the tape and when the brown goop stops rising, remove the wire and wipe it in a double folded cotton shop towel from just above the solder to the cable end. This will squeeze the excess solder and burnt insulation out, leaving an ugly spot on the rag.
Do this to both ends of the cable.
Here is my concoction of acid flux and methanol - all I had handy:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39172)
Taped and cut and ready for dipping:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39173)
There's the ugliness after burning off the coating and partially soldering the ends. I re-dipped these again after some paste flux:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39174)
Twist the length of cable at least two full turns down it's length and try to keep it from untwisting (not easy). Now take an appropriate size of shrink tube and cut a 0.9 inch piece off, fold the cable in the middle and slip the tube over the two parts. Then solder the two dipped ends together and attach them to a short piece of tinned copper wire, either solid or stranded and go hook it up to your speaker ground lug. Make two of these of course.
Here is the before and after twist:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39176)
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39177)
And a clear piece of shrink tubing prior to shrinking:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39178)
Bud
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Pete,
I think you're going to be reworking that shrink tubing. As far as I understand it, it should be as this image from DIYAudio:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/parts/102180-groundside-electrons-22.html#post1753094 (http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/parts/102180-groundside-electrons-22.html#post1753094)
(http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/attachments/parts/127279d1250566664t-groundside-electrons-groundsideelectrons.jpg)
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You can use the simple shrink tube. The multiple pieces do allow more finesse.
Wire looks fine. The ugly will go away when you get some liquid flux and 99.99% pure alcohol. You might try getting a sample amount from Kester.
Bud
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It looked from DIYAudio like it was trying to be kept in a loop, or at least the two lengths separated.
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The instructions say to wrap it around both parts. Essentially you have a loop. And then they look like the retail part.
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=38356)
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If you read a little further into that thread:
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39184)
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Here is my DIY version for one channel. It consists of 12 twisted pairs of Belden Datatwist 1577A
formed into a 6in. loop and the stripped ends,all 48 of them stuffed into a spade-lug with a gas tight crimp. I have to make another one for the left channel and then do some serious listening.
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39186)
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39187)
Preliminary impressions are that the right channel may render decay and the size of the acoustic space the sounds originate in a little better,no night and day stuff yet and zero brightness problems.
Scotty
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Pete, I still consider that second one a loop. I did see that and that's why I wrote "or at least the two lengths separated.".
The image later in the thread shows the shrink wrap skipped, but still insulating the conductors. My main concern of your first pic with the shrink wrap was you were going to have both conductors shrunk together touching.
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Pete, I still consider that second one a loop. I did see that and that's why I wrote "or at least the two lengths separated.".
The image later in the thread shows the shrink wrap skipped, but still insulating the conductors. My main concern of your first pic with the shrink wrap was you were going to have both conductors shrunk together touching.
So the question is whether an antenna loop is required or just a loop since the wires have dielectric.
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So the question is whether an antenna loop is required or just a loop since the wires have dielectric.
The picture of an uncovered retail unit in the Six Moons review (toward the bottom of the page) seems to present a simple loop: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/groundcontrol/groundcontrol.html
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The picture of an uncovered retail unit in the Six Moons review (toward the bottom of the page) seems to present a simple loop: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/groundcontrol/groundcontrol.html
Right, a collapsed loop.
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For insulated wire you can collapse the loop. You can use one piece of extra insulation or three. The only other thing to be aware of here is that without a true Litz lay up you do have an antenna. The twist helps a bit but you may still get some RFI from the diy loops. However, to date no one has advised me of any problems with RFI reception.
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Solder Pots need a bit of maintenance and care. The following may come in the Parts Express instructions or it may not.
1. Mount the pot on a ~.060 thick sheet of aluminum just to make it harder to tip over
2. Have some form of fume extraction, There is no reason to breathe lead fumes if you can avoid it. Not high concentration, but not beneficial.
3. Wear Levi's, nothing else will protect you from serious burns if you do upset your pot. Makes sense to have a heavy cotton apron with bib on for another layer of protection.
4. Sit on a narrow foot print round seat stool, with back, so that in case you do spill into your lap you can stand quickly and send the stool flying backwards out of your way. Make sure you have some clear space behind you to allow for this.
5. Have a separate 4 inch square of aluminum next to the pot and periodically use a steel spoon to skim the dross off of the pot. Tap the hot dross onto the aluminum square to cool. Throw this away in an approved fashion.
6. Forget about ROHS compliance. "Silver Solder" (less than 4% silver by the way) eats the iron pot constantly, always has iron dross on the solder surface and NEVER looks like you have made a clean solder joint. Plus, the pot has to be about 130 deg F hotter just to make the stuff properly eutectic.
7. Never ever buy any kind of "bargain" solder. Purchase bar solder and know where it came from.
8. Purchase a temperature sensor attachment for your multimeter, just so you can monitor the pot temperature setting.
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For my quick and dirty test I used 2 - 6" lengths of JSC Wire & Cable #6669 (http://www.jscwire.com/jsc_ss.taf?p=6669), 12 conductor, 22 (7/30) AWG wire.
(http://www.wghwoodworking.com/audio/ground_enhancer1.jpg)
Bud's proof of concept test is 2 ft. of #16 AWG lamp cord, in a previous post (http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=87809.msg867372#msg867372) Bud suggests using 88 turns of #36 AWG magnet wire which is close to the area of 16 guage. I split the difference and used 8 out of the 12 conductors which calculated out to 1 ft. of 16 AWG wire based on the American wire gauge chart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge)(below). The bundled wires were soldered to a straight length of 18 AWG copper.
(http://www.wghwoodworking.com/audio/ground_enhancer2.jpg)
I will listen for a few weeks then remove the ground enhancers. Right now I may be hearing more low level info and depth but time will tell if my brain is playing tricks on me again.
(http://www.wghwoodworking.com/audio/wire_table.jpg)
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WGH,
When next you make a loop, use a bit less dielectric material and probably something unshielded too. That's a lot of plastic you have there and it does turn out to be a combination of surface area and dielectric constant / dielectric absorption. You want some really low value plastics in these things.
Bud
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Hi, Bud, The Cat5e DIY enhancers appear to work in my system but I can't explain the weird break-in process. I do like what they do though. I guess I may bite on true litz version after the first of the year.
Scotty
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Bud - Do the number of twists in the bundle make a difference? I've made number of these loops to experiment with, but I think I may be twisting them too tightly - usually quite a few twists to make the bundle as tight as possible. Perhaps I should try a looser bundle?
Jim D
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For my version #2 I removed all the extra stuff. The wire is still 8 strands of 22 (7/30) AWG JSC Wire #6669.
Back to listening.
(http://www.wghwoodworking.com/audio/ground_enhancer3.jpg)
(http://www.wghwoodworking.com/audio/ground_enhancer4.jpg)
(http://www.wghwoodworking.com/audio/ground_enhancer5.jpg)
Wayne
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Hi, Bud, The Cat5e DIY enhancers appear to work in my system but I can't explain the weird break-in process. I do like what they do though. I guess I may bite on true litz version after the first of the year.
Scotty
You might be able to get a used pair... some folks in the last few posts of the mind blowing thread don't seem too impressed.
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You might be able to get a used pair... some folks in the last few posts of the mind blowing thread don't seem too impressed.
If I were them, I'd be returning them for refund instead of selling them to someone looking for a deal, which afterall they already are. 8)
Cheers,
Robin
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As some of may recall I never reported any exaggeration of the highs when I first placed my DIY enhancers on my speakers. Extended listening has shown that I may have too much of a "good" thing.
What has actually happened is that the presence of this iteration of DIY enhancer actually dumbs the system down. I lost dynamic attack and much of the original space and three dimensionality the system had, low level resolution and extension at both frequency extremes was also MIA.
I have run into this before when I have played around with improving the amount of free electron storage at other points in the signal chain. I will have to use a less is more approach and start with 4 twisted pairs of CAT5e instead 12 in the next version.
Scotty
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Excellent Scotty! I have been waiting for someone to do way too much and you have the exact experience. I would start from the other end, and make a series of parts that step up one thing at a time. First would be an experiment with length. Listen carefully to the sound stage air, the aura around voices as the echo takes off.
Bud - Do the number of twists in the bundle make a difference? I've made number of these loops to experiment with, but I think I may be twisting them too tightly - usually quite a few twists to make the bundle as tight as possible. Perhaps I should try a looser bundle?
Probably not. What are you using? The typical problem is too little length and too little dielectric material and it is too slow. This gives a part that never settles down. IT goes through 10 minutes of changes every time you turn the system off, or turn it up. So, tell me what you are experiencing and I can probably help out.
Bud
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Bud, possibly because Scotty is using 24g wire rather than your recommended much thinner (30g?) Litz wire, his results are spurious? So it doesn't matter how many of the 24g Cat5 pairs he uses?
Regards,
Andy
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The GC's that are made for sale utilize #40 AWG. This just drops the RAC # down to that of the RDC. Makes it easier to get what you want out of all of the materials. However, there is a good balance possible with any wire gauge and dielectric material. For some it is just very hard to find and big steps away from what doesn't work can be helpful.
Bud
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The GC's that are made for sale utilize #40 AWG. This just drops the RAC # down to that of the RDC. Makes it easier to get what you want out of all of the materials. However, there is a good balance possible with any wire gauge and dielectric material. For some it is just very hard to find and big steps away from what doesn't work can be helpful.
Bud
Whew, Bud ... speak Engerlish why don'tcha! :D I have no idea what you mean. :o
Regards,
Andy
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Here's my experience. I was going to give the easiest method I could manage a try...just a try to see what you all were talking about.
I am using four 20" lengths of twisted pair 24g FEP insulated wire from some CAT5e plenum. These were simply cut to length, stripped and the stripped ends twisted together to form a loop.
My speakers are set for bi wiring and so have 4 binding posts per. The speakers are bi wired.
I attached two of these loops per speaker - one for the high negative binding post and one for the low negative binding post.
Dead simple. Building these and applying them took about 10 minutes.
I used 2 pairs of solderless bananas like these
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2123188 (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2123188)
to make applying the loops as simple as possible.
I found an immediate change in my systems sound - more detail, a blacker background, deeper SS and more detail out at the edges of the SS. SS width has not increased but the margins are much more "active" sounding.
The number one, most obvious change is the clarity of lead and background vocals. I am able to make out far more lyrics now than before. Background vocals are now VERY well defined - what was once a massed female vocal can now be heard as three singers or what have you.
Cymbals and the various percussion in the upper freqs have much more shimmer and dynamics. Bass is cooler and tighter than before but the deepest electronica synth bass is all there - only now with a slight bit less boom.
In the first few hours I felt that the clarity was a result of a lack of bass and midbass. This might have been the case but now everything seems to be very balanced.
I am not getting any nasty brightness but I will say that during very complicated, dense music things can get "busy". It is not congested as much as it is - "busy" - this is the best way I can think of to describe it.
As for break in, I do think these have broken in.
At first I was hearing a cycle of brightness/collapsed SS -> better sound/wider SS -> brightness/collapsed SS. The cycle had a period of about 5 minutes or so. I remember thinking the wires were "filling up" and then emptying as it seemed each track ended on a bright note and the following song started on a good note. Strange, but after a week or so this has completely gone away and the only issues I have now is with the complex/dense music being too busy or strident.
Overall, I am floored by this tweak. It's been about a week and I haven't given a thought of taking them out since day 3. Again, in my system and to my ears these 2 cent pieces of wire have resulted in a huge step up in sound quality.
If anything changes, I'll report back but for now I am very pleased.
Thanks to everyone and Bud in particular.
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Her's my experience.
I am using 20" lengths of twisted pair 24g FEP insulated wire from some CAT5e plenum. These are simply cut to length, stripped and the stripped ends twisted together. My speakers are set for bi wiring and so have 4 binding posts per. The speakers are bi wired.
I attached two of these loops per speaker - one for the high negative binding post and one for the low negative binding post.
Dead simple. Building these and applying them took me about 10 minutes. I used 2 pairs of solderless bananas like these
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2123188 (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2123188)
to make applying the loops as simple as possible.
Always nice to see installed pics. :thumb:
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Here's my experience.
I was just about to ask you what your experiences actually were AB, but you beat me to it and modified your post with that most crucial information. Good show AB. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
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I was just about to ask you what your experiences actually were AB, but you beat me to it and modified your post with that most crucial information. Good show AB. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
I hit the post button by accident. I had to edit it to write it.
As soon as I get my camera's batteries charged up, I'll post a pic.
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Whew, Bud ... speak Engerlish why don'tcha! :D I have no idea what you mean. :o
What, I have to invent something as ridiculous as this is and also speak engrish toda troops? Fah!
Ok, so RAC is the AC equivalent of DC resistance, which is RDC. Dielectric materials have two very important characteristics with respect to tone and transient information in a coherent AC signal. When an electrical, field under the control of information, changes it's vector, the signal that is this field stops at some convenient electron in the wave guide (copper wire etc.). The electron in question is phase changed in spin and angle of polarity to suit the signal and this change is reflected in a local electron, around an atom on the end of a dielectric molecule.
This dielectric material has the ability to pack more electrons per square centimeter of wave guide than does vacuum. Thnsi is called dielectric constant. There is a time to charge and a time to release to this packing process.
There is also dielectric absorption which has a charge threshold for adopting a reflected phase and polarity angle and to a degree a reluctance to release this reflected position. These are relatively low level events, when we consider typical signal levels in our speakers and cables, but when these two characteristics are not particularly low information can be lost. This charge that couldn't find a vector change home is a coherent part of an electrical field and the coherency has an information relationship. The lost charge becomes noise, with reference to the coherent signal.
Enough of these losers and you have a change in tonal gradient portrayal of notes and transient gradient rise and settling time characteristics. When this happens on the positive going portion of a wave form, we recognize it. When it happens on a negative going portion of a wave form we recognize it.
Just think of what live, natural sound would sound like if it perfectly mimicked your speaker system. The positive going wave forms are near to perfect, but the other half are not so much. If you added that missing information back into reality what would the audible consequences be.
Now go read what folks who are doing this with Ground Control and their speakers and audio equipment say they find as the benefit. And then note that at these tiny signal levels the relationships between charged plate (copper wire) and local and distant dielectric materials is subtle and easily compromised. Very easy to have too much plate surface ratio to distant dielectrics and not enough to local ones, like bare copper wire and plastic insulation in Zip cord. This makes it much more difficult to find the ideal relationship that provides enough retention of signal coherence on the negative going wave form for you and I to recognize that something has changed and also, that we like the change.
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What, I have to invent something as ridiculous as this is and also speak engrish toda troops? Fah!
Ok, so RAC is the AC equivalent of DC resistance, which is RDC. Dielectric materials have two very important characteristics with respect to tone and transient information in a coherent AC signal. When an electrical, field under the control of information, changes it's vector, the signal that is this field stops at some convenient electron in the wave guide (copper wire etc.). The electron in question is phase changed in spin and angle of polarity to suit the signal and this change is reflected in a local electron, around an atom on the end of a dielectric molecule.
This dielectric material has the ability to pack more electrons per square centimeter of wave guide than does vacuum. Thnsi is called dielectric constant. There is a time to charge and a time to release to this packing process.
There is also dielectric absorption which has a charge threshold for adopting a reflected phase and polarity angle and to a degree a reluctance to release this reflected position. These are relatively low level events, when we consider typical signal levels in our speakers and cables, but when these two characteristics are not particularly low information can be lost. This charge that couldn't find a vector change home is a coherent part of an electrical field and the coherency has an information relationship. The lost charge becomes noise, with reference to the coherent signal.
Enough of these losers and you have a change in tonal gradient portrayal of notes and transient gradient rise and settling time characteristics. When this happens on the positive going portion of a wave form, we recognize it. When it happens on a negative going portion of a wave form we recognize it.
Just think of what live, natural sound would sound like if it perfectly mimicked your speaker system. The positive going wave forms are near to perfect, but the other half are not so much. If you added that missing information back into reality what would the audible consequences be.
Now go read what folks who are doing this with Ground Control and their speakers and audio equipment say they find as the benefit. And then note that at these tiny signal levels the relationships between charged plate (copper wire) and local and distant dielectric materials is subtle and easily compromised. Very easy to have too much plate surface ratio to distant dielectrics and not enough to local ones, like bare copper wire and plastic insulation in Zip cord. This makes it much more difficult to find the ideal relationship that provides enough retention of signal coherence on the negative going wave form for you and I to recognize that something has changed and also, that we like the change.
Much obliged, Bud. :D
Regards,
Andy
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Thanks Bud. I think much of that still went over my head, but it is good to know that there is some "science" behind it all.
On the DIY Audio thread I believe you mentioned that you have experimented so much with this that you can "tune" it based on a users feedback. I know the products being sold are an attempt to find a happy middle ground that will work well for most systems.
In light of some people trying these and finding too much brightness or grain in their systems ... how would you suggest tuning these to compensate for that? Is there something an end user can easily do without ruining the product itself, like putting a small piece of shrink tubing over it somewhere?
Thanks,
Bob
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Here's a pic...
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39365)
Pretty straight forward. There's two separate wires there - one right above the other plugged into the neg posts.
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Bob and Andy and world,
Please note that what you read is a postulate, nothing more. This is just what seems workable to me and does allow me to propose solutions to particular driver problems that fall into the categories these things can remedy.
The problem usually found is that a wide range driver, say a Lowther PM6A, will have superb retention of small signal information up to 8 kHz. To "tune" for this driver I would vary the amount of the three types of capacitance that I allow for in the Ground Control devices to enhance the retention above 4 kHz. This will offset the difficulties the driver has in this 8kHz and above region, without causing problems below that region.
Unfortunately you cannot do this with the simple wire loops that are being used here. Nor can my esteemed competitor provide this form of control with his somewhat more complex system.
Most multi-way systems use their drivers only in the minimum phase bandwidth and so a generalist tuning is quite successful and the diy applications do show considerable benefit.
The GC units are "tuned" to allow almost any system to benefit. We know of three types of systems that do not benefit.
1. fully differential
2. fully supported with poured ground planes
3. those owned by individuals determined to blacken our reputation.
There are other systems that are not improved enough to warrant what we charge. For those folks we have an unconditional money back guarantee, for 30 days. This is enough time to find out in. We do not find GC's returned because of this in any way offensive. We are just happy they had the courage to try them out. There have been very few returned though, so do beware, you may not want to do so, because you may be among the vast majority who find the improvement does justify what we ask.
I provide this diy discussion so that those who would not otherwise be willing can also benefit. So far seems pretty successful.
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Bob and Andy and world,
Please note that what you read is a postulate, nothing more. This is just what seems workable to me and does allow me to propose solutions to particular driver problems that fall into the categories these things can remedy.
The problem usually found is that a wide range driver, say a Lowther PM6A, will have superb retention of small signal information up to 8 kHz. To "tune" for this driver I would vary the amount of the three types of capacitance that I allow for in the Ground Control devices to enhance the retention above 4 kHz. This will offset the difficulties the driver has in this 8kHz and above region, without causing problems below that region.
Thanks, Bob.
This post implies to me that in a 3-way active system, 3 different loops are probably necessary for bass. mid & tweeter drivers?
(Remember the active XO only feeds a restrictive range of frequencies to each driver - so, say:
* my Maggie bass panels deliver nothing that is hearable above 2KHz,
* the mid panels deliver nothing above 8KHz, and
* the ribbons deliver nothing below1KHz.)
Is this a correct assumption? If so, can you advise what changes should be made - eg. longer loops? More wire strands in the loop?
Regards,
Andy
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Andy,
I would try longer for lower, shorter for higher. I have no experience with Cat 5 cable and do not know what dielectric material is used, so this is where I would start in an attempt to characterize the materials.
Bud
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Bud,a lot of Cat5 is teflon insulated, the two types I am playing with are teflon dielectric.
Scotty
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Andy,
I would try longer for lower, shorter for higher. I have no experience with Cat 5 cable and do not know what dielectric material is used, so this is where I would start in an attempt to characterize the materials.
Bud
Thanks, Bud, appreciated.
Regards,
Andy
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Bud,a lot of Cat5 is teflon insulated the two types I am playing with are teflon dielectric.
Scotty
Hi Scotty,
What are the "2 types" of teflon-insulated Cat5? IE. what's the difference between them?
Regards,
Andy
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There are probably more than three types. If you check the Belden catalogue you can find the types listed. There should be Cat5,cat5e and Cat 6. I tried 1577 initially and I am now trying 1701A which is a bonded twisted pair cable. I have scaled back to two twisted pairs 12in. long on the negative terminal of my speakers. I am going to have to wait for the dielectric to break in to see whether the system is dumbed down again or not. I should know if I have to scale back to one twisted pair or a shorter length or both tomorrow,apparently I don't have a big problem to fix. If I have made a difference for the better it is very subtle in nature.
Scotty
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Bud, you did say in his DIY Audio thread that you can "tune" the loop based on user feedback to the basic design. That has to include one of several variables, from what I understand:
- length of wire
- guage of wire and or # of strands
- amount of dielectric used
If so, then perhaps you can tell us what might work best if we find the basic design to be too revealing of the high end, and or hard sounding. Your answer above went way over my head. A more direct answer, like "add a 1/4" piece of dielectric to the bottom part of the product" would certainly serve my non-scientifically educated mind better.
So, any ideas on what one might do if the product doesn't settle down with break in, as some have reported in their systems?
Thanks
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To roll back some of the high end, make sure there is no silver in the loops you have. If there is none, try soldering a piece of bare tinned copper, about 18 gauge and 2 inches long onto the end of the loop and insert that into the speaker lug. Add some more dielectric material over the solder joint, preferably shrink tube.
What type of wire are you using please?
Not settling down is an indicator of not enough dielectric vs area of wire exposed to the dielectric. You aren't providing enough stiction to hold the electron seethe in place. Beyond those words I do need to know what you have and how it is made.
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Hi
I've been following this thread for some time with great interest but no success what so ever.
I've experimented with 2 different systems one with Planet Ten Half Changs using the Fe207 drivers fully tricked out by Dave including EnAble and a Class D Audio SDS-4 kit amp. The other has Sonic Frontiers Monoblocks and Sonus Faber Cremonas :
I have tried the following DIY ground loops:
2' lamp cord exactly as was initially recommended
2' Radio Shack 16 G stranded
the above RS wire cut down in 2" increments to 1' loops
2' of 12G wire with heavy dielectric
20 " of 20g solid core hook up wire using both 1 and 2 strands
In all cases the soundstage collapses to varying degrees and the highs become rolled off with a slightly muddy sound overall. These effects were more pronounced with the single driver speaker set up. Either I'm not hitting on a good combination or this is one tweak that just does not work for me.
I've left a couple sets in for a good 8 hours to see if it was a burn in phenomenon without any change in the presentation.
Ideas and comments are welcome
Thanks
Kevin
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Hi
I've been following this thread for some time with great interest but no success what so ever.
I've experimented with 2 different systems one with Planet Ten Half Changs using the Fe207 drivers fully tricked out by Dave including EnAble and a Class D Audio SDS-4 kit amp. The other has Sonic Frontiers Monoblocks and Sonus Faber Cremonas :
I have tried the following DIY ground loops:
2' lamp cord exactly as was initially recommended
2' Radio Shack 16 G stranded
the above RS wire cut down in 2" increments to 1' loops
2' of 12G wire with heavy dielectric
20 " of 20g solid core hook up wire using both 1 and 2 strands
In all cases the soundstage collapses to varying degrees and the highs become rolled off with a slightly muddy sound overall. These effects were more pronounced with the single driver speaker set up. Either I'm not hitting on a good combination or this is one tweak that just does not work for me.
I've left a couple sets in for a good 8 hours to see if it was a burn in phenomenon without any change in the presentation.
Ideas and comments are welcome
Thanks
Kevin
Welcome to audio! Now go back and repeat until you hear the difference. :lol:
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Flounder,
Best bet at this point might be to buy a pair of Standard, lugged Ground Controls, with the 30 day money back warranty, and see what they bring to your system.
On another note, what are you speaker cables?
The rolled off highs tells me that your systems don't like more dielectric in the ground lug position, are your cables a common element here?
Regardless, the next step is to come at the lack from the other end. Take some bare, tinned, stranded wire and remove most of the dielectric. Or better, buy some without dielectric and use shrink tube, cut into lengths that are about 10% of the overall wire length, for each piece of shrink tube. Then begin to apply them one by one.
This means you cannot solder the wire ends together, so it will be a bit fiddly to get the ends into and out of the binding posts. Do solder the ends of the wire just to keep blue language from erupting.
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Hi Bud
Two different sets of speaker cables in use -Purist Audio and Ridge Street Audio.
OK I'll give the bare wire a try before I abandon ship.
Thanks
Kevin
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Hello,
I have read pretty much all there has been to read about these GE/GC's since the first Ric Shultz announcement, including the whole www.diyaudio thread. I then proceeded to make a pair for myself, as I had plenty of suitable wire, and it seemed like an interesting little project.
First I calculated an amount of wire roughly the same as Bud's 140 strands of wire. I had 25.5 awg OCC magnet wire, and I went with 24 strands of it, which is a bit less wire than Bud's, and I braided it all together, like I do on my speaker cables. I used a 7 inch length for each strand, and used some beeswax for dampening, like on the speaker cables. The speaker cables are 9 strand + and 9 strand - all braided together, so the new little add-ons were a little larger. I used a single strand of 20 awg OCC uncoated wire to connect the looped braid to the negative terminal on the back of the speaker. Oh yes, I used 3 pieces of heat shrink, as Bud advised, and covered it all with a piece of tech flex. I did everything per the diyaudio thread.
I left the GC/GE's on the speakers for 2 weeks. I didn't hear anything different upon initial installation. After the two weeks I decided to take them off and listen for a change. I did this in the middle of a piece of music and just put the player on pause, took the things off, and resumed the music. Nothing changed.
The ground return on my speaker cables connects directly to a large ground plane surface on the amp's power supply, and then by large cable to the amp module. The output stage in my player has a very large ground plane in the board. Both of these boards are custom designed and made by myself.
I make to conclusions or anything else, other than I did not hear a difference.
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stvnhar,What equipment does your stereo system have in it. Also what loudspeakers are you using in your system. It would be very helpful to know what combinations produce null results.
Scotty
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stvnhar,What equipment does your stereo system have in it. Also what loudspeakers are you using in your system. It would be very helpful to know what combinations produce null results.
Scotty
The system I did this in is all DIY, or self modified, one of a kind equipment, including cables.
I mentioned the ground planes in my boards, a lot of equipment these days does not have a big ground plane in the boards, just connecting tracks. And these wire loops are somewhat known as adding ground storage. Maybe I have enough.
BTW, I thought my systems were listed.
But I now notice they are not. Guess I could get around to doing that.
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Are the speakers also DIY,if so pictures of them would be cool!
So far I have had negative results when any extra electron storage of a DIY nature has been applied to the negative terminal of the speaker ground. My speakers have quasi-second order series networks and my equipment is custom in nature with attention paid to how the the ground plane was implemented.
With the 30 day satisfaction guarantee I will probably still give the commercial version a try when the demand dies down after the first of the year.
Scotty
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stvnharr,
You are in the sweet spot! The only place you might get some benefit from is upstream commercial CD player or out board DAC. You are exactly correct in thinking that you have solved the same problem that Ground Control solves, sonically. Cheers to you, you are one of the few who have gotten it right.
Having said that you might just want to try out a Standard GC RCA upstream if there are strip grounds there.
Bud
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stvnharr,
You are in the sweet spot! The only place you might get some benefit from is upstream commercial CD player or out board DAC. You are exactly correct in thinking that you have solved the same problem that Ground Control solves, sonically. Cheers to you, you are one of the few who have gotten it right.
Having said that you might just want to try out a Standard GC RCA upstream if there are strip grounds there.
Bud
Thanks Bud.
I don't use a preamp. I just go direct from player into amp, which has signal attenuators on each channel input before the amp module.
DIY has it's benefits!
Steve
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Are the speakers also DIY,if so pictures of them would be cool!
Scotty
I thought I had a pic of the speakers in my gallery, but I just looked and I don't. And I looked everywhere else, and I don't have a pic of them anywhere.
However, here is a description:
Speakers are 2 1/2 way design with Seas Excel W18E's and Hiq OW1 in a sealed box, that Rick Craig designed for me in 2003. I made the boxes and assembled everything.
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So I played with them a little bit this weekend. To begin, they are on the + speaker terminals in a bi-wired installation, because my preamp inverts. This sounds very good with no forwardness or top end emphasis since I installed banana plugs and hooked them at the very tip of the copper wire and tied the bottom end to my speaker cable with some cotton string.
I did move them to the - speaker terminal, but heard that forwardness immediately.
I took them all off and heard the soundstage compress.
I put them back on the + terminals and heard the forwardness. This disappated over the course of an hour back to the pleasant sound I started with.
So this leads me to believe that any quick A-B test is pointless and the GE's need some time to "acclimate" after being moved. I will have to repeat this test on the - terminals and maybe on the amp when I can give them time to do so.
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I am still confused about what wires you are using. Are you using Ground Enhancers? Are you using Ground Control or are you making up your own version? If you are using GE's you probably need to discuss your findings over there as that group will have experience with that product.
A too forward response is often the result of more dielectric than is needed, but not enough more to completely collapse the effects. Just as with the "never settling" problem, the dielectric amount and type vs the available wire area is the major determining factor in the spatial characteristics retention as useful information.
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Well I gotta say these little pieces of wonder wire have worked exceptionally well in the context of both tubes (300b) and SS (Dayens Ampino). Not only that, they transformed this crappy Sony piece of low-fi....
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=39940)
...into a crappy piece of mid-fi. No kidding. With the little loops of CAT 5 in place this thing reveals details it couldn't otherwise. The soundstage opened up and became less two dimensional, actually there was a fair bit of depth and 3D localization, however there wasn't any appreciable lateral extension.
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Hey BudP what do you think about star grounding inside of an amplifier, is that similar to the ground plane you speak of? I am not sure what you mean by ground plane.
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A ground system in an electronic component is actually a moderately complex system. Star strip grounding is a minimum expectation. This helps to keep noise from power ground from arriving in signal ground. A more advanced ground is called instrumentation ground. In this power star ground and signal star ground are kept separate until a path to true ground is available. The most sophisticated form of this is a poured ground plane, a solid sheet of highly conductive material that extends under all of the components and circuitry of a power or signal circuit, while keeping power and signal circuits physically separated.
One of the reasons for using a poured ground plane is the electrostatic retention of electrons on the outer orbits of the atoms of the conductive material that constitutes the ground plane. This attempts to keep the local ground as packed with electrons as is the signal side, which is continuously under a charge state against the load. A fully charged ground plane will allow a low RAC / RDC space for the negative or back half of the wave form to circulate in, before being pulled back through the load.
In ultra high signal to noise circuitry, this is the preferred method for maintaining signal integrity. You need only look at the test equipment produced by Tektronics, Fluke, and others, during the peak of their dominance in this market, to see evidence of this.
Strip star grounds do not provide this signal integrity. They are required in modern two prong plug electronics to keep the interaction with chassis circulating currents from entering the circuitry. They are quite successful in this endeavor. They are very cost effective. They are also not useful for electrostatic support of the back half of the waveforms.
This is where Ground Control and shortly Ground Plain come into the picture. A low RAC / RDC, relatively large volume and surface "zone", that allows signal to circulate with immunity from circulating currents in the chassis, before being drawn back through the load.
So, probably best to think of Ground Control as an external, add on equivalent to a portion of what a poured ground plane provides. Without the draw backs of a poured ground plane when it is used for two prong power systems, that do not have a true safety ground reference.
This does bring up the issue of home wiring, in which the neutral is grounded to local ground and also to service ground. In instrumentation ground systems the true ground, or third prong, is intended to go directly to ground, without being connected to the neutral line. This is not a safe method for most households and that is another reason why true poured ground planes are not usually found in consumer electronics.
The audible difference between a true ground plane and strip star ground systems is a rather large one. The true ground plane system has a far more natural and complete character. Equivalent to fully saturated colors in visual systems.
Ground Control may not be the complete answer to these issues, only time will tell, but until something better comes along it is an extremely effective answer and one that we can access and utilize safely.
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I do have the luxury of wiring my amplifier however I want. However I think I would need to see a schematic of the ideal to understand it.
I am following the best I can, but you think like me. There is a lot going on and terminology can get interesting with so many factors and similar things.
It sounds like I would want a large good conductor to which all signal circuitry was connected. I could do that, a bus bar connected to a second rectifier bridge? and secondary transformer? I am seeing some loop problems as it would have to connect via through the AC. It sounds like a separate power supply for just the grounds that the signal is connected to is needed.
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If you consider a PCB. The typical low cost boards have circuit paths on the same side as the components, with no through hole plating and no "ground plane" to speak of. Strip grounds are usually run around the outer periphery and signal flows down the middle portion of the board. Power is brought to the board from some other location and AC power is not allowed.
Another iteration has the circuit on the opposite side of that which holds the components. Some ground strips run on both sides and through holes are plated. This does provide a small measure of capacitive coupling , through a pretty lousy dielectric, from signal side to ground / return side.
The true instrumentation ground is as continuous a plated sheet as is possible, on the same side as the components, with the circuit strips on the opposite side of the PCB. This plated surface does need to follow some simple rules concerned with keeping DC power return ground separate from signal return ground plates and never leaving a "dangling" plated zone connected to the rest by just one jumper wire or a single narrow strip. This arrangement allows direct coupling between the components, which generally exhibit the greatest amount of capacitive coupling, directly adjacent to the local return ground.
Using cables to simulate this is not easy. In my own projects I typically use bare tinned copper buss wire for all positive going signal interconnection. This is usually "floating" on solder lugs and is a point to point connected Darwinian selection device, especially with tube circuits. The copper sheets used as separate ground planes for separate channels, in both power and signal, are also floated, generally from the top chassis plate, on turrets. This is arduous to plan and implement.
I use stranded buss wire, with a PVC coating, for all ground plate connections back to their respective star points and a single large diameter muti stranded buss wire to true ground / third prong. All of these ground buss wires are run as close to the chassis as possible and the chassis is attached to power ground at the third prong IEC connector, with a soldered 18 gauge, SHORT wire. Signal ground is sometimes best flowed through the chassis on it's way to that third prong, after being accumulated in a star connection, but not usually.
Even with this attention to detail, Ground Control devices provide a noticeable increase in information retention. Simple loops of wire, external to the chassis and connected to signal ground / return, do not.
Bud
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I'm amazed on how many forums you're on promoting this tweak. It's simply amazing.
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Everyone should have it, or at least try it.
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Just wait till the web site is up. The trumpeting and thundering from the driven herds of audiophiles will be astounding.
Bud
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I can try the tweak easy enough...
However if I am understanding right what I could also do is connect all the grounds on my amplifiers components to the same same star point. That is instead of using separated paths on the PCB. However I think my PCB's have this already? or there is no way to do any better than I have done?
http://www.audiosector.com/images/lm3875_se_pcb.gif
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Just wait till the web site is up. The trumpeting and thundering from the driven herds of audiophiles will be astounding.
Bud
Moooooove over, I'll be there amongst the herd Bud,,, gitalong doggiephile. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
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Just wait till the web site is up. The trumpeting and thundering from the driven herds of audiophiles will be astounding.
Bud
When will it be up? URL?
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Looks like your PCB's are using the ground buss properly for power, for an instrumentation ground. Assuming that the orange layer is on top of the board and we are looking at the component mounting side. However, I do not see any hint of a ground plane in what I take to be the central signal section.
Bud
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When will it be up? URL?
o-netics.com This is our audio transformer company. The actual site will have a split personality, right out front for everyone to see. One side O-Netics and the other EnABL.
The EnABL side will have links to licensee sites for diy drivers and finished in cabinet designs for EnABL'd drivers. Also will have pricing for the exotic drivers that I do, Lowthers and such and links to the argument and diy treatment sites.
The Ground Plain, Ground Control, interconnect and speaker cables will also be under this banner. A shopping cart will be included and likely either forum or blog or both.
You guys have just barely been introduced to the snake oil I have for you. Many pretty colors and exotic flavors available, in the rush to increase information retention in our hobby.
The site is planned for mid January at the moment. Still providing art work & pics for a prelim design from Crystal Commerce. I figure if they can deal with the game card industry, and tens of thousands of sku numbers, I should be a piece of cake.
Bud
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o-netics.com This is our audio transformer company. The actual site will have a split personality, right out front for everyone to see. One side O-Netics and the other EnABL.
The EnABL side will have links to licensee sites for diy drivers and finished in cabinet designs for EnABL'd drivers. Also will have pricing for the exotic drivers that I do, Lowthers and such and links to the argument and diy treatment sites.
The Ground Plain, Ground Control, interconnect and speaker cables will also be under this banner. A shopping cart will be included and likely either forum or blog or both.
You guys have just barely been introduced to the snake oil I have for you. Many pretty colors and exotic flavors available, in the rush to increase information retention in our hobby.
The site is planned for mid January at the moment. Still providing art work & pics for a prelim design from Crystal Commerce. I figure if they can deal with the game card industry, and tens of thousands of sku numbers, I should be a piece of cake.
Bud
Look forward to reading it. What are your thoughts on the EnABL test that was done and posted here on A.C.?
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=59575.msg530046#msg530046
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I think it was fair and unbiased. Danny is a very bright guy and he did very little wrong on his drivers, unlike some much more famous and wealthy driver makers. The coating he applied to the paper cones, just as with Vifa and Morell, goes a long way to stopping the sorts of in cone and off cone ringing and ghosting that is typical of less thoroughly thought out designs.
At the time I treated these my post included comments to this effect. I have recommended the drivers to quite a large number of folks, especially those interested in diy HT systems just because of the tremendous bang for the buck Danny provides.
I will say that the methods he used to objectively look at the treated driver performance have generally failed to find much indication of a change, either better or worse, in some far more susceptible drivers. Jon Ver Halen's Lowther PM6A blind test, run at the 2008 RMAF being a good case in point. The treated drivers showed worse seeming performance in objective measurements. In blind listening people like Lynn Olson, Alex from RAAL, Michael Mardis and others commented that one set of drivers was startlingly better than the other. Because of the crafty way Jon worked the test, everyone thought that the poor sound came from the EnABL'd drivers and were trying to figure out how to break it to me in a gentle fashion. Caused quite an uproar when Jon pointed out how he had tricked them.
Recently Michael Gerstgrasser, a well known audio investigator in Europe, tested another pair of pretty egregious drivers that I prepared for him. Michael uses wavelet analysis to take a look at speaker performance and the results were startling. The more normal CSD waterfall and impulse tests could find little or no difference. The wavelet analysis was just gorgeous.
Here is a link to a blink comparison of a wavelet analysis of those treated and untreated drivers I was going on about.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/119677-enabl-technical-discussion-88.html#post2349700
The rest of the data is in post # 865, 867 & 875, with skeptic analysis at 877 and advocate rebuttal at 879 and many more blink comparisons at 880, not all of which function properly, or are not labeled properly like my favorite wavelet B/D, which is really C/D, the two treated speakers.
The earliest blink comparison, be sure you look carefully at the resonant node shown in the CSD's
http://planet10-hifi.com/johnK-test/
And some resonant movies that will give you an intuitive idea of the weird energy transform coming off of a vibrating surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY6z2hLgYuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWadDtIFPNs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bAmjRK9wBA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csi-2Hrzhg
Have fun wondering what the heck is this really all about.....
Bud
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Destroyer of Smiles, you can realize a substantial improvement in the size to the sound-stage, front to back depth layering and freedom from compression if you do not mount your circuit boards any closer than 1.5 inchs away from any portion of the metal chassis. The images of my power amp show one method of minimizing the circuit boards interaction with metal of the chassis. The image of my DIY buffer shows another way of maximizing the space between the circuit board and the top and bottom of the chassis.
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=40161)
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=40163)
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=40169)
This is a good way of maximizing the performance of your amp or preamp if your circuit boards are not designed as described by Bud with an instrumentation type ground plane.
Scotty
Scotty, whilst I can agree with your concept of spacing away from the metal chassis (hence people have reported improvements when they mount their PCBs in wooden cases, rather than metal cases - except that, unfortunately, this offers no shielding against RFI!! :( ), I can't help noticing that in your 1st & 2nd pics:
* the PCBs are certainly mounted at right-angles to the back of the case but they are smack up against it - plus, there is zero clearance between the PCB and the top & bottom of the case. So any improvement you might have noticed could IMO be attributed to a vertical mounting of the PCB (compared to horizontal mounting), rather than spacing away from the metal case! :)
* plus, is it spacing the PCB away from the metal which delivers the benefit ... or should all components be spaced away from the case? In which case you have failed this condition - as you have a number of components on the floor of the case.
Regards,
Andy
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I deleted my previous posts as their content, while central to optimizing the performance of amplifier circuitry in general, is peripheral to realizing the best from the GC tweak under discussion.
Scotty
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Just in case. To make the blink comparisons actually work, you need to place your pointer right out at the edge of the browser, onto the scroll bar usually. Then just it zip it on and off, between scroll and picture area, to get the comparison to work. Not exactly intuitive, so I thought I should mention.
Bud
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Looks like your PCB's are using the ground buss properly for power, for an instrumentation ground. Assuming that the orange layer is on top of the board and we are looking at the component mounting side. However, I do not see any hint of a ground plane in what I take to be the central signal section.
Bud
How could I add that? In simple - I am not on the same level as you - terms?
I thought the red area was a ground plane on the PCB board? Notice PG- PG+ CHG and OG are connected. SG is connected to OG through the PCB tracing but is not part of the red area that is a copper plane but maybe not ground plane?
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These boards are not designed for a poured ground plane. However, the power sections come closest. For full implementation the *g portion of the board would be on the blue side, with all + power provision done with strips wide enough to handle the current, but not large area pads as they are currently laid out. This + portion would remain on the red side.
With the stipulation that components would need to be moved around a bit, a poured ground plane on the signal portions would be on the blue side, interrupted by all pads and the traces already on the blue side.
So, most of what you would see from the component side would be solid copper, broken up by pads and some circuit traces.
Bud
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Interesting... so I would have to cut a new patterned copper plate to put on top of the PCB board basically... I will probably not be doing that unfortunately. Well maybe some day when I want to hand make a "PCB" board.
I mean you could point to point wire except use a ground plane underneath the components correct? One that the leads go through to wires for power or attach soldered into the hole. (Granted you would want to find a way to enhance the contact area like through hole design)
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Actually there is a MUCH easier way. Find http://www.expresspcb.com/ download their FREE software and spend a few hours learning the basic rules of PCB design. These are simple rules. You can learn them and implement them correctly. You do not need an electrical engineering degree to produce safe and competent board designs. The boards ExpressPCB will send you from a local board house , after providing a ridiculously low price quote from the software, will astonish you with their quality. You can design on four layers, if you are doing digital boards, or two, with any level of complexity, printed symbols, trace overlay and plated through holes you need.
You can copy the board you showed a picture of and then redo it to suit a poured ground plane. Essentially placing the blue lines on the far side, placing the red lines on the near side and making then a single or perhaps double ground plane per channel. You will need a way to measure the board spacing you currently have for pads and holes, a $25 digital caliper will work perfectly.
Bud
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I may look into that. Unfortunately my computer may not be able to run their software since I use Ubuntu.
The one thing I can say is that I would not desire any more softness or remove of "fatigue" factor that is there because I am considering replace a bunch of kiwame resistors because it is too easy to tune out or fall asleep. The only reason is my power conditioner seems to remove any sort of displeasure associated with noise. I only seek to improve the sonics.
Two ground planes, like for separate things? For example for power and signal? (as much as they are seperatable) and then connect them via star pattern at another point where earth also connects (say between the two boards).
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All of this talk about ground planes for printed circuits is certainly interesting and informative.
What about a simple monoblock tube amp with point-to-point wiring and a minimal amount of components? Currently I have a single ground buss (12 ga solid copper) running front-to-back across the amp, with one end grounded to the chassis. Both power supply and signal grounds are connected to this buss (about 15 total connections).
Jim D
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jimbop,
Quickest way to answer your question is for you to make up a pair of the zip cord loops and tie them onto the ground lugs of your amp outputs. If they make a difference that includes sound stage and ease of listening, then it would be worth either investigating a poured ground plane or waiting a bit for the Ground Plain products.
What you already have has shown to be a very good idea. I cannot say any more than that from personal knowledge, but you are not the only person to take that route.
Smiles,
I am all for that, putting my threat assessment correlator to sleep!. Best rest I get at my age, gentle bliss indeed.
However, missing information does not provide this desirable condition for me and missing color or dynamics fall into that same category. Everything I do is aimed at grain, strain, thin and sharp free, information. That sort of clarity of information, in such large quantities that, just like in a live situation, there is simply too much to take in all at once, without anything "shoving" to get your attention.
Bud
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I wanted to post another update to my experience with my overly simple DIY ground controls.
I recently swapped interconnects and made a couple of mods to my music source. In doing so, I removed the ground controls from both my speakers and my amps (mono-blocks). The sound certainly changed from what I had before the changes. I did like what I was hearing, but I need more time to know if I prefer the new sound over the old. However, in doing some critical listening, I noticed that I did not have the clarity I had before making the changes and removing the ground controls. I listened for a couple of hours this morning and decided to put the ground controls back in.
One track I really noticed a difference with the DIY ground controls is Patricia Barber's "Ode To Billy Joe". The finger snaps sound completely different with the ground enhancers in place. The finger snaps are so clear they actually sound different. While listening this morning, I could tell they were different without the ground controls in place. Sort of smeared and lacking the echo sound a bit. But as soon as I replaced the ground controls on both the speakers and amps, the super clear sound was back. It is crazy just how much the clarity changes. I can even hear a change in her vocals and there is no doubt I can hear a lot more micro detail. This just amazes me.
I am sold once again on this tweak and I do not find the change subtle at all. I will not be removing them again. I need to buy the real thing now...
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TJHUB- sorry if my skimming the last post in the thread doesn't answer the question, but if you think the pig-tails make a difference - have you opened the polka dot door yet?
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TJHUB- sorry if my skimming the last post in the thread doesn't answer the question, but if you think the pig-tails make a difference - have you opened the polka dot door yet?
Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is the "polka dot door"? I did some searching, but I didn't come up with anything tangible.
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Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is the "polka dot door"? I did some searching, but I didn't come up with anything tangible.
One answer would be: a Canadian TV children's show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polka_Dot_Door
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chrisby is talking about EnABL treatment of loudspeaker drivers,it looks like rings of polkadots on the drivers cone.
Scotty
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what exactly is the "polka dot door"
TJ, google Planet 10 Hi Fi. They are a licensee of mine. I use their products in preference to my own. Just scroll down till you see a 3/4 view of a driver and look closely at the surfaces. Just eliminates any hint that what you are listening to might be a loudspeaker. The only thing that enters your room is the music..... seriously.
Bud
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Bud,
So, how do you add them to your speaker cone?
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Bud,
So, how do you add them to your speaker cone?
That will require a new thread...
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Bud,
So, how do you add them to your speaker cone?
Another thread will be needed, assuming denizens of AC are interested in modifying their drivers in a non reversible fashion. The process does function for all drivers. For some, like the GR research drivers, the benefit is limited. The reason it is limited is that music can only sound like music. Audio can sound like a lot of different and exciting things and there are many words to describe these sounds, but music just sounds like music. Once it's right, there is no more to do. At least from the speaker surface out into the room to your ears. There are still those curious wire thingy's, absolutely neutral cables and transformers with two to three times the information content of all others made on this planet. And that just for level one of three.
So, once you have just music, you can dig very very deeply into the provided sources. There is so much more information available than is usually found, even in plain Red Book, that it staggers me. And, once the drivers quit being a problem you can go looking for that information. Another staggering bit is just how good modern signal side electronics are, even in cheap alleged mid fi components. So treating your speakers is really just the beginning of another journey. I have been on it for 35 years and still haven't grown tired of it.
There is a thread devoted to just the art of EnABL treatment here.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1460031#post1460031
Those of you who are interested in digging in to this should read most of this thread first. There is a gigantic thread that precedes this one, but it is both art and arguing and gets damned tedious quickly. If, after you have spent a bit of time and some of you are still interested, we can start a new thread here. I can bring all of the specific driver treatment posts from both threads here and we can get involved.
For those of you not brave enough I recommend Planet 10.
http://www.planet10-hifi.com/
For a piddling sum of money you can buy a cabinet kit and seemingly insignificant drivers that will knock all of your clothes off. Your home speaker system might still be better for audio, but for music.... well all you will really care about is the joy of having art enter your home without any barriers.
Bud
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Bud, you wrote: "Quickest way to answer your question is for you to make up a pair of the zip cord loops and tie them onto the ground lugs of your amp outputs. If they make a difference that includes sound stage and ease of listening, then it would be worth either investigating a poured ground plane or waiting a bit for the Ground Plain products."
- What is a "poured ground plane" and how do I make one?
- Would this item then replace the ground buss in my amplifier?
Jim D
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- What is a "poured ground plane" and how do I make one?
- Would this item then replace the ground buss in my amplifier?
Jim D
I asked the same thing, essentially.
Poured ground plane PCB in audio: Think of it like having a plate of copper underneath (directly) your components on the PCB boards. The power wiring (v+ and v-) would be wired not in planes of copper but single traces that are below the initial ground plane; which creates shielding. Then you could have another poured ground plane between power and signal traces, which again just has traces directly to components and is shielding power from signal. The idea is to create a near field references to ground from what I can tell, as well as shielding. Each plane would have through hole plating, and a tap that goes to star ground for the amplifier, instead of meeting at the same place. For true star ground I use a screw with terminated O ends stacked. Star grounding does not work on a bus bar unless they are all connected on the same tap.
A question I would have might be could you have ground planes poured that do not connect to the components but just star ground, and all of the devices connect to star ground, and have star ground be in the center of a like 4x4 plate of copper? (that is grounded to chassis, *which earth ground is connected to farther away at plug - also important in order to increase ground reference for signal shielding according to BudP, and I agree as I tried it)
You can look up ground planes on the internet but it will be confusing because they try and explain what frequency to tune them to for radio transmitters.
Ground bus in amplifier: As you can tell not exactly, but in a way.
I will say: BudP says it improves all the regular qualities a lot but also makes music more listenable. I say I appreciate what it offers to clarity but will say for listenability power conditioning does a lot more. I mean a very good power conditioner does enough to the point where you might actually wish your system had a little more edge to it in order to keep you awake. I have been considering replacing Kiwame resisters in my phono pre-amp for that reason.
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A couple of additional notes to Smiles comments.
Typically a power and signal section are physically separate on a PC board, with power being brought in either through a peripheral trace buss or separate wires. A poured ground plane is not different here, other than that the power components and power traces are shielded with a nearly solid sheet of copper on the opposite side of the PCB from all power and signal traces. The same holds true for the signal components. Obviously this cannot be perfect but needs to be a complete as possible.
The poured ground plane eliminates all ground side trace or wire interconnects, they are merged into the ground plane.
Connections from ground plane sectors to a star central ground may need to make use of discreet wires but they must be in a true star connection, with all of them terminating on the same point, rather than along a ground buss wire intended to provide common connection. Theoretically that common buss wire is at the same potential at all points along it's length. If such were actually true there would be no circulating currents in either grounds or chassis.
As I understand the concepts behind poured ground planes and an instrumentation ground system, that collection point must go directly to a true, non neutral connected, ground point, as in a copper pole buried in the earth. Otherwise it is even more susceptible to induced circulating currents than is a more typical single sided PCB with strip grounds. I have this sort of flexibility. The audible difference between Ground Control and a poured ground plane, properly grounded, with both having instrumentation organization is within the range of "straining to hear it".
The likelihood of being able to apply a proper instrumentation / poured ground to an already produced piece of equipment without significant time and money being spent, is slim. Better to apply the Cat 5 cable discussed in earlier postings and reap some of the benefit available from the Ground Control products. You can also purchase the inexpensive Ground Enhancer product and obtain about the same results.
Only the AudioPrism Ground Control is going to provide all of the benefits of a poured ground plane system, without the risks inherent in actually having one. I no longer have any poured ground planes in my personal audio system. I use good commercial products and make up for their deficiencies with the Ground Control devices. In a reasonably short amount of time I will also bring out a less capable set of devices. More useful than those of my competition, but deliberately not as comprehensive as the Ground Control devices. They will also be simpler, just as carefully designed as the Ground Control devices, but much less expensive, since there is an obvious market for these products.
Bud
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A couple of additional notes to Smiles comments.
Only the AudioPrism Ground Control is going to provide all of the benefits of a poured ground plane system, without the risks inherent in actually having one. I no longer have any poured ground planes in my personal audio system. I use good commercial products and make up for their deficiencies with the Ground Control devices. In a reasonably short amount of time I will also bring out a less capable set of devices. More useful than those of my competition, but deliberately not as comprehensive as the Ground Control devices. They will also be simpler, just as carefully designed as the Ground Control devices, but much less expensive, since there is an obvious market for these products.
Bud
I'd say you've spent a little more time researching these topics Bud, I'll be putting my stock into your statements myself. :thumb: I have always been a firm believer in power conditioning tho and have many different avenues of conditioning in my system. But nothing has brought it all together more than your research into grounding controls and my system has proven that out in spades. While I doubt I'll go any further into your bag of grounding research myself due to continuing financial concerns, I am forever grateful for your efforts into this vein of research. :notworthy:
Cheers,
Robin
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So you mean to say ideal is that your equipment from star ground would go to chassis, to earth ground, to socket in the wall, and straight out to earth ground rod outside the house? or do you mean run a star ground off of earth ground rod outside the house and directly into star ground in the equipment?
Also to say that if you have some sort of make shift earth ground by living in an apartment building or something you are out of luck and poured ground planes would be less advisable than say the tweaks etc.
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Almost. The ideal is to go from a star point collection of signal grounds to the direct connection to the ground point. Next the same organization for power grounds. Then a separate wire to the chassis, no more than an inch from the ground point. The power and signal circuits should not be connected to chassis at any other point.
A slightly less ideal, but sometimes more useful scheme has the signal grounds connected to the chassis as far from the actual ground point as possible, so that signal ground is distributed across the entire chassis. Power ground is still connected directly to the ground point and the chassis connection to ground is the same.
In an instrumentation ground, the ground point would be connected to a rod buried as close to the equipment as possible, with no connection to mains neutral at all. THIS IS NOT SAFE FOR NORMAL HOME USAGE.
In our modern environments, poured ground planes would be a disaster, requiring all sorts of odd component placement to eliminate air borne EMF from modulating circuits. This is why strip / star collection grounding is employed in commercial equipment. The Ground Control devices just provide a portion of the benefit of a poured ground plane, without incurring the down sides, other than added cost.
Bud
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Ok, a bit of a revival of a middle aged thread. I stumbled on this from a link on another thread (thanks satfrat) and have been playing with concept a bit. First the zip cord, or in my case some no name bulk 16 ga oxygen free copper speaker cable, sure looks like zip cord. Anyway, 24" lengths, 2" stripped, on the negative speaker lugs. It made a difference, not sure if better or worse, but different. Then the same on the Amp neg terminals, no change. Then removed one by one a few days later, no change in soundstage. The speakers were then treated with 6" lengths of the same wire with most of the insulation removed, a more profound difference for the better, now I'm hearing what has been described in these pages. Next will be magnet wire arranged to Bud's specs.
Has anyone measured frequency response when using either the DIY product or the manufactured one? Frequency response is the first place I look when someone says something changed, for better or worse. I got changes in the 2.5khz to 5khz bands, increases with the insulated Zip cord, depressions in the uninsulated. And initial bumps at 16khz and 20khz with the insulated zip cord that dissipated after 24 hours. Measurements were completely ad hoc one time snapshots, but wondering if anyone, Bud included, has done something more rigorous.
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I have lost most of my interest in measurements, unfortunately. This has come about due to the endless wrangling and bickering they seem to always incur.
The EnABL battle has been the major culprit here. Measurements made under strictly controlled conditions, by people skilled in that sort of endeavor, were dismissed because their results did not follow the accepted, incorrect, operating norms for loudspeakers. Most recently, wavelet analysis has again shown very clearly that this process alters a speakers behavior in a profound fashion. And now the critics have taken the position that nothing can be stated about the efficacy of the EnABL process from this form of analysis either.
Measurement of FR is always a good thing. It shows a one dimensional analysis of a process. It does allow some inspection of changes in utilization of materials and techniques and does provide a "paper" trail for those changes. Wavelet analysis shows even more and uses the same impulse that other forms of analysis utilize.
However, all of them are interested only in the loudest signal and it's decay. None of them are able to pierce this veil to look at the sub peak relationships, that provide information for our mental illusion of reproduced sounds, within a volume of space in our listening environment. The tools are just too crude and the analysis of structural coherence is almost nonexistent.
So, no, I have not performed any objective tests on Ground Control. That a loop of wire hung on the ground / return can make any difference in the illusion of space, recreated from an audio system, is already outside of our commonly held understanding. I am sure that there will be measurable differences, since there are audible ones. The applicable analysis, as with EnABL which also works outside of commonly held understanding, is going to cause a similar furor.
I am already bored.
Bud
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Thanks for the reply. And I agree, unless measurements are treated as the tool they are instead the basis for dogma one can fall into the morass of circular arguments so common on internet forums. That being said, very basic frequency response variations can describe some of the euphemistic claims made about various changes in our systems, e.g. an increase in HF response is often described as more detail, and an increase in the body and wholeness of images can be traced to HF depression.
I like the changes brought about in my system so far and will continue to experiment with the ground control concept. Please don't construe that I'm suggesting that GC is merely frequency response change, it's strictly curiosity as I noticed some changes while I was adjusting a lot of parameters in a new listening room and wanted to know if I should pursue that avenue in more depth. I'm measuring mostly to track wall treatments and bass traps. When I get your to spec models installed I'll post again.
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Sounds sane to me. Be happy to help in any way I can.
Do you have a copy of ARTA? They have included wavelet analysis and this along with a CSD may begin to show what you are hearing.
Bud
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Hey guys...would headphones benefit from this tweak?? I'm modding some Grado's and there is plenty of room to add the piece...the negative lead in each phone would be OK or another location inside each would be better??
Thanks
Ed
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Hey guys...would headphones benefit from this tweak?? I'm modding some Grado's and there is plenty of room to add the piece...the negative lead in each phone would be OK or another location inside each would be better??
Thanks
Ed
I was wondering the same thing.
I built some replacement cables for my HD650 last year. After reading this thread, I wondered about building another set of cables with ground loops, but didn't see an elegant way to add them since the cables have to be relatively lightweight, flexible, and aesthetically pleasing,
Modding the headphone itself would make more sense.
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I don't know what to tell you. I haven't experimented on headphones yet.
Were I to do so I might first try a mini plug Wye adapter with one of the loops connected to the common ground plug of another plug and inserted into the adapter. If the audible benefits seemed noticeable you could then proceed.
As an aside, using them for phono cartridges, guitar amp pickups and tape deck heads is useful, but the loop size gets cut in half as does the dielectric material added to the wire, at least with the Litz that I use.
Bud
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While waiting for the mailman to bring me these ground devices I thought I'd just try the looped wire DIY. 20" looped 14 gauge twisted ends inserted on the neg posts of my bi-wire speakers. 4 loops total. Hoping I wouldn't have to strain to hear a change I hit play. After about a minute I reached down to pick my jaw up off the floor. Shocking. Everything I wanted more from my very modest system and then some. My greatest thanks to BudP for his invention and research.
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Resurrecting a very old topic, (but new to me tweak).
Curiosity got the best of me and I happened to have some 14 AWG stranded copper wire laying around and made loops for negative posts of my bi wired ACI Jaguars and Odyssey Kimet monos.
The wire was some stuff from Home Depot called Cerrowire Vinylon. It's like 25 cents a foot. LOL.
Not going to go into a lot of audiophile terms. Definitely made a change and I like it so far after a couple days.
Still assessing, but it seems positive across the spectrum. Some might find it a bit strident or too much added clarity.
Dunno if there is break in of some sort. It's sharper, but still smooth. System leans toward smooth to begin with.
It brings more of an in the studio or live sense.
More presence and air. Maybe it lowered noisefloor to be more revealing or is accentuating detail more.
I listen to a lot of 50's/60's jazz FWIW.
Don't know why it makes a change. Don't care. Audio hobby is part science and part system synergy and trial and error and many things are system and context dependent.
Been refining this system for years off and on. You never know about some of these things.
Will see how this holds up for extended play.
Interesting to say at the very least.
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I found that you should experiment with this one to balance the sound to your liking. There's a slight difference using it on the speaker end or on the amplifier end of the cable. Also a difference on the + or - side of both, especially if you are correcting for phase with your cables.
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i’ve been using the EVS ones for years and just tonight unplugged them from my speaker binding posts to compare. Definitely sounds better with them. I googled them to refresh what they are about and found this resurrected thread LOL.
tony
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would this work with open baffle speakers ?
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would this work with open baffle speakers ?
I use them on my Spatial Audio X2 which are open baffle.
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did you have good results on your Spatial's ?
Are you still using them ?
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did you have good results on your Spatial's ?
Are you still using them ?
Yes, I like and currently use them on the Spatial and other speaks too.
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was there much tuning involved ?
Like with loop length ?
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was there much tuning involved ?
Like with loop length ?
Plug and play
http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/EVS_Ground_Enhancers.html (http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/EVS_Ground_Enhancers.html)
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Those are the same ones I have ! :green:
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Also, look at battery ground tweak by unclestu. search in audio asylum. A lot written about this tweak.
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Is this the idea?
(https://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=219609)
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Would these still work if you put them at the amplifier end of the speaker cable ?
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According to the EVS site they would also work on the amp end as well but better on the speaker side. Not sure I did it right. My M3’s sound so good I’ll have to give it a good listen to determine