I ordered it with the Puritan Ultimate cable from the 156 to the wall outlet. I ended up getting a second Puritan Ultimate cable for the DAC. I think they are onto something with vibration dampening in the cable.
The Puritan 156 replaces an Audioquest Niagara 3000. It's a night and day difference. There may be A/C issues that the Audioquest handles better than the 156, but in my circumstance, the 156 is far more effective.
The Puritan 156 is the most significant upgrade I've made to my system apart from getting the Spatial Audio Labs M3 Sapphire speakers.
Perhaps the shift from the Benchmark DAC3 to the Holo May KTE DAC was 90% as significant, but the Puritan has transformed the system comprehensively.
There is break-in. After about 150 hours, things started to sing, so maybe 200 hours is a good target. Based on the improvements I heard, I went ahead and got the Groundmaster since I am able to install a grounding rod outside of the wall behind the system.
I got the full 8-foot-long, copper-clad grounding rod that would be used to meet code in the US. The Puritan product literature references using two 1.2-meter grounding rods for even better performance. Apparently, 1.2 meters (4 feet in American) is a common length in the UK. It would certainly be easier to install, but it is half the conducting surface area. Equally importantly, it is not extending as far down into the permanently damp (and therefore conductive) soil. Because my soil is very clay rich (and hence retains more water), I decided on one 8-foot grounding rod instead of two Euro-rods.
I got a 25-foot length of 10 AWG THHN (Southwire brand) cable from Amazon. Home Depot will also sell you a project length of Southwire—good stuff, pure copper, made in America. I only used about four feet to run down the outside wall and out 16" to the ground rod, but it was very comforting to have enough to redo the job once or twice depending on stupidity issues arising.
I buried it about 8" down. THHN wire has a nylon coating on top of the PVC jacketing. This should protect it well from rotting in the ground. Maybe not enough for future archeologists to unearth it intact, but my plans to route it via conduit ran into issues that would have taken time to resolve (and to explain).
10 AWG will fit nicely in the hole in the binding post of the outbound (black) terminal of the Groundmaster. It might be possible to fit 8 or 6 AWG, but with only 4 feet of cable going to the grounding rod, I went with 10 AWG since that was readily available on Amazon.
The Groundmaster has been settling in for 24 hours, providing more of the same improvements I got with the 156—open, natural, detailed sound with much more articulated bass. Voices have become very natural. The crud on the A/C was the most significant limit to system performance.
Things are sounding like they were with my battery-powered Vinnie Rossi tube hybrid monoblock amps and preamp, but with even more natural detail and better bass. Dynamics are better as well. I've seen several comments about this being a bog-standard balanced power setup with a filter that will subdue dynamics. I feel a punch in the bass and swings from soft to loud, which I did not previously. The sound is more, not less, alive while being less fatiguing and purer.
Everyone's A/C is different, but I can't say enough about the pleasure this upgrade is bringing. To be trite, it has unlocked the potential of my system.
