[BobM]

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

[BudP]

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.

[Flounder]

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

[jtwrace]

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.   

[BudP]

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.

[Flounder]

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

[stvnharr]

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.

[*Scotty*]

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

[stvnharr]

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.

[*Scotty*]

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

[BudP]

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

[stvnharr]

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

[stvnharr]

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.

[BobM]

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.

[BudP]

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.

[Wind Chaser]

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....



...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. 

[Folsom]

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.

[BudP]

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.

[Folsom]

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.

[BudP]

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