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YES.

Posted by alan m. kafton (M) on September 28, 2016 at 17:46:47

In Reply to: ANy reason to have the ground wire be a high quality wire??? posted by Smelly_Socks on September 26, 2016 at 13:26:22:

With all sorts of power cords available. Many very expensive.. I ask myself why do they also make the ground wire out of the same expensive wire?

The ground is sort of just 'there''. It does not carry anything, and is just a safety valve, in case of a short or other accident.

I used to think the same way....then I did some listening, and learning about various products created to deal with the ground connection and ground plane. The ground conductor DOES carry something....not only parasitic noise, but in some cases some of the signal. It does not simply sit there waiting for "an event" to happen. And no this is not a design flaw, but with the proper instrumentation can be measured. I believe Nordost has done some of these tests.

So since the ground is really not used for music power.. Why is it usually made of the same expensive wire?

If you did some sonic comparisons, you would likely hear the qualitative differences, whether they be silver-plated copper, higher-purity copper, or solid silver.

Or, is there an actual reason unknown to me.. As to why the ground wire SHOULD BE of the same expensive type of wire as the Hot and return?

Again, to my ears, the higher the quality of conductor, the greater the benefits, no different than the benefits of using higher-quality conductors for H and N. On paper it shouldn't matter, as we've collectively discarded the idea based on old engineering texts. But with real life experience it does.

From memory, Audio Magic was one of the first to address these parasitic ground noise issues many years ago. Dave Clark of Positive Feedback did a review on a couple of those products at that time. Today there are ground noise products from Entreq, Furutech, PranaWire (disclosure....I am a dealer for them) and more recently a Taiwanese company (I'm forgetting their name) that Stillpoints is distributing here in the US.

It's the wiggly world of audio, but there is alot going on with the ground (signal ground & safety ground) that we have yet to discover. In short (no pun intended), the ground ain't just sitting there doing nothing.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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