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This tweak has been very interesting and intriguing ( attaching a battery with capacitors to the ground only of your component).On one hand, it works very well on tube gear, but not as noticeable on solid state gear: adding dynamics, a seeming 2dB increase in overall volume, and far greater detail in magnifying the signal to noise ratio, at least for tube gear.
On s/s gear I can hear an increase in detail but not much gain in s/n ratio or overall volume.
I am speculating on the difference in the nature of the perceived sonic changes. I believe one of the principle differences is that tube gain stages are primarily unbalanced, while s/s stages are more balanced.
This is in regards to the power supplies: except for the negative bias voltage, most tube designs are unbalanced where only the positive voltages are critical to the performance of the amplification device. A vacuum tube essentially generates its own negative voltage from the emissions off of the cathode which in turn is triggered by the heater.The solid state gear is dependent upon the output of the transformer, and most (at least those I've examined the internals of) have a separate negative voltage supply which parallels the positive voltage off of the same output taps of the transformer. That is, you make a bridge rectifier which supplies both positive and negative voltages. A transistor can not generate voltage within itself like a tube does.
Thus, in essence, a transistor device is in a closed equilibrium. The tube devices are not in a closed equilibrium and thus adding a source of electrons ( the negative of the battery), we are essentially unbalancing the circuit even further. The negative voltage sources in solid state essentially buffer the battery ground tweak limiting its effectiveness.
Thus far in applying the battery ground tweak to solid state devices, I find it necessary to use far higher voltages and extremely large capacitances, using as large as multiple one farad caps ( and this for a CD player!).
Initially, I thought it was perhaps due to the fact that most transistors are current amplifiers rather than voltage amps as tubes are.
At any rate comments are welcome from those who have tried the tweak.Stu
Edits: 05/11/11Follow Ups:
...solid state with and without "power conditioning?"
You may have mentioned it before and I am forgetting.
Hi Stu,
What is the voltage you would recommend for solid state devices, including a CD player?
As for capacitors, what voltage rating do you recommend?
My experience with 6V, 1A - 4A sealed type lead acid batteries is really positive.
I could tell the same for installed 3300uF - 4700uF capacitance per component.
You are right, overall gain in volume increased just slightly.
To resume, I have achieved better dynamics, soundstage, detail, transparency and frequency extension.
Thanks,
Baki
to be a tease, but I only own tube gear, except for the CD players. It may take a while before I do more experimentation and come up with something definitive.
I do like the the larger 6.3 volt lantern type batteries on my CD player and I have tons of microfarads on it: actually whole farads ( since one farad low voltage caps are relatively cheap).
What is interesting and something I need to explore a bit more fully is that I have many large computer grade electrolytics: 450 volt at 1800 uF, measuring 3.5 inches in diameter and about 9 inches tall. Hooking up even the one farad caps to the battery does not really create any sparking even when the battery is connected. Hooking up the monster caps does produce sparking.
In terms of capacitance, they are smaller than the one farad caps I have used, so one would expect a great amount more of the sparking using the one farad caps. Its the opposite, however, even though the farad caps have excellent ESR ratings.
I do know that the miniature power supply caps employ "flash" cap technology, whereby they acid etch the foil to create more surface area and thereby increase capacitance. The large computer grade types use the traditional smooth foil, IIRC. I am wondering if the acid etching actually creates an issue. From a theoretical basis, capacitors are supposed to be parallel plates. The etching would mean that the surfaces are not really parallel, and the peaks may arc before the valleys do. When flash caps first gained popularity I did notice that they had a much brighter top end than the standard computer grade stuff.
I have to do more experimentation there too.
Stu
I have installed a 12V lantern type battery together with 47,000uF/16V capacitor on my cd player.
As for conclusion I would have to wait for couple of days.
Preliminary impression seems quite good.
Baki
Forgot to tell, my Tripath TK2050 based amp uses only positive supply. Instead of toroidal trafo I am using SMPS which provides only positive voltage.
I havent actually tried it yet since I have fully balanced class D amps (inverted and non inverted speaker outputs) directly driven by a balanced dac. I am however planning trying this out on my mac mini on say the usb ground. It might be an interesting experiment to add some crystals to your groundtweak and see if that has any effects, I want to try silver wired tourmanilated quartz chunks. I read somewhere tourmaline actually has a constant 0.6 mA charge or something like that.
A crystal on the negative of the battery and the capacitor certainly is quite audible.
Stu
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