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In Reply to: RE: Gutwire Perfect Ground Cable posted by Palustris on August 12, 2017 at 08:07:46
Audio tweaks are a strange phenomenon. One person's success is another's failure, condemned as an item arriving directly from a UFO that landed in Roswell.
I decided to give the ground cable a try. Took an old laptop power cord (each of the 3 wires appeared to be around 20ga) that was no longer in use and cut off the ends. Trimmed down two power wires about 1 inch leaving the green ground available for attachment. Then took an old RCA male and unsoldered the previous negative (ground) connection. Soldered in the green ground wire.
For the AC end I took a 3 wire AC plug and connected the end of the green ground wire to the green ground. The two power wires were trimmed back, so there was no chance of connection.
Then I took a small bit of Stillpoints ERS (RF absorbing) material that was left over from a previous tweak experiment from around 10 years ago and wrapped it on the inside of the AC Plug shell before reinstalling the cover.
Attached the new ground cable to my Schiit Bifrost 4490 DAC through the RCA digital input. The AC end went into the power grid.
Fortunately, nothing fried. How is the sound; more detailed, tighter, somewhat more relaxed with a bit more air. Noticed a bit of sibilance in female voices. Overall, perhaps a bit tweaked up in the high end. But, this cable is certainly not broken in and who know where the sound will be in 25-100 hours.
My humble experiment indicates there may be something to the Gutwire Perfect Ground Cable. Not in every system, but it may offer success with some equipment.
Follow Ups:
There is definitely something going on and that something is a ground loop. If your unit is from a competent engineer, then it already has a robust ground connection. When you add a second ground you are by definition creating a ground loop. If the two ground paths are not exactly equal in resistance, the loop with the greatest resistance will develop a voltage across it. That voltage is the source of the hum and noise that is created by the ground loop.
The engineer that designed your gear actually knew what he was doing. Defeating his carefully engineered grounding scheme by intentionally creating a ground loop is absurd.
Is having differing ground potential voltages different than ground loops?
If it isn't different, then we all have ground loops, because each component does have its own third prong, which we are advised not to disconnect.
So then If we all have ground loops, those systems with less noise must have less critical loops.
And what would constitute a less critical loop? less variance of voltage to ground potential between components?
So a bad ground loop that caused a loud buzz has a huge ground potential voltage on a component?
Lacking an engineering background, my view of an audio system may be a bit different and perhaps less educated.
There are four links in the chain; computer storage, dac, preamplifier and amplifier. Each has a power cord with ground drain (3rd prong on electrical plug). The chain is connected by means of unbalanced RCA plugs. The ground cable provides an additional ground drain to the system.
A brief update - after 10 hours of running in the test cord it's still a bit edgy. I prefer my music a bit more rounded, but I plan at least 25-50 hours before making a decision as to whether the test cord is an improvement or another home built audio tweak that didn't make the grade. Also, consider there are major differences between the test cord and the real product, the Gutwire Perfect Ground Cable.
After 25 hours of inconclusive results connected to the dac I switched the test ground cable over to an unused rca on the preamplifier. Quite a change! The audio qualities produced are in line with those reported in the Six Moons.com review.
Now, on to tweaking combinations of wire and plugs to produce optimum results in the home audio system.
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