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Grounding


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8 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 That low a resistance is not normally achievable without a network of connected earth rods, and will substantially degrade under prolonged dry conditions. 25 ohms is a more realistic target based on my testing experience in this area with Telstra (Au.) 

Hi, that’s what I currently have with one rod. 25ohms. I have perfect ground conditions to achieve this, and enough rain here in the uk. 
 

I am planning Star configuration next month to get it down to 10ohms. Fingers crossed. Also add magnesium sufar to each pit. 
 

I’ll never know the difference in SQ until I listen to property earth versus ground rod. Maybe do the test in the future. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
4 minutes ago, MarkusBarkus said:

...that is remarkably low, @ASRMichael. Interesting to remeasure in your opposite/driest season. BTW: did you add anything to the soil in the area, or just drive the rods? 

Just drive rod in. Need to get myself a tester when summer comes again. 
 

call me mad but I’ve got a plumber to install garden pipe above the rod. So turn on for 5 minutes should keep it moist! Audiophile Gardener, that’s a new one! 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi all. I think I know the answer to this question but would rather triple check before I blow up my speakers. 
 

I’m planning grounding the speaker terminals on my amp (black being the ground). That I get that. 

 

However Sonus Faber speaker terminals are red & white. Currently I have speaker cable connected as follows;

 

Amp - Black > White Speaker Terminal.
Amp red > Red Speaker terminal
 

Am I right in thinking the white is the negative (as black on my amp)? 
 

I appreciate may be basic question to answer but need to check first

 

any comments appreciated

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32 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

Hi all. I think I know the answer to this question but would rather triple check before I blow up my speakers. 
 

I’m planning grounding the speaker terminals on my amp (black being the ground). That I get that. 

 

However Sonus Faber speaker terminals are red & white. Currently I have speaker cable connected as follows;

 

Amp - Black > White Speaker Terminal.
Amp red > Red Speaker terminal
 

Am I right in thinking the white is the negative (as black on my amp)? 
 

I appreciate may be basic question to answer but need to check first

 

any comments appreciated

Yes, red would be positive and white would be negative (or, perhaps, ground, but this depends on the amplifier).

Note that on amplifiers with balanced outputs, one should never connect the black/white terminals to ground.

And on amplifiers with single ended outputs, the black/white terminals will already be connected to ground-so I am not sure what you mean by: "I'm planning grounding the speaker terminals on my amp"? 

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Thanks for info. Let me explain 

 

My DAC is RCA to amp

 

Amp Black - Speaker white Note via spade connectors. 
 

I’ll then connect RCA type connector to black speaker terminal. The other end will go to my earth spike/rod via this.

 

yellow connector goes to earth spike, black speaker terminal to black connector. Affectively action as Entreq like product. 
 

Hopefully makes sense? 

 

 

0BC9166B-7D7E-4E90-A6AC-88B7A6F95596.jpeg

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There's a member of What's Best Forum who got very good results, for himself, by doing "extreme grounding" between components - using heavier and heavier links of copper between the cases, etc. The more copper he used, the better it got. So, what was going on? To me, this was all about minimising the true impedance between supposedly identical voltage points, at all frequencies. Just joining two places with a long, thin, round conductor is close to useless for very high frequenecies - which might be where "all the problems are".

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2 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Using the above device, i have connected the following

 

All metal case work

Edge Router & EtherRegen

Mains Conditioner, I made a plug with just ground wire & plugged into 1st socket on my conditioner. 
 

next will be my speakers. 

Ummm, why?  If I am actually following you, your approach has both created ground loops, and defeated the isolation provided by the EtherRegen, this will result in a noisier system.

The only reason to add "new" grounds to any audio component is if that component was designed improperly in the first place.  If your components use three prong AC cabling, the third prong is already your ground, adding an additional ground connection creates a loop (because the two ground connections almost certainly have differing impedance to ground) and will encourage the flow of current through that loop, raising the noise floor of your system.
Most of the Audiophile ground tweaks are ill advised, and certainly should not be experimented with unless one has a very good knowledge of electronics and of how their individual components are grounded in the first place.

I am not against tweaks, but one needs to know technically what is actually going on to make any kind of ground effectively; for example, I ground my Mac Mini to shunt the high impedance leakage current from its internal SMPS, but I do this because I already know that it is not grounded by any connection in stock form: the ground wire which I added is the only ground which the Mac Mini "sees" so it cannot form a current loop.

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In addition to what Barrows has said above , I would add that earthing some SMPS powered devices as John Swenson has described, can also often result in worthwhile improvements. However, you still need to be careful about creating additional earth loops.  In the case of a Set Top Box whose Coax SPDIF is connected to my main DAC, it did result in an improvement, but not as much as when I used a series 10 ohm resistor to connect it to mains earth instead.

 

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9 hours ago, Speedskater said:

If he is connecting it directly to a Planet Earth grounding system what he is achieving is very dangerous!

Any connection to Planet Earth must flow thru the Safety Ground/Protective Earth back to thew main breaker box and only then can it connect to the single Earthing system.

Just to clarify what the election has done. Which is certified in the UK. 
 

Separated from my house supply>From my Meter>60A Breaker>6AWG>Junction box (earth cable ends)>live & Neutral>Consumer Unit (has RCBO’s) > ground/earth Rod. 
 

I believe it called TT system, having the RCBO’s are the required for safety & not having a switched fuse for the consumer unit. 
 

I actually send the certificates to my insurance company, to which they were happy with paperwork I supplied them. 
 

Now prior to 18th addition regulations you could not connected the casework direct to earth spike. The junction box above is required to meet regulations. 
 

 

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Thanks for all the comments. Few more questions, as maybe I’ve taken a step too far? 
 

My original plan was to drain and RF/EMI/Noise from all metal case work in my system. which is what I’ve done.
 

Then Next plan was to add a plug to my mains conditioner to first socket which had ground wire only. This goes back to earth spike via the attached photo. I was told to do this by the company that sold me this devices. But I was thinking myself this is making a ground loop. 
 

But thinking about this now. Is what I’m doing is not just the same as what JCAT are doing with this device? it’s reducing noise by connecting back to ground? 
 

https://jcat.eu/product/usb-lan-ground-conditioner/

 

Now I’m thinking about doing the same on amplifier negative speaker terminal, hence the question above. 
 

effectively what I’m trying to achieve is reducing noise, RF, EMI. Thinking about this now, and considering the earth loop. Maybe to reduce the noise, RF, EMI, I need an additional earth spike for this. Rather than using the safety ground on plug that is connected to an earth spike/rod. This way it will be isolated from each other, and not actually creating a loop. Instead it will give an the noise, EMI etc isolated path back to ground. 


Maybe is the 2nd isolated rod that is the missing link? 
 

cheers


 


 


 


 

 

FE54483A-AC74-4A0E-8775-F93212548D60.jpeg

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10 hours ago, barrows said:

Ummm, why?  If I am actually following you, your approach has both created ground loops, and defeated the isolation provided by the EtherRegen, this will result in a noisier system.

The only reason to add "new" grounds to any audio component is if that component was designed improperly in the first place.  If your components use three prong AC cabling, the third prong is already your ground, adding an additional ground connection creates a loop (because the two ground connections almost certainly have differing impedance to ground) and will encourage the flow of current through that loop, raising the noise floor of your system.
Most of the Audiophile ground tweaks are ill advised, and certainly should not be experimented with unless one has a very good knowledge of electronics and of how their individual components are grounded in the first place.

I am not against tweaks, but one needs to know technically what is actually going on to make any kind of ground effectively; for example, I ground my Mac Mini to shunt the high impedance leakage current from its internal SMPS, but I do this because I already know that it is not grounded by any connection in stock form: the ground wire which I added is the only ground which the Mac Mini "sees" so it cannot form a current loop.

Thanks for the info. question? what is the external ground connector for on the Etherregen then? Cheers

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It's fine I trawled through the EtherRegen manual and looked at previous emails. 

 

From my email regarding my LPS

 

Re. my PSUs, in most cases it is best to leave the 0V of the outputs separate from ground. One notable exception is for an EtherRegen, that likes to have a ground connection at the ER end for best performance I believe. In this particular setup, I think it is best if you run a dedicated ground cable from the ER post to the grounding box, rather than ground the 0V of the ER power rail inside my PSU.

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Michael, maybe it is time that you don't confuse "grounding" as such with connecting to Protective Earth (named PE).

PE is that third prong in your mains plugs. It is NOT anything like your earth rod (the earth rod could be involved all right, but it is invisible to you and behind the junction box (normally close to your front door)).

 

You can "ground" to PE if you like, which means that you make a connection to that third prong in your means socket. You can do that directly and you can do that indirectly by means of a wire connection to one of the chassis of your devices, of which you know it connects-through to PE (by means of its 3-wire power cord).

 

Do notice that half of audio devices with a PE connection (again, that power cord with 3 wires) have connected PE to the chassis. Nothing dangerous about that. Moreover, again half of those devices have internal ground of the electrical devices, connected to the chassis. Thus, they connect electrical ground to PE.

If those devices can do that (without you knowing) you can do it too. Whether a loud hum is the result, is something else.

 

Whether a device without PE should ever connect to PC by one means or an other ... I would not do that. Example:

 

A passive speaker will not have a provision for PE connection. This is, however, exactly what you kind of proposed to do (connect the ground terminal to the earth rod, even around the junction box).

 

You can easily disconnect PE connections from any audio device you like, unless you plan your amplifiers and such to float in your bath tub (people might know I did this with my DAC, so one can never know how crazy people or ideas are).

With this, it is good to know that where devices really depend on PE for grounding, you might suddenly need to make chassis to chassis connections for those devices now lacking "interconnection" ground. This is hard to explain, but depending on how poor a device has been designed (say I did that ;-) cutting PE from that one, will not receive the ground connection of the "feeding" device any more, which device also works via PE. For (stupid) example, if you'd cut the ground from an RCA interconnect, BUT the both devices are connected via PE, the ground of your interconnect will now travel via PE.

Totally stupid of course and in the realm of what Barrows told.

 

Personally I avoid PE where possible (but I always listen and in my case I also measure for noise), because PE is a dirty "ground" as such (your light bulbs / leds / dimmers might pollute it).

 

Anyway ... connecting a speaker output (or input for that matter) to any additional ground makes no sense at all, because a speaker lives from A/C signal (the ground we are talking about implies D/C). And ...

Connecting the so-called ground from a balanced speaker output (see Barrows again) to PE will blow something seriously - hopefully your circuit breaker in the junction box. This is because a balanced output bears no ground - both signal wires are hot. Thus you simply connect a hot wire to your ... earth rod ? that will cause fire.

 

I suppose if you attempted it after all, we won't see you responding any more.

 

PS: There's undoubtedly a lot to say about my text, but for Michael I hope to achieve a little knowledge of these matters.

At least my 118dB sensitive speakers, always hanging on full gain (no analog attenuation) should speak a little of what can be done, which is not always text book stuff.

 

 

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