Entreq ground conditioners

Anyone have experience with Entreq ground conditioning products? Reviews are very positive. Being a mechanical engineer I have no clue about all this electrical mumbo jumbo though I do know the importance of clean, consistent power to my listening experience.



http://www.entreq.com/products/ground-boxes-17667704

MY BS alert starts to flash heavily when I look at this, but it’s been wrong before.

Thanks Paul. So the idea of having “clean” ground doesn’t impact the quality of the power and thus the music? I am curious what the theory is behind this product and if it has any merit at least technically. Frankly I don’t understand anything about electricity.

I have contemplated ground conditioning but it’s never got to the top of my list of things to do. When we build communications towers on mountain tops we always condition the soil around the base of the tower with ground enhancing material or GEM. It’s a compound you mix with the soil to bury the earth mat in to get a really good grounding for the tower. Like I said I have thought about doing my earth spike/ground at home to test if it brought any sonic benefit but never got around to it.

As for those ground conditioning products mentioned in the opening post, I’m inclined to agree with Paul in the 2nd post.

I still don’t understand what you do with these. Is it in parallel or series with the (earth) ground? Please tell me these are not intended to be an “earth” replacement, which conjures an image of fellow audiophiles BBQ’ed.

They are a bit mysterious - look like they came from the biodynamic power conditioning farm.

They are a bit mysterious - look like they came from the biodynamic power conditioning farm.


Hence the high readings on the BS meters...
3:-O

exactly, but they forgot the hi-end german ceramic horn in which to stuff the BS before burying it under a full moon.

I believe they are ground “sinks” and you simply use your equipment, grounded normally, and then add a connection from your product ground to this box which acts as an even better repository for ground stuff.



I am hesitant to cry BS because I really don’t know - but if that’s what they’re claiming it just went up on the scale.



To answer the original question, a clean ground is REALLY important. That’s why some have gone to great lengths to make the connection to earth as solid as possible - and I’ve seen some crazy schemes. Basically, everything you get into your house in terms of power can be looked at like a triangle - the top two points of the triangle being the hot and neutral where the current flows and the bottom point of the triangle the ground sink. This ground is really what it says - it is a connection to the earth itself - and most designs use this for safety (in case either of the other two points of the power triangle should do something unintended), but more important from a sonic standpoint the ground is where designers send unwanted noises.



I just don’t think a floating box can have any affect on the ground.

I’ve heard from some others that if you use grounded power conditioners, the Entreqs and the such have less of an impact.

Would my PS Audio P10 and P5 benefit from this ground? Or is this already well taken care of? I wonder because obviously the P5/P10 are transformer-based, different from conditioners…

An old thread arises!

I have no clue as I have no idea what these boxes are supposed to actually accomplish physically. I assume they are some sort of sink, a bit like sending stray static electricity into your less than delighted cat. But they (both the boxes and cats) have nothing to do with earth ground as they themselves are floating, ungrounded.

The boxes are much bigger, and heavier, than the pictures suggest.

In another forum, this product (especially the Telus model) is very much raved as taking their system to the next level and there the say is “try it if you are ready to buy”. I believe they offer different qualities of grounding wires and the performance depends very much on these as well. If you have the full chain of components - source, dac, preamp, monoblocks, power conditioner - we are talking several of the ground cables. I don’t have first hand experience and wanted to try one for myself - unfortunately, the distributor never really got back. I stopped chasing the ground tech after that and instead got a dedicated 20A circuit for my 2-channel with Furutech outlets and wallplates - which turns out so much cheaper and effective happy-048_gif

There are two similar products offering - one crazy expensive and one at lower cost

http://www.tripointaudio.us/PRODUCTS.htm

http://www.synergisticresearch.com/new-product-synergistic-research-grounding-block/

Would be interested to hear either from people who’ve tried it, or Paul himself. So far in my research I hear it’s really effective- if your component needs it.

For example I know of someone who had great results with his TOTL Entreq Poseidon, until he changed his DAC and now hear no difference.

Another friend has great results with his server, but hears no difference whatsoever with his dac, which is connected to his balanced power conditioner, which apparently already deals with grounding (because of balanced).

The examples go on and on…

So I’m wondering how the PS Audio Regen devices deal with grounding to begin with. I have both the P5 and P10.

I have never tried these ground conditioners though they might have merit. The Power Plants leave the grounds untouched.

I recently added to my system within the last 6 months an Acoustic Revive RGC-24 grounding block.

http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/rgc24/rgc24_01.html

You basically plug it into a spare rca socket on the back of your pre-amp and position the disc underneath the transformer in the pre-amp.

I found it very beneficial in that it lowered the noise floor allowing retrieval of more detail.

I got it on a 30 day return basis but being happy with the results I kept it.

I felt my system was already well grounded before adding the RGC-24.

I’ve no experience of the Entreq products but I presume they would do an even better job, but at a higher price.

After Paul’s reply I went ahead and got an entreq box. I have two separate dedicated mains lines to my audio setup; one is feeding a p5 dedicated to digital, another is feeding a p10 for analogue only.

I added the entreq first to my dac (Schiit Yggdrasil), then changed to my music server (Auralic Aries), and finally tried it with my Preamp (Hegel P20). Each time there was an improvement in the blackness of the background, dynamic range, and overall snappiness of the sound. Putting it with my preamp also helped improve the analogue-nature of the sound so eventually I kept it there.

I also got good gains moving the entreq away from my system. Originally I had it on top of my p5/p10 stack and then changed to a corner of the room, far from other transformers. Similarly moving my Aries (which was on top of the p5/p10 as well) far away was also a positive to the sound. (Incidentally, moving my hdd from my Aries to the NAS, and removing the ethernet cable to use wifi instead, were both big plus’es too).

Next on my list to try is optical isolation for my Aries and changing to a roon endpoint where unlike the Aries it doesn’t have to process music and so further reduces on noise. I realise this is getting further from grounding, but turns out there were lots of gains to be had with minor tweaks.

I bought one Entreq Grounding Box. And then I bought 4 more. They work. Those who doubt their efficacy should “try them before they knock them.” Major transformation of my system. If you can afford them, they are highly recommended. What you get is a LOWER NOISE FLOOR and all the good that comes from that. Noise is your sonic enemy!

Ground is the most misunderstood mystical component/concept on the face of the earth with regards to audio!

I also use the AR RGC-24 beneath the power supply section of my DS.

The noise floor is noticeably lowered with it in place.

For the inquisitive, I would recommend looking into the “battery ground tweak” threads on the Audio Asylums Tweaks/DIY forum.

I use this tweak in its simplest form, a 9 volt battery with the negative terminal attached to the chassis ground.

This is on all of my components including the negative speaker binding posts.

aka “Uncle Stu’s Battery Tweak” , RIP Uncle Stu, we miss you!