Tboooe: from the looks of it the Entreq unit may remain a bit of a mystery for the time being since any English-language description of it I've seen is so hopelessly mangled from the translation from Swiss. I have no experience with it (and don't yet know anyone who does). I could tell at least from one site that it's only part of an overall power delivery system for your rig and that it's apparently more popular in Europe than here (small wonder with that translation being the only product announcement I could see...not knocking the product at this point, just the means of its introduction). I use a Tricell Chemical Ground along with a Tricell Earth Filter from Alan Maher for this purpose which work very well - noticeable improvements in just about every sound attribute across the board. Very definitely they lower the noise floor. It is also astonishing to see the effect on video as well. You know when you see some fine print on a flat panel TV that consists of small, white text on a plain, light-colored background? If you look closely next time and adjust sharpness at the same time you'll notice the more you increase sharpness the more an artificial vertical edge appears right along side the vertical portions of the letters (at least on one side of them). All you can expect to do is reduce sharpness until legibility becomes optimal. That goes for image detail too, of course. This kind of image blurring is called "ringing" - the same kind you can see on an oscilloscope...also called "overshoot". These 2 products reduce ringing dramatically, not all-the-way completely, but VERY nearly so. I can ramp up the sharpness with out the usual garishness to the pic that tells me I've gone too far. It has made standard hidef TV look like 4k. Alan's is one of the very few forms of power conditioning that has actually addressed ringing. The audio benefits are equally remarkable. I'm betting you never thought your tweeters were capable of this level of smoothness, extension, dynamics and fine detail and utter clarity...I know I didn't til I heard it in my rig. But, from what Alan tells me, grounding is normally accomplished through the copper ground rod into the soil where a number of chemical compounds (a long list, actually) are in the presence of ground water (moisture). But it's those compounds in the presence of water that's key. Many people notice that their rig can sound inexplicably better after a 2-or-3 day gentle, soaking rain. Dryer ground or earth surrounding the rod that is depleted of some of the needed chemicals (which tends to happen naturally over the years anyway) lead to less than ideal ground. Also, newly built homes have the best ground at first, but this slowly changes over time also as the ground rod begins to corrode, as well. In some parts of the country even a house as new as 3 years can have little or no ground and after 10 years many homes will be effectively without ground. It matters where you live in that it may be much easier for the ground rod to penetrate the ground water level in, say, southern Florida than it may be up in the Colorado Rockies. In any case Alan maintains that the US code has been screwed up for decades. If your house has a finished basement for example, that spec'ed 8-ft ground outside one level above won't be enough to go below the basement and tap into the water table since the code also stipulates that that the basement be built so many inches above the water table to prevent leakage into the home. You might end up needing something more like a 20-ft rod and, depending on local conditions (General Contractors in your area should be able to clue you in about water table depth where you live), you may still not reach the water table. Alan packed the necessary compounds into the Tricell Chemical Ground, so any soil conditioning (which has been resorted to in the past, is no longer needed...it also acts as a true "portable ground" and is indeed a substitute ground even for homes that not were not built with any ground at all - only hot and neutral). The Tricell Earth Filter actually magnetizes the soil surrounding the ground rod and, together with some other of his products I have in my home, they do something in the way of lightning protection. Lightning strikes that hit nearby powerlines are not the usual culprit to equipment loss. That's because the power co. has a system (ever since the 1950's) of chokes and regulators along the lines every so often that makes this a non-issue (and if they didn't, they know everyone would be throwing rocks at them). But, they don't do anything about the ground rod because most people are accepting of the risk-vs-loss ratio of lightning striking a nearby tree. What's happening is that it runs down into the ground, finds the ground rod and gets into the home that way. Something close to 99% of loss is due to this entry point to the home. Alan's Reference Ground system provides, what is in essence, a system of chokes and regulators inside the home that absorbs lightning frequencies (lightning can be thought of as an intense burst of high-frequency noise). But, it remains to be seen just how effective all that will be and I suppose the only way I will ever know it didn't work as well as I'd hope will be if I lose some gear...like any other strategery, really. But, this is the one I chose to hitch my horse to and I'm loving it if for no other reason than the sound quality his Reference Ground system (which includes other pieces) is giving me (that alone is worth the price). But, NO system can protect anything from a direct enough hit. That's at least because of the magnetic pulse given off by lightning, just as surely as it emitts thunder. The magnetic pulse is strong enough to induce an actual voltage in anything metal, including your components - whether they are plugged into anything or not - which can fry just about everything inside. According to Alan, his system in total works to make circuit breakers (the usual thermal/magnetic kind, anyway) at the panel about 97% faster in their reaction speed (types other than thermal/magnetic tend to be increased by about 50%), so no more stupid surge protectors, as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I'm of the opinion, as I've stated before, that they don't really work, anyway. Or that they DO work Exactly as advertised - which effectively amounts to the same thing. IOW, they work beautifully, but in fact are no faster at all than any decent circuit breaker. Making them reliably faster would be incredibly expensive and technically very difficult...and few are even bothering to try in the first place. Why bother? Everyone is content with the surge protector myth, so as long as that's what they're buying, that's everyone will manufacture. I believe all they really do is add noise to the system and provide a false peace of mind. What I have from Alan amount to prototypes, but the finished versions will be available (probably in early 2014) as soon as his first B&M store is finished with construction in Nashville. Prices TBA, but probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $1k-1.2K each for these 2 products. Ok, Ok, another stoopid-long post, sorry, all... |
Jfrech: I think Spirit is basically right, but what I'm seeing that the difference amounts to is the distinction between the traditional "power conditioning" we're so far familiar with and this emerging new field of "electronic noise reduction" - similar, but different. Traditional power conditioning evolved from simple designs usually involving the more basic ingredients for filtering like caps and chokes and so on - good, but they can have their limitations...the technical side of which I will spare you, but everyone has had to deal with the downsides to power conditioning - inconsistencies in performance due to various conditions or factors - things like: time-of-day or weather and seasonal changes, voltage irregularities (here you could talk about AC regeneration, but surprisingly it's just as vulnerable to these changing factors as anything else is). But, most of all and particularly familiar to those of us who've kept some kind of tabs on user reports on power conditioners - there can be some sort of infringement on the sonic performance of the system...some loss of bass, or treble or dynamics...that tends to pop up with a somewhat disturbing degree of regularity in almost any thread on the subject, do they not? Look at Spirit's own direct experience with his Burmester. The inference is that there all kinds of conditioning out there, some good, some great...and some, in the end, not so great. So how much do you really have to know to market a conditioning product? How many makers out there are the real thing and how many are just pretenders? Hard to say, but the fact is that anything less than a completely successful conditioner (i.e. one that plainly improves the sound quality and without compromising it at the same time) is liable to be seen as an unfortunate investment, regardless of price. But, what I'm trying to get at here is that I think we're more or less on the verge of a paradigm shift and that "electrical noise reduction" represents the next step. In its new form, apart from traditional power conditioning, you might recognize it by its inclusion of some form or another of quantum physics (on which I'm basically next to clueless so far) that will likely involve proprietary materials and, increasingly, an absence of any of the traditional parts like caps, diodes, resistors, chips, etc. For Alan's part, he has said all of the products he makes do only one thing: reduce electrical noise. I own thousands of dollar's worth of his stuff, but I've not yet heard any of it to introduce anything I could interpret as a negative impact on the sound...all utterly without adverse effect. But, he says he does not own an "audio" company because this sort of technology has applications everywhere. I even have it in my car. It's applied to the car's computer. For $60 I now get 50 extra miles per tankful. That same amount of fuel savings applies to any car in the world (that has a CPU). Imagine what the world impact would be if you could just flip a switch, and instantly every car in world had this simple technology installed. What would that do overnight for world economies? There are endless applications for this kind of thing: aeronautics, medical imaging, computers, communications - everywhere there is an electrical circuit there is virtually the possibility of an app for it. One of the things Alan has done with all this is a very sophisticated level of manipulating ohm's law in a way that reduces resistance. Up to now, the only way to do that has been through selective use of metalurgy. This is different. This is innovation. Not only has he found a way to this in a component, but in the whole home. It consumes little or no electricity from the wall, so it's utterly green. I even save money on my power bill. And it reduces all forms of EMI/RFI, in the in-wall wiring, in the components and in the air in the home - which brings with it health benefits for allergy suferers (like Alan) and those who suffer from auto-immune diseases. FWIW, Alan Maher has flown under a lot of people's radar so far, but I think that may begin to change in just the next few years. If he were publicly traded, I believe I would be buying his stock. I also think he (with help from his investors) is going to one busy dude for a while...a long while. That's one reason why I sound like a perpetual Alan Maher commercial any more...it's not that I just like saying the guy's name or anything, it's the endless innovation that seems to be coming, both for A/V and for everything else. Keep your eye on that guy, he just may end up being one of those special people in history who changes the world. Or, if you like, as Spirit says: "...I'll never go down the conditioning/filtering route again". I'm thinking that before it's all said and done an awful lot of hifi people may well be saying the same thing. Alan certainly won't be alone, there will be the Entreqs, the Tripoints and the rest, I'm sure, but I suspect in one respect or another, they will be struggling to catch up to where he is now...let alone where he will be... Jfrech: do I think the Entreq will not be that much of an improvement over your Shunyata? Somehow, I don't think so...from both what I believe and from what Spirit is saying... (An even longer post...oy vey...) |
Davehrab: good post. Glad to see someone with more ee experience chiming in. All extremely interesting and useful. |
Davehrab: "... as a matter of fact in high school I was so poor in math that I thought that Calculus was Julius Caesar's hair dresser".
...wait...you mean he wasn't?!? :)
Jfrech: No sweat. Do give us an update at some point, I'm curious too. The 2 Maher products I have took about a month to fully come on song, BTW. |
Agear and Atmosphere: Here's how I see it: I'm absolutely convinced there is, and has been, such a thing as bad grounding schemes in perhaps all manner of hifi gear up to now...happens all the time. But, I don't believe for a moment that alone can account for the differences I've witnessed in my own home from this kind of noise reduction...this seems to go far, far beyond any "textbook" definition of proper grounding (whether equipment, home or whatever). The reason I think it does so is because this kind of noise reduction seems to be closely identifying and resolving the real-world problems that have never been addressed by the established ee books...and, considering the frequently less stringent requirements for grounding outside the realm of A/V, maybe that's understandable. But, with the available lessons learned from modern quantum physics (and again on which I am no expert), I'm coming to believe in the possibility of the next generation of pioneering ee's giving us new applications of new materials and techniques. Alan says he didn't do anything but go back to how mother nature establishes a ground and tried not so much to take his cue from the literature...and also, for example, lessons learned from trial and error IN THE FIELD by various commercial entities - what happened to them when they tried to implement accepted and established principles - sometimes with success and sometimes not...a frank look at the underlying conditions behind why those efforts sometimes work and why they sometimes don't. After all, THAT sort of thing to me is the REAL classroom - what happens when something accepted is applied and it doesn't entirely work. It's from that kind of endevor that we eventually wind up with the textbooks. I think so many people seem to get that cart before the horse - as if textbooks (theories alone) are somehow the "bleeding edge" of technology - to me, that's pretty close to myth. Of course the more we add to the texts, the more things we can hope to (endevor to) accomplish, but the REAL advances come when we are confronted with the unexpected challenge and we need to re-examine what we think we know. After all, this is precisely how those wonderful textbooks came to be in the first place. They didn't spring forth from a vacuum, but from necessary real-word problem solving. In my view, the classroom textbook is actually the back end of the process - it's the real world that's the front end. What is taught today is applied (and corrected) tomorrow - only to be taught differently the day after...and on it goes. It's just that now the folks who are far more familiar than I with quantum physics are getting their chance to take a crack at the problem. I believe there IS such a thing as innovation (and, without knowing, it can conceivably come from virtually any quarter), but without that inside track (quantum physics, in this case), the consumer then has no one else to rely on but himself when trying to put himself in a position to recognize innovation even when he's first looking at it. And that, I grant you, is therefore not always an easy or straightforward thing to do...but, come to think of it FWIW, that much about innovation has been true as far back as I can remember.
I also think Alan has figured out a rather extreme method for manipulating Ohm's Law in order to lower resistance house-wide in a way that evidently has not been done before and that this has led to his remarkable 'monopoly' on his brand of applications (which he's currently very busy recombining every time he has a breakthrough in a given area) and this so far has allowed him to keep going and moving the ball forward - not only to the point of coming up with ever-higher-performing products that are comparatively expensive (some over $1k each), but those that overwhelmingly outperform his previous examples, yet at a small fraction of the cost, as well. So, right now the sky's the limit and nobody seems to be on to his game yet. I expect that will remain true for quite a while, but we'll have to see how long that lasts... |
Atmasphere: Ok, I think you're right about my poor word choice. Let me see if I can fix that. I don't think Alan is really in the business of 'manipulating' Ohm's Law (and let me say that no one would think that it's somehow mutable less than I...or for that matter, Alan either, I believe) so much as he appears to actually be 'applying', or rather 'exploiting', it in brand new and innovative ways. By innovative, I mean that this is how he has arrived at a way to actually lower resistance throughout the system (as well as the home). Realize, that, up until now and going by the book, the ONLY way to do that has been by the designer's choice of metallurgy...and again, apparently, not anymore. That was all I was really trying to get across, but I can see now how the way I worded it above might've seemed like a possible red flag...and to somebody, I suppose, maybe it still is, but for the moment that's ok.
But, a number of years ago, I suppose I might have agreed with you about almost anything with the name "Quantum" attached to it. But, since then the number of products claiming to benefit from quantum physics only seems to have risen. We see them here in these pages: Bybee devices, W.A. Quantum chips and Marigo Dots among them. In my mind, these that I mention at least have not been "proven" to be a scam, not by what I've seen, anyway. I'm sure somewhere, some of such products may very well deserve that category, but, from what I can gather so far, not all of them. And while it may come as a surprise to anyone concerned, over the last 3 years I've been steadily buying Alan's products, now to the tune of about $10,000. Although I've pretty much reached my financial limit with all that at this point, there was never a purchase from him I ever regretted. I can assure you that I didn't wake up one day and decide that I was going to drop 10 large ones on anything. But, after the first 2 or 3 thousand or so, I began to think in terms of, first, using the purchases to fix a number of problems with performance and then, later on, I intended to continue to buy more stuff from him until I began to encounter evidence that I had pretty much reached the limit of what his stuff would do - until I felt I'd reached some point of diminishing return. I never reached it. That never happened, period. Never even came close, really. Each and every purchase brought about a whole 'nother level of performance in varying ways. Alan, BTW, has kept on coming up with new designs and I'm sure I could bleed myself dry if I made it a point from here on out to continue to try to keep up with him.
Then I finally began to get it. Electrical noise is basically infinite. No matter how much the individual product you made could reduce it, you could always make another additional product to reduce it even more. So, from there, it was just a matter of my own preference - that and striking the balance between a (very) high level of performance and financial self-preservation. But, I'm enjoying emensly where all that has finally come down for me. Atmosphere, my friend, your concern for my susceptibility to quantum scams is noted, but I seem to be doing just fine and don't feel inclined, at this point, to be running anywhere just yet. Peace. |
Atmosphere, come to think of it, I may have been wrong to include the Marigo dots, but, no, the WA Quantum chips and the Intelligent chip are 2 different things (but, as I said above, there are certainly quantum scams to be found out there). From what I've read (interviews with Jack Bybee, reviews and, yes, the advertising) Bybee devices do employ quantum physics. Dunno if every word of all that is true, although I don't feel I'm qualified to openly dispute it. Disputing things at this point is not really my goal with all this. I'm still trying to pick up on a lot. I think I see what you are getting at though, but I still see plenty of room for both viewpoints (house grounding and component grounding) to be included. It's your last statement above that sums it up for me..."but what strikes me as odd is that many 'high end' audio designers don't seem to be grounded (pardon the expression) in the principles for effective grounding". I would say that, in all likelihood, is a fair assessment. But, for that very reason, the overall problem remains intractable. How much of the gains to be had can be derived from proper home grounding and how much from proper component grounding? For the present, there seems to be no real way for consumers to confidently, and correctly with a minimal amount of effort, ensure that their components use truly correct grounding schemes (to snuff out the match)...even though, like you say, many manufacturers should likely know better. OTOH, new grounding technologies for the home (the forest) are beginning to emerge and I believe they can in part help compensate for gear with inferior grounding schemes. And, in my mind, it may even be possible that they are going beyond that, but it's still unclear to me. While whether or not the real theoretical goal should be home grounding or component grounding, is, to me, largely intractable, it is not irrelevant. But, from necessarily a practical standpoint, maybe the best hope may lie with the forest. Neither on its own gets rid of all noise, but it does seem to be a big step forward. |
