Grounding cable gauge size

@ozzy I looked at the Entreq site and also read the manual for the boxes.

They only have one wire from the component to the box. When a cell is used in a box, it can only be used for one component so there are no other 'ground' wires connected to that cell.

Since only one wire is used there is no circuit- and therefore no current. I think you'll find that the wire is of little consequence. As best I can make out the boxes might act as a sort of opposite of an antenna and is something for which I have either too much education or too little to understand; I found the poorly written (language first English not) explanations offered on the website incomprehensible.

I also had a residual noise when I used your Atmashere amps. It is inherent in tube amplifier designs.

With all due respect, you really need to try this type of grounding before you comment. It would probably surprise you, as it did me.

Its true that tubes are noisier than solid state. But you should not get any buzz if things are going well- just hiss. I run my amps on horns and I'm not particularly keen on buzz, nor do I get any. There are a good number of things that can cause buzz in a tube amp- for example leakage in the filament/cathode elements of the tubes, where noise can be injected into the audio circuit, or swept resonance between the inductance of the secondary winding of a power transformer and the capacitance in the junctions of the power rectifiers (of course that can happen in solid state amps too). Neither has anything to do with ground!

You might want to look at this page; of particular interest is page 20:

https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://centralindianaaes.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/indy-aes-2012-seminar-w-notes-v1-0.pdf

Grounding is a far more complex topic than most people realize! I love the comment he makes about grounding in aircraft, not having to drag a ground wire around- its a good point.

At any rate I'm not contesting that you hear a difference or that it might be an improvement! Instead I'm simply pointing out that because that is so, it points to something amiss in the grounding scheme of the equipment you're using. Its a common problem in the audio world; I've seen amps that are currently in production that have grounding schemes from the 1950s before grounded outlets were a thing; others that have IEC connectors but the ground connection isn't hooked up. I've no idea how such products could be shipped overseas, since they are a bit more draconian about such things in Europe and even China; relatively speaking in the US its a bit of the Wild West in this regard.

Ok, but my ears can hear the improvement and my brain can appreciate it. If it can't be measured it must not be?  It reminds me of the age-old topic of power cords not making a difference.

I'm not contesting that. And I can easily measure why a power cord is audible in a system- they respond to Ohm's Law like anything else, but that's off topic. This:

Ralph is giving you a hint to fix the grounding issues at the source vs a series of relatively expensive band aids.

- is correct. It might not be as inexpensive as all that, since the manufacturer of the equipment that is causing you to need the grounding box might push back on the idea that they have a problem. Put another way, if the grounding box helps, its a useful tool to indicate that there is a grounding problem somewhere.

If that is the case, I use a DVM to check and see if the audio connection grounds are the same as the chassis and see how that relates to the ground pin of the IEC connection. You should be able to measure something between chassis and audio ground, but if its a short, that can be a problem. OTOH if you find that the chassis isn't grounded through the AC power cord that too is a problem! Grounding is a tricky thing and its not surprising if a designer gets it wrong- I've been there.

Now you might think 'hey, the box fixed it all' which is fine. No worries. But audiophiles often ask 'can it get better?' and the answer is often 'yes'. People have said to me many times that they can't imagine how it might get better, and then it does. There are almost always opportunities for improvement.

Thank you and I respect your opinion, but I consider it just your opinion and not actual experience.

Its engineering. FWIW I did a survey about this topic a few years ago. What I found was that there were grounding problems in every system where the box was shown to be an improvement. To back this up in at least one of the manuals of one of the ground box product, the manual states exactly what I said- that if all the equipment has a proper grounding scheme internally, there will be no benefit.

Usually an Ohmmeter is all that's needed to sort this question out.

Too bad though because it really is the great unknown as to the level of improvement in sound quality it can provide.

Grounding is really important so naturally it can affect sound quality quite a lot. But I was not kidding that if your equipment employs a proper grounding scheme, an external 'grounding box' will not offer any benefit whatsoever.

That’s what I think. Do you think 16-gauge silver to be ok?

Of course! Like I said, if the wire really has to take any current you have much bigger fish to fry due to some sort of Bad Thing going on with a component or AC outlet miswired. When things are set up properly the wire will see no current at all.

Now I feel compelled to mention that if all the equipment has a proper grounding scheme and your home wiring meets electrical code there will be no benefit whatsoever from any external grounding systems. But its a sad fact that many ’high end audio’ components have poor grounding (or none at all).

There's no current in the wire unless something is terribly wrong. So a light gauge is no worries.