Grounding with a Earth box?

brubin

I found this thread looking for info to build my own ground boxes. I wanted to make comments and ask questions of the people with experience but thought it would be meaningless on threads inactive for almost a year.

Firstly, there is so much misinformation in this thread I can hardly believe it. Lightning is the number one reason for a safety ground but it's not the only reason. Admittedly it's a complex issue the I dont fully understand. See Grounding and Shielding 4th ed. by Morrison.

And if anyone hasn't heard Ground Boxes and thinks they're snake oil they ought to keep their comments shorter. People are leaving sites like these in droves because it has become a waste of time. 

I don't know how these things work. But we theorize anyway. I know how interconnect is supposed to work but I know interconnect that breaks all the rules and sounds even better. I've been experimenting with various wire types on my system and the area between the conductors makes zero difference to the sound. Its supposed to make a huge difference because it's the"loop area" that determines inductance. I've learned the hard way to trust my ears and not reason with incomplete scientific models. I don't ignore them, just am not ruled by them.

The first time I heard of Ground Boxes where I actually paid attention was the OCD Hifi Guy video. Since then I've spend a lot of time looking into it. I almost broke down and bought a used one. 

Like Mikey says there are Ferromagnetic, Paramagnetic, Diamagnetic and Piezoelectric materials. You can research that yourself. I'm not going to rewatch the video but I thought he said he used a base of dirt. If so I have no idea why. 

Audiogoner tksteingraber said he researched ground soil mixtures or something and they used charcoal and salt. I had never found anything previously about that and searched it now. It looks like they also use calcium chloride (and charcoal). It said that concrete "dopes" the area for good ground. It attracts moisture and provides plenty of icons. Now I know why soil next to concrete is so cold and moist. 

That's a different thing than a ground box. I'd imagine that on most ground box designs the moisture and ion levels do nothing. On ground boxes that do use that than it is actually how they work. I read somewhere that making a salt battery might work. I wish I knew chemistry better so I'd know exactly what they meant. 

Okay. So we have all these elements. Carbon absorbs certain frequencies of EM (Electromagnetic) energy and converts it into heat. Quartz is crystalized silicon and highly piezoelectric. It converts EM energy into physical vibration. Damp that vibration and you've converted that energy into heat as well. 

I'm writing this on my phone so will do several shorter comments so I don't lose anything which would be a waste of my time. 

I was talking to someone that saw inside a base level Entreq damaged in shipping. It was basically a box of thick copper plate (price that stuff out - yikes!) with the terminal lug bolted to that. Most of the filler was a black rock (Shungite, I'd guess) and sprinkling of various metals that looked like copper, silver, iron fillings etc. This guy uses an Entreq and no power conditioner. He said the various models and generations sound different (they basically give it a warmer sound and lower noise floor). I have no idea what his system is. I asked him about the Telos GNR. It's an active unit from Hong Kong. I'd like something active because to me it should be adjustable in some way. He said he'd heard that unit and it worked but not as much as the Entreqs. 

That's part of the reason I'd like to try making one out of salt water in a water fountain container (5 gallon plastic jug). You could change concentrations or salts. 

And can anyone tell me why these have to be in a wooden box? Why cant I use a plastic pail or storage container? No body mentions this. If this works I'm going to have a lot of big ones. An over sized one for each component. 

Before I try to make conclusions I need to digress some more. Acoustic Revive makes a power conditioner called the RTP. It's made buy CNCing a pocket out of a solid block of aluminum. The minimum thickness is 1 inch. It's basically a power distribution block more than conditioner. They pour green carborundum on the bottom then take a fine grain mixture of a specific type of tourmaline and quartz and mix it with epoxy and pour it over the carborundum. Green Carborundum is actually a brand name. It's really silicon carbide. So we're back to silicon and carbon. This compound doesn't exist in nature. It's used for sandblasting and is being researched for EMF sheilding in harsh, high temperature environments. 

As far as I can tell tourmaline is just quartz with a bunch of other elements mixed in. I think they were using black tourmaline but not sure. I don't know why they aren't using Rutilated Quartz instead. It's quartz with a bunch of metallic elements embedded inside it. Maybe tourmalines are more consistent? 

So that's the Acoustic Revive. Add wires and AC receptacles. 

The CAD is supposed to be basically the same type of thing but sourced from a scientifically engineered and developed product. I think it was a ceramic blend. It's not lose. It's cut from a block. Whether it's rubberized or brick like I dont know. They said it's the same as or came from the same technology as used to ground aeroplanes. I looked into it and found nothing. 

Tara Labs, the cable maker, uses a proprietary ceramic blend to ground their cable shields. That sounds like a good idea. Usually shielding analog cables is thought to reduce air and dynamics etc. Generally a bad thing so if you can get the benefits without the negatives I'd be all for it. I talked to a dealer recently who warned me away from their cables. He deals in the very best gear so I'll take his word for it. Walked away from a $3000 used cable on his advice. Gotta trust the few who know what's really up. 

Shungite is a rock that has a lot of carbon in it and a smattering of metals. I bought some recently and got my hands dirty handling it. So I washed it and put in the microwave to dry. Sparks flew out of it similar to sparkler sparks. Nothing too alarming though. Shungite is famous for containing Fullerenes like C60. It's used by naturopaths to condition drinking water. You soak so much if it in a certain amount of water for 2 or 3 days before drinking. The shungite is used up after a few months and discarded. 

There's another thing called a Counterpoise. It something that's used to create a synthetic or artificial ground for short wave radio operators who cannot obtain a physical ground. I looked into it. It's like a large net that is able to generate some sort of EM interaction with the atmosphere. Of no use to me as far as I can tell. 

So now I think we can get down to different designs for ground boxes. I'd say the primary type would have the majority of the material being carbon based. Either shungite or charcoal or even carborundum if you're loaded. Or a mixture. You can buy activated charcoal by the cubic foot from water treatment places and it's fairly cheap. Not sure if there's a benefit. You can also get barbecue charcoal made from South American hardwoods that is super dense for charcoal.  

Then you'd add a sprinkling of quartz or whatever piezoelectric material you chose. Considering the number of these things that are ceramic based maybe more than a smattering of piezoelectric material is better.  For quartz, I dont understand why you couldn't use play sand. It's not quartz but it has to have some crystallization and is dirt cheap. They sell quartz sand for salt water aquariums but I haven't contacted the company to see if it's real quartz. If it is I'd be trying that by the bucket load. 

Ferromagnetic would be soft iron shavings (maybe oxide so it doesn't rust), tungsten and nickel. I don't know about tungsten oxide or nickel oxide. I do know they sell soft iron oxide powders for teaching magnetic fields in school. Then there's magnetite too. 

I have no idea why it needs to be a wooden box or why the copper box inside would benefit from being really thick. Is hardwood better than plywood? I never read that the wire probe going into the box should be short and thick. 

The secon type of box would be charcoal/carbon and salt based. Sounds to me this is working through ionic transfer of some sort. I have no idea why the carbon is needed. Then we have the commercially available products that are a pre-engineered using science. I've seen one small tweek device that is think worked like this but where do I buy a huge brick for cheap? 

Them we have the salt water battery type device. No ones made it yet. It was just a suggestion by a big brain on a forum. 

If you google "groundside electrons" it will take you to a thread at diyaudio.com. This guy took 140 threads of 40 awg magnet wire. 1 foot each if I remember. He twisted these up into a litz wire (three twisted bundles that are the also twisted together). He put 3 short lengths of regular heat shrink distributed evenly on the wire. Formed loops by connecting both ends and cleaning off the polyurethane using a solder pot and soldered the ends together. He covered this loop in cotton sleeving and connected these to signal grounds on his stereo (most important) and chassis grounds and AC grounds. Too many worsen the sound. They're called Ground Loops. The effect takes time by slowly sounding better before getting worse and then better than the first cycle. If not used for months the entire charging or conditioning cycle is repeated. It was this changing of their affect that lead to them having any idea at all about how they worked. 

They argued for almost 30 pages over these things. It took me several days of company time to get through them all. Long story short, here's the most likely explanation for why they work. When signal is rising all the electrons in the conductor spin in one direction and the electrons in the dielectric spin in the opposite direction. When the signal slows it's rate of change and then reverses its polarity all the electrons have to reverse their spin. It's theorized that this enormous surface area of dielectric is the key. God help me I'm trying to explain this and I have no idea how it works. Okay. Start over. Imagine Hillary having a love child with Kamala and that demon possessed mutant screaming at you all the time. Well, it's like these kill that virtual monster child and your system sounds way better. 

These work on most systems but on about 10% to 15% they do nothing. The systems unaffected are usually super expensive and have over built ground planes. Therefore, it seems likely that there is a shortage of electrons in the ground system that these loops provide. Electronics work by sucking electrons off of the ground plane (there's more physics to it than that but for this discussion that's all there is). So you could either put a thick plate of copper in as a ground plane or these loops. I've read up on the electromagnetics of this and nobody talks about electron spin and especially electron spin in the dielectric. And what about having zero electrons in a vacuum and getting better sound. Or vacuum capacitors. 

Some people have tried doing this using 9 volt batteries hooked across capacitors.  Then attach the positive of the capacitor to any grounds on your system starting with the most sensitive which are the signal grounds at the source component. There's some info online about this. They don't have the capacitor size worked out yet. I tried it since I had all the parts already. In conclusive. Seems to add some liveliness at first but leads to brightness. Maybe my rig will never respond. Maybe I should buy some loops to try. 

Gotta go. I think we should experiment and pool our knowledge on these DIY ground boxes. I don't want to spend 10 grand on one and be stuck with a particular sound. I searched for used units on hifishark and found there were a lot of them for sale near me. I wonder if that should be taken as a warning?