Nice to know there are inexpensive ways to improve your system’s performance. @ddrave44 I started with DIY cables from my components to the ground lug on my Denali with excellent results. So much so that I went for the Altaira. The hubs are designed to be amenable to an incremental implementation. I started with the Chassis Hub and a mix of Shunyata Alpha cables and the DIY ones I made. With the Altaira in place the improvement was staggering. Rearranging the cables also proved beyond any doubt the purpose built models were far superior. I then added a Signal Hub and implemented a “segmented” framework with the digital gear to the SG hub and analog to the CG hub. The amount of noise removed from my system allowed it to reproduce music like never before. I truly heard new and different subtleties in music I had been listening to for decades. The lowered noise floor simply allows more music to get through unobstructed by noise. I thought it couldn’t get any better but I have been proven wrong and joyfully so. Shunyata has recently released a new power distributor called Gemini. It is a dual function unit that incorporates Altaira-like grounding capabilities. Shunyata states it is perfect for smaller systems, headphone systems, and “network closets” as it will allow for grounding the noisy network gear like routers, switches, and the like. I use it in the latter application. Grounding these last components provided another jaw dropping improvement. You have no idea how much garbage enters your system through its network connections, or at least I didn’t. The dual use Gemini costs less than a single Altaira hub so the grounding it provides is obviously to a lesser degree but it’s effectiveness in my system was amazing.
I have read in more reviews, posts, and critiques than I can recall how the writer will always provide the qualifier, “if your system is resolving enough…” to hear whatever he or she is referring to. Before grounding my system in the progression detailed above, I always assumed that to mean, if your gear was “expensive enough to be resolving enough”… My components haven’t changed in some time but their collective performance has improved exponentially. The process is not cheap by any stretch of one’s imagination, but was significantly less expensive than moving up a rung or 2 on every piece in the system.
To those who insist it “can’t work” or request hard data to back up claims like these, I can only submit to your intellectual superiority and acknowledge all of this must be in my head. Confirmation bias and all that…. Please kindly try to refrain from the usual attacks that a post like this usually elicits here. They do nothing to move the discussion forward.
To anyone with an open mind and the willingness to try, I say please do. The beginning experiment in grounding will only set you back a few bucks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You might be very pleasantly surprised. I certainly was.