Entreq Tellus grounding
- Thread starter spiritofmusic
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I have upgraded my Tellus to 2 boxes of Tellus 2. I have also Everest caps on all ... Total of 6. The Everest caps did add abit too much details and as opposed to my prior single Tellus box which also had the Everest caps. I realised that the probable reasons were the symposium roller blocks that I used. I used Gyrotension vega prior with good effect and would be ordering 2 sets to see if they may address this.
There are so many people I have heard of (on these forums and word of mouth elsewhere) that found the Everest caps were too much of a good thing. Maybe (based on Mike's and Bruce's testimony), every high end Entreq component should include a discount voucher for a set of four A10-U8 feet
By the way, I think A10-U8 is a terrible name. Sounds more like a naval submarine variant than a high end audio component isolator!I think Barry's feedback here is going to be quite critical in terms of what Entreq owners may decide to do, especially the ones who capped every wire termination with Everests. But even the K2 need to be very slightly smoothed over as well, especially if you have multiples of those like I do. Just not nearly as much as the Everests do though. If the combination of Everest knobs and A10-U8 can achieve what I almost consider to be the unachieveble in reproduced audio (forensic detail, extreme high end focus but without any more listening fatigue or subjective harshness), they would be one of the best high end combination tweaks available anywhere.
It would take me well over a year to save up just for a set of four of these things, but if they do what I think they could do, they will be worth it.
There are so many people I have heard of (on these forums and word of mouth elsewhere) that found the Everest caps were too much of a good thing. Maybe (based on Mike's and Bruce's testimony), every high end Entreq component should include a discount voucher for a set of four A10-U8 feet
my friend Jonathan (a partner in Wave Kinetics; the company that makes the A10 U8's) maybe is too clever for his own good.
besides the A10 U8 footer's.....
there is the speaker footers, 2NS (tunes),
and then there is the (and my own) turntable, the NVS (Envious).
he named them all. blame or credit him, that's just how he does it.
you can knock the name, but not the performance. it's all based on science.
OK, award me the Clown of the Day Award. I guess as I get older, my brain is shrivelling up like everything else.
A10-U8 = A-Ten-U-Ate = attenuate.
I get it. Duh. I am obviously not intelligent enough to use this product! All I ever saw was a sequence of numbers and letters and could only think of the A10 Warthog aircraft and the German U8 U-Boats. So as you can now see, I had great difficulty reconciling war-themed hifi accessories to improved isolation!
A10-U8 = A-Ten-U-Ate = attenuate.
I get it. Duh. I am obviously not intelligent enough to use this product! All I ever saw was a sequence of numbers and letters and could only think of the A10 Warthog aircraft and the German U8 U-Boats. So as you can now see, I had great difficulty reconciling war-themed hifi accessories to improved isolation!
My system has just caught me completely by surprise which I can only attribute to the settling in of the Athena rack and its Apollo grounds.
I was listening late this morning to Radio 3 FM and the programme included part of Glen Gould's 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations which sounded particularly good, but I just assumed that it was the recording.
About 20 minutes later I decided to play Kraftwerk's OK Computer CD without even warming up the CD/Clock. As soon as it started playing it was apparent that there was a substantial improvement in sound quality. Bass in particular was so much fuller, tauter and the treble sounds were coming out with real definition and impact.
The rack had previously improved the sound but now it was as if the the system had had a major upgrade. Delighted as you can imagine!
I assume that the new rack and the Apollo ground cables needed a longer settling/burning in period than I had anticipated but certainly worth the wait.
Should add that the Everests have been working fine in my system so I've not felt any need to try the K2s. May be down to the Olympus Tellus with its mains Apollo ground.
Murphy I should just add that I'm not familiar with the roller blocks so can't really comment. The Tellus 2 does seem to be a very worthwhile upgrade on the Silver Tellus so look forward to hearing more of how they perform in your system.
I was listening late this morning to Radio 3 FM and the programme included part of Glen Gould's 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations which sounded particularly good, but I just assumed that it was the recording.
About 20 minutes later I decided to play Kraftwerk's OK Computer CD without even warming up the CD/Clock. As soon as it started playing it was apparent that there was a substantial improvement in sound quality. Bass in particular was so much fuller, tauter and the treble sounds were coming out with real definition and impact.
The rack had previously improved the sound but now it was as if the the system had had a major upgrade. Delighted as you can imagine!
I assume that the new rack and the Apollo ground cables needed a longer settling/burning in period than I had anticipated but certainly worth the wait.
Should add that the Everests have been working fine in my system so I've not felt any need to try the K2s. May be down to the Olympus Tellus with its mains Apollo ground.
Murphy I should just add that I'm not familiar with the roller blocks so can't really comment. The Tellus 2 does seem to be a very worthwhile upgrade on the Silver Tellus so look forward to hearing more of how they perform in your system.
I changed out my symposium roller blocks and deployed the Gyrotension vega isolator footers on all my Entreq boxes. I have now managed to tame down that hyper detailing wrought about by the deployment of the Everest caps. Now I can hear the details without getting fatigue...the details are there but no longer bright or edgy thin. I Guess the wave kinetic footers would do the same but the gyro are cheaper.
Excellent feedback. Thanks. Since the topic has steered in detail into footings I have been bewildered with what is on the market. The Wave Kinetics are indeed quite expensive and if I were to import a set after July 1st, it would cost me the best part of $1,200 AUD with shipping I reckon. That is going beyond my limit for footings. Then again I have looked around and there isn't much that impresses me below around the $500 US mark, so I am guessing there is probably a cost / performance ratio sweet spot in the $500 - $800 per set range. That said, the Gyrotension don't really seem to be that much cheaper than the Wave Kinetics from what I can tell - only around $50 or so, which wouldn't even be a primary consideration for people buying in this price range. The Gyrotension do seem to be adjustable though which is quite important given the varying weights they will be supporting.
I'm taking a closer look at these Gryotension footers as I really like the precision adjustability. What is the black base made of? Is it some sort of rubberised / flexible compound or is it very hard?
Since this is an Entreq thread, what about Entreq's own unfortunately-named Garbo 4 footers? I say unfortunately, because here in Australia, "Garbo" is colloquial vernacular to describe the guy in the loud noisy truck who wakes you up at 5.30 am in the morning to collect the rubbish out of your council garbage bins. Then again, as I learned with the Wave Kinetics products, maybe Garbo is an excellent name - cleaning up the mess so to speak!
Hi all,
I would just like to reply to my own(!!) post above where I mentioned the Entreq Garbo 4 isolation feet. Today I actually received a demo set to try, courtesy of the excellent Australia distributor of Entreq who has previously sold me my boxes, cables and K2 knobs.
I am afraid the news about how they perform is not good. I firstly tried them under my Rega CD player. There was no improvement in any aspect whatsoever to the sound, however the sound significantly degraded in two other aspects - there was a loss of air and the sound became more coarse. It was honestly like I had lost bit-depth - and using a very bad word-length reduction algorithm at that. Ironically, this sort of degradation is precisely the opposite effect to what I experienced when I got my Entreq boxes and cables, and then again when I upgraded to the K2 knobs.
I need to emphasise of course that this is just my own experience and other people's may be different. For what it is worth, the Rega had previously been sitting on stock feet using a HiFi Rack XS rack (installing that rack did change the sound of the system in a positive way, especially in terms of detail retrieval). I don't have any explanation as to the poor performance though one observation I made is that since the coupling faces of these feet are machined wood, if they are not absolutely perfectly flat to microscopic tolerances, this might cause issues, since there is no obvious "give" in the feet like there are with rubberised solutions, for example. Two of the feet were dead flat, one wasn't perfectly flat - not visibly I mean - much more subtle than that. It was just that it did not sit as surely on the rack surface under no weigh as the other two did. And the rack surface is perfect - tested with the edge of a metal ruler at all angles during installation. Mind you, once under the component, the third Garbo 4 footer felt like it was flat. But in any event, there is no "precision engineering" evident at least to the extent that you would see in something like the Stillpoints, A10-U8, etc. I suppose "rustic" is a term that kept coming into my mind time and time again when it came to the physical characteristics of these feet. In an endearing way of course
I also tried them under the Entreq boxes but could hear absolutely no difference in sound whatsoever versus the boxes sitting on their stock feet. So very disappointing and I have to emphasise, the first Entreq component I have auditioned in which I am disappointed. But I thought it important to add this post, not only because I mentioned them in the post above but also to perhaps encourage anyone interested to demo before buying, despite the much cheaper price compared to other footers mentioned here.
Entreq do make two much higher grades of feet, but both are outside of my price range and indeed are more expensive than the A10-U8 (at least if I were buying here in Australia).
I would just like to reply to my own(!!) post above where I mentioned the Entreq Garbo 4 isolation feet. Today I actually received a demo set to try, courtesy of the excellent Australia distributor of Entreq who has previously sold me my boxes, cables and K2 knobs.
I am afraid the news about how they perform is not good. I firstly tried them under my Rega CD player. There was no improvement in any aspect whatsoever to the sound, however the sound significantly degraded in two other aspects - there was a loss of air and the sound became more coarse. It was honestly like I had lost bit-depth - and using a very bad word-length reduction algorithm at that. Ironically, this sort of degradation is precisely the opposite effect to what I experienced when I got my Entreq boxes and cables, and then again when I upgraded to the K2 knobs.
I need to emphasise of course that this is just my own experience and other people's may be different. For what it is worth, the Rega had previously been sitting on stock feet using a HiFi Rack XS rack (installing that rack did change the sound of the system in a positive way, especially in terms of detail retrieval). I don't have any explanation as to the poor performance though one observation I made is that since the coupling faces of these feet are machined wood, if they are not absolutely perfectly flat to microscopic tolerances, this might cause issues, since there is no obvious "give" in the feet like there are with rubberised solutions, for example. Two of the feet were dead flat, one wasn't perfectly flat - not visibly I mean - much more subtle than that. It was just that it did not sit as surely on the rack surface under no weigh as the other two did. And the rack surface is perfect - tested with the edge of a metal ruler at all angles during installation. Mind you, once under the component, the third Garbo 4 footer felt like it was flat. But in any event, there is no "precision engineering" evident at least to the extent that you would see in something like the Stillpoints, A10-U8, etc. I suppose "rustic" is a term that kept coming into my mind time and time again when it came to the physical characteristics of these feet. In an endearing way of course
I also tried them under the Entreq boxes but could hear absolutely no difference in sound whatsoever versus the boxes sitting on their stock feet. So very disappointing and I have to emphasise, the first Entreq component I have auditioned in which I am disappointed. But I thought it important to add this post, not only because I mentioned them in the post above but also to perhaps encourage anyone interested to demo before buying, despite the much cheaper price compared to other footers mentioned here.
Entreq do make two much higher grades of feet, but both are outside of my price range and indeed are more expensive than the A10-U8 (at least if I were buying here in Australia).
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And yet another update. Even though the Garbos are packaged in threes I decided to try them under the stock feet of the Rega CD player (I had to use a cut-down small wooden block on one of the feet). The sound was chalk and cheese compared to sitting them directly under the chassis. Suddenly the Entreq "signature" sound is all there - more detail, better timing, better bass (and as a result of the better bass, a clearer midrange and top end). Virtually the opposite to what I heard sitting them under the chassis.
I'm not going to say I am sold on them yet because I'm not really sure they are the best value for money, since it is necessary to buy two boxes of 3 in order to support a four-legged component in this manner (it makes them around 60% of the A10-U8 three-pack price to me at least). This in turn makes me think the Garbo feet were never designed to be used in any other way other than directly under a chassis which in turn casts doubt on their ultimate efficacy compared to other feet specifically designed to work coupled directly to a chassis.
Still it is a relief to know they are actually very decent feet - just packaged in a very consumer-unfriendly manner in my opinion, given most companies will offer feet as singles, threes or fours. Or otherwise the feet they sell will only work in one manner and one manner only (direct coupling to chassis).
Given the improvement I am now hearing I might even have been tempted to at least try the ES Pads. But having to buy four of them is ridiculous and I am really not sure based on all of my tests that Rega CD players like having anything coupled to the chassis. And in any event, an expense like the ES Pads would only be justified if they were to carry through to a future component upgrade, in which case one might have to start the auditioning and component matching process all over again anyway.
Of course, with Entreq boxes, I think they all have three feet don't they? So I guess the Garbos were made with that in mind, though as I mentioned in my last post, I honestly could not hear a difference (well, that I couldn't attribute to placebo) when using them under either of my boxes.
I'm not going to say I am sold on them yet because I'm not really sure they are the best value for money, since it is necessary to buy two boxes of 3 in order to support a four-legged component in this manner (it makes them around 60% of the A10-U8 three-pack price to me at least). This in turn makes me think the Garbo feet were never designed to be used in any other way other than directly under a chassis which in turn casts doubt on their ultimate efficacy compared to other feet specifically designed to work coupled directly to a chassis.
Still it is a relief to know they are actually very decent feet - just packaged in a very consumer-unfriendly manner in my opinion, given most companies will offer feet as singles, threes or fours. Or otherwise the feet they sell will only work in one manner and one manner only (direct coupling to chassis).
Given the improvement I am now hearing I might even have been tempted to at least try the ES Pads. But having to buy four of them is ridiculous and I am really not sure based on all of my tests that Rega CD players like having anything coupled to the chassis. And in any event, an expense like the ES Pads would only be justified if they were to carry through to a future component upgrade, in which case one might have to start the auditioning and component matching process all over again anyway.
Of course, with Entreq boxes, I think they all have three feet don't they? So I guess the Garbos were made with that in mind, though as I mentioned in my last post, I honestly could not hear a difference (well, that I couldn't attribute to placebo) when using them under either of my boxes.
Thank you Jonathan.
Fascinating.
What you say does make sense and it will be very interesting to hear how four work on your Rega CDP if you can organise that.
As for using them on the ground boxes I suppose it is possible that they work better on the bigger and heavier ground boxes which would provide a more secure coupling.
Fascinating.
What you say does make sense and it will be very interesting to hear how four work on your Rega CDP if you can organise that.
As for using them on the ground boxes I suppose it is possible that they work better on the bigger and heavier ground boxes which would provide a more secure coupling.
You are almost certainly right about footers really only working on the larger boxes. I won't get to hear what the full four feet sound like unfortunately, since there is only one demo product available and Entreq in their wisdom only sell them in three-packs (I was thankful just to get hold of the three-pack demo). It is a pity as that forth foot might make a significant difference.
But here is a picture showing why the Garbo 4 is disappointing as a machined / finished wooden product. And why I think the term "rustic" is appropriate. You can see the gap where the foot couples to the rack and I can attest that rack surface easily passes the "metal ruler edge" test - it is perfectly flat. So you wonder what just that alone is doing to the sonics.
But as I mentioned, yes, they do change the sound and in some aspects - notably detail and bass - do improve it. But I think it should be possible to do noticeably better in the sub $500 bracket and certainly quite a lot better in the under thousand bracket.
And my final word on these Garbo 4 feet (I promise!) is that I can't recommend them unfortunately - well, I certainly cannot recommend them to any member of this forum. I spent another couple of hours mucking around with the Garbo 4 today (I tried about 5 different configurations on my two source components) and came to the resolute conclusion that - at least for any mechanical vibration-causing source devices (OK, I have only the Rega CD and Project RPM9.1 to test); the direct interface of either the source chassis itself or source footer with a wood finish does not bring significant returns on investment over the existing rack surface.
Yes, the Garbo 4 did change the sound - there was a bit more detail and the bass in particular was noticeably better (which as mentioned before does help the midrange). But no matter what I did, there still emerged a slight coarseness about the sound and I do feel this has a lot to do with the chassis coupling to the wood surface as opposed to a suspension-type of surface (rubberised, silicone, etc).
To support this belief, one configuration that worked best was the Garbo 4 sitting normally (directly on the rack surface), with some simple, cheap Herbies Audio sorbothane inserts between the top surface of the Garbo and the chassis underside. This was merely an experiment with what I happened to have at hand in the "parts bin". In this case, I got more of the sort of sound I would expect from a good footer and what other members have reported when using them (and also in reviews).
So at least to my way of thinking and based on my own experiments, the optimum sort of footer (at least for my components) would be one where the underside of the chassis couples with a surface with some yield and suspension-like properties and which sits firmly on the rack surface itself. In other words, I would put a wager on the A10-U8 sounding extremely good, but I'm not sure I am prepared to make a $700 gamble on it.
I would love to try the Entreq ES Pad (as it ticks the above boxes) but they are a really expensive foot - quite a lot more than the A10-U8. At any rate, if anyone here did want to have a go of the Entreq feet, only bother with the Lynx or ES Pads, though I suppose it might be a reasonable step to use the Garbo feet under some of the lesser (but larger) Entreq boxes in less critical roles. But that said, this forum has never really been about penny-pinching, so I don't see any reason for anyone here to compromise.
As a direct result of Mike and Bruce's recommendations I decided to try the Wave Kinetics A10-U8 footers .
A pack of four arrived last Saturday which I placed under my DCS Puccini to replace the four Stillpoint Ultra SSs on my Entreq Athena rack. Three of the four SSs went under one of my Silver Tellus ground boxes and the fourth was added to the three under my Audience Aspect.
I have now had a few extended listening sessions with the new set up and mainly sacds both rock (Abcko Rolling Stones) and classical (Esoteric Dvorak 9, Julia Fisher Bach Sonatas and Partitas Pentatone).
I am delighted with them. More body to the music, clearer lyrics, more defined leading edge attack and improved tonality and flow. I confess I have not sought to isolate the effects of the revised Stillpoint placement as compared with the A10-U8s simply because the revised set up works so well together and I am sure the changes have simply complemented each other.I am sure the major part of the benefits has come from the A10s as the improvement in sound quality is so much in line with Bruce's experience.
The build quality and aesthetics of the A10s is also very good, In addition the plastic tops and felt covered bottoms resolve any scratching issues which can so easily be a feature of Stillpoint use.
Will be ordering another two sets very soon. One is destined for the Rock turntable and the second under either the Poseidon or the Olympus Tellus which will give me a better fix on how much they will or will not benefit the grounding boxes which currently have only some modest RDC cones under them.
So many thanks Mike and Bruce for making me aware of the A10s.The combination of features and performance set out above adds up to a very good buy and I can gladly join Mike and Bruce in recommending them.
Will post on the next stage once I have got them up and running.
A pack of four arrived last Saturday which I placed under my DCS Puccini to replace the four Stillpoint Ultra SSs on my Entreq Athena rack. Three of the four SSs went under one of my Silver Tellus ground boxes and the fourth was added to the three under my Audience Aspect.
I have now had a few extended listening sessions with the new set up and mainly sacds both rock (Abcko Rolling Stones) and classical (Esoteric Dvorak 9, Julia Fisher Bach Sonatas and Partitas Pentatone).
I am delighted with them. More body to the music, clearer lyrics, more defined leading edge attack and improved tonality and flow. I confess I have not sought to isolate the effects of the revised Stillpoint placement as compared with the A10-U8s simply because the revised set up works so well together and I am sure the changes have simply complemented each other.I am sure the major part of the benefits has come from the A10s as the improvement in sound quality is so much in line with Bruce's experience.
The build quality and aesthetics of the A10s is also very good, In addition the plastic tops and felt covered bottoms resolve any scratching issues which can so easily be a feature of Stillpoint use.
Will be ordering another two sets very soon. One is destined for the Rock turntable and the second under either the Poseidon or the Olympus Tellus which will give me a better fix on how much they will or will not benefit the grounding boxes which currently have only some modest RDC cones under them.
So many thanks Mike and Bruce for making me aware of the A10s.The combination of features and performance set out above adds up to a very good buy and I can gladly join Mike and Bruce in recommending them.
Will post on the next stage once I have got them up and running.
Barry, they should give you a quantity discount. As for myself, I have decided after much experimentation at the budget end of the scale to use the far more humble Project Damp-it isolators. For the price, the performance of these have stunned me. I mean, you'd think rubber-type materials or elastomers were all the same. But it seems that they are not. They work exceptionally well under the CD player and even work under the lightweight entry level entreq boxes (with less effect, though this is perfectly understandable). Their only weakness at the price point is that they will mark wooden furniture - probably solved (I suspect) by using cup cake case cutouts between them and the wood surface as opposed to the extremely thin cardboard I use now.
Hi All,
I have recently seen the light and had spiritual experience when my friend and dealer of Entreq gear hear in NZ plugged in the Tellus II to my system. I wasn't expecting much and had many of the reservations outlined in various threads and sites across the globe. My jaw is still somewhere near the ground after experiencing a majority of what has been covered off in this thread. Fast forward 230 pages of whatsbest, every thread of information on the Entreq products I can find. A did have one question that you guys might be able to help with while my friend and dealer is enjoying the delights of Munich High End (Lucky bugger) I am currently running an integrated amp(NAF 300b), the new Tellus II is supposed to be the same in design as the Poseidon and have three separate boxes. On the Entreq site PO mentions that the ultimate connection for this box is ground wires to the negative speaker terminals. Given I don't need to connect much gear(Integrated, DAC and maybe Phono stage) I am keen to explore this. It does however mention on the website that wherever possible you should use the RCA earth wires. Has anyone grounded an integrated and if so tried the difference between using the interconnect inputs and speaker posts. I know each system is different and these boxes and cables can throw up surprising results but just wanted to throw the question out there and see if anyone had gone down that path....Cheers
I have recently seen the light and had spiritual experience when my friend and dealer of Entreq gear hear in NZ plugged in the Tellus II to my system. I wasn't expecting much and had many of the reservations outlined in various threads and sites across the globe. My jaw is still somewhere near the ground after experiencing a majority of what has been covered off in this thread. Fast forward 230 pages of whatsbest, every thread of information on the Entreq products I can find. A did have one question that you guys might be able to help with while my friend and dealer is enjoying the delights of Munich High End (Lucky bugger) I am currently running an integrated amp(NAF 300b), the new Tellus II is supposed to be the same in design as the Poseidon and have three separate boxes. On the Entreq site PO mentions that the ultimate connection for this box is ground wires to the negative speaker terminals. Given I don't need to connect much gear(Integrated, DAC and maybe Phono stage) I am keen to explore this. It does however mention on the website that wherever possible you should use the RCA earth wires. Has anyone grounded an integrated and if so tried the difference between using the interconnect inputs and speaker posts. I know each system is different and these boxes and cables can throw up surprising results but just wanted to throw the question out there and see if anyone had gone down that path....Cheers
welcome to WBF, and also welcome to the Entreq sickness.
in my system I use a Silver Tellus to ground my preamp (which includes my phono) and my dac, both with Eartha RCA's. in most systems the biggest single place to do signal path grounding is the preamp......that has been the consensus.
I also use a Poseidon's 2 outer boxes (with Atlantic Minimus's as force multipliers) to ground both of the negative speaker terminals on my amp mono blocks with Eartha spades.
I'd say you need to experiment, as I've seen no other feedback about what you are suggesting about the Silver Tellus II. try connecting to unused RCA outputs, and to the negative speaker terminals. just be careful with those speaker terminals as there is potential 'bad things' that can happen. I would view your integrated as 2 separate boxes in terms of signal path grounding until you prove to yourself that it does not matter where you connect your grounds.
and I'd verify with a multi-meter that the terminals on the Silver Tellus II are isolated from each other before you try the negative speaker terminals.
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