this weekend i tried a few different things with my Entreq grounding and i'm happy to report some performance advances by re-tasking my existing Entreq gear.
i've made zero system changes since last June, when i moved my Taiko Tana/Herzan units to under my darTZeel 458 monoblock amplifiers. it's just been listening and enjoying since then. i've not had anything new to report......so have been pretty quiet about things.
i'd been pondering some tweak checks of my grounding anyway, and i had been talking to another darTZeel owner who had found that grounding the negative speaker terminals on his dart amps was not positive (caused some clarity reduction) for him and so he removed it. it has been a few years since i had added the Entreq Poseidon and done that negative speaker terminal grounding. i had also done the grounding of the bass tower amps at that same time and the whole picture had been a clearly positive move.
so yesterday i listened to an hour of my standard test tracks and then removed that grounding of the negative speaker terminals on my amps. then i listened to those same test tracks again. there was a definite small cleaning up of the presentation; an increase in clarity. a slight bit more vivid. later yesterday i inserted the grounding back onto the negative speaker terminals, and listened again to those same tracks, i could hear the slight congestion......so i removed them and clearer again. i was satisfied to keep them removed. a nice little boost to clarity.
i had been using 2 of the 3 modules of the Poseidon for those amp negative speaker terminals, plus 2 Olympus Minimus boxes for that purpose, plus two 'infinity' upgraded Eartha Atlantis cables, so i thought about what i might do with those. i had been using the middle Poseidon module plus one Olympus Minimus box for my bass tower amps. i decided to add those now idle modules and boxes to the bass tower application. so i separated each grounding cable from the bass amps from the single center module to each side module (including the Olympic Minimus) and then also connected the center module and it's Olympis Minimus to each side module. in essence using three modules and three Olympic Minimus's for the two bass towers all connected together. so triple the grounding capacity compared to before.
i knew from before that it takes some time for this stuff to manifest itself in terms of full traction. this morning when i made the change the bass was better. but tonight, 7-8 hours later it's much more noticeably better. imaging and ambient presence are more holographic and disconnected from the speakers, and more distinct and real. there is more weight and slam, and just overall a more robust and commanding feeling with greater ease. a more natural, propulsive, compelling, and immersive presentation. objectively a slight change, but musically important.
i've loved how my bass is, and now it's just that little bit better overall.
the slight added clarity compliments the added bass flow and it's a nice overall step up. it's fun to find some progress just by being open minded to feedback.
i will live with this a week or two and see how i feel about it then.
