Speed Kills

[DonH50]

Hi Tom,

I almost hate to bring this into the fray, but... Years ago I did something very similar to the earlier suggestion of grounding a preamp with a big honkin' wire to an earth ground (a rod outside the room, actually). The sound improved significantly. It about drove me nuts (ok, it's a short drive) trying to figure out the root cause. Turned out it was RFI sneaking in, rectifying in the front end, and putting a bit of strange "noise" into the system. The grounding scheme actually provided a better RF ground for the preamp's case (a tube pre, FWIW) and "blocked" the RF. One of the few times I used an RF spectrum analyzer on an audio system...

No magic, but now and then a mystery... - Don

 

[fas42]

I almost hate to bring this into the fray, but... Years ago I did something very similar to the earlier suggestion of grounding a preamp with a big honkin' wire to an earth ground (a rod outside the room, actually). The sound improved significantly. It about drove me nuts (ok, it's a short drive) trying to figure out the root cause. Turned out it was RFI sneaking in, rectifying in the front end, and putting a bit of strange "noise" into the system. The grounding scheme actually provided a better RF ground for the preamp's case (a tube pre, FWIW) and "blocked" the RF. One of the few times I used an RF spectrum analyzer on an audio system...

No magic, but now and then a mystery... - Don

And that says it all, Don. You need some heavy duty measuring gear to tell you what's really going on, and it's happening to a greater or lesser degree with almost all equipment. Hence the nightmare of trying to make sense of the business ...

Frank