ML's With Audio Prism Ground Control

PubTone...Tone Publications

Ouch, PUBTONE is an objective reviewer that makes judgments without having ever touched a product let alone listened...this is not just about AudioPrism Ground Control but the many many new discoveries that will enhance our hobby in the future!

Sorry...that pubicaton is now off my list of valuable audio reading.

Audionut2

Here's a cheaper clone of the GROUND CONTROL at a tiny fraction of their price. http://www.tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/EVS_Ground_Enhancers.html


Supposedly the same sound improvement as the GC. Here's a cracking review of them http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/tweaks/messages/17/172657.html

audionut2 said:

Ouch, PUBTONE is an objective reviewer that makes judgments without having ever touched a product let alone listened...this is not just about AudioPrism Ground Control but the many many new discoveries that will enhance our hobby in the future!

Sorry...that pubicaton is now off my list of valuable audio reading.

Audionut2

Click to expand...

Yes Nut,

It's quite clear you have a personal agenda against Jeff. If I recall correctly, you had a recent post with a similar rant.

I'm confident Jeff will be extremely upset that you have pulled his publication from your "valuable audio reading" list.

GG

Gordon Gray said:

Yes Nut,

It's quite clear you have a personal agenda against Jeff. If I recall correctly, you had a recent post with a similar rant.

I'm confident Jeff will be extremely upset that you have pulled his publication from your "valuable audio reading" list.

GG

Click to expand...

Yep, no introduction, only two posts, and both of them dissing Jeff. Pretty clear why nut has joined the forum, and it isn't to discuss Martin Logans.

His loss. Agreed this poster's agenda is pretty clear. I find Tone an excellent online magazine.

FYI:-
I just got off the phone with Rick Schultz of Electronic Visionary Systems. Apparently TONEPUB has just purchased a couple of sets of his GROUND ENHANCERS to test for his magazine. Should be interesting, what with TONEPUB being a sceptic.

I just ordered my Christmas present, 2 more sets of regular ground control for the woofer section of my Odyssey's and for my MOON amp.Now, I am really looking forward to Dec 25. I will be grounded to my stereo room on the 26th.

Brian, I would agree with Bud on the regular gc for your application. After reading the Audiogon review by member Ozzy in one of the links I supplied on the 1st post I decided to skip the reference version altogether. Ozzy tried both the reference and regular versions in all application, speakers, amp etc and reported his findings. I think people automatically gravitate to the word (reference) as being better, not so.

Cheers, Greg

Dan Osib said:

FYI:-
I just got off the phone with Rick Schultz of Electronic Visionary Systems. Apparently TONEPUB has just purchased a couple of sets of his GROUND ENHANCERS to test for his magazine. Should be interesting, what with TONEPUB being a sceptic.

Click to expand...

I think a healthy skepticism is a good thing to have.

tonepub said:

And the explanation behind the "technology" in this device is beyond ludicrous on their website. Most vintage tube amplifiers didn't sound great because of a ground plane, many of them sounded good because of the care that went into winding the transformers, the purity of the copper used in those transformers and the much higher quality of the vacuum tubes used.

Ask anyone at CJ, ARC, or McIntosh and they will tell you the same thing.

As for the ground plane, almost no one in contemporary audio design uses a buss bar anymore because it acts like an RF antenna. Science has caught up with things a bit in 75 years and there's a lot more RF in the air.

This really is one of the poorest excuses for science I've seen in a long time.

Click to expand...

Speaking of hype, any comments regarding the following?

"...among the most detailed, transparent yet warm speaker cables available at any price; their deep bass impact and pitch definition are particularly impressive. In independent dealer and audiophile listening tests, they have bested MIT, Transparent, Nordost and Audioquest cables costing up to $15,000.

Here’s what’s special about our speaker cables: they’re handmade from silver-microplated, single strand, high-purity copper wire that is drawn and heat-treated to our specs. Our cable is coated with ultrathin, nearly loss-free insulation, twisted into a super-tight, field-cancelling helix. Each cable is given four hours of our proprietary crystal-modifying treatment.

Design and Performance:
• Far lower dielectric losses than any "garden hose" cable encased in thick plastic, due to our ultra-thin dielectric coating (under two ten-thousandths of an inch) using a better-than-teflon polymer selected by ear from among hundreds.

• High purity copper conductors, drawn, heat-treated and silver-plated to our proprietary specification.

• Thin diameter, single strand wire to greatly reduce skin effect relative to fat gauge "garden hoses". Based on hundreds of hours of meticulous listening tests, the diameter we use optimizes the balance between skin effect losses and resistance losses.

• Proprietary dual helix field-cancelling, two shielded-conductor configuration with our unique common grounding scheme to minimize all signal interactions between the + and - signal conductors.

WARNING: DO NOT USE ANY BREAK-IN DEVICES OF ANY KIND ON OUR WIRES! They will seriously degrade the sound. Use only music to break in our cables. The recommended break-in period for standard Clearview Cables is 30-50 hours; 150-300 hours for cables with PLUS Upgrade. Feel free to install and listen to our cables immediately, they'll sound really good after about an hour. But you won't hear their full potential until they have been broken-in thoroughly."

Or:
"...pushed the boundaries of cable technology even further, refining the micro mono-filament approach still further. By using two, precision twisted filaments in a similar helical wind arrangement, we can reduce dielectric contact below the 85% point while further increasing the air-gap and improving the mechanical damping and Propagation Delay value. It’s an incredibly difficult construction to achieve, requiring previously impossible levels of precision to manufacture consistently, which only xxxxxxx's proprietary extrusion technology can master. The differences might seem small, but when you are operating at or beyond the cutting edge, small differences can prove surprisingly significant. The proof of the pudding is in the listening. If xxxxxxx's micro mono-filament xxxxxxx cables established a new reference for performance, it is a standard that has now been totally eclipsed by the dual micro mono-filament xxxxs – a new supreme reference for audio signal transfer."

OK, all you engineer's out there -- does all (or any) of this really make sense? Inquiring minds wan to know...

Mapleshade hype

Hi Len,

Won't comment on the science but will say the following regarding the first item.

All agree that Pierre's marketing is over the top. Having said that, I have had Mapleshade speaker cables, IC's, PC's, and brass cones in my system and they offer substantial value for the dollar. A defensible criticism of Pierre's speaker cable is that they are on the "light" side of the equation. They are also extremely quick, transparent, and dimensional. Depending on one's system, they could be a very good match.

They do offer a 30 day money back on all their non custom items. And Pierre, the Sound Engineer, makes some absolutely phenomenal recordings. Mapleshade, the label, is one of the best (read top five) CD labels I have in my collection.

You should try one and it might give you some insight into the sound of Pierre's wire.

GG

Gordon Gray said:

Hi Len,

Won't comment on the science but will say the following regarding the first item.

All agree that Pierre's marketing is over the top. Having said that, I have had Mapleshade speaker cables, IC's, PC's, and brass cones in my system and they offer substantial value for the dollar. A defensible criticism of Pierre's speaker cable is that they are on the "light" side of the equation. They are also extremely quick, transparent, and dimensional. Depending on one's system, they could be a very good match.

They do offer a 30 day money back on all their non custom items. And Pierre, the Sound Engineer, makes some absolutely phenomenal recordings. Mapleshade, the label, is one of the best (read top five) CD labels I have in my collection.

You should try one and it might give you some insight into the sound of Pierre's wire.

GG

Click to expand...

Thanks -- think I just might. I am an optimist, after all.

Len,

If you like jazz, the first MS CD to purchase is the Clifford Jordan Quartet / Live at Ethell's.

GG

tonepub said:

I take it you're the one that makes these little gizmos, and that's why you're so offended?

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Hi Guys,

Now this is an interesting thread. Coming in a little late to the game here, but having parsed the various comments and responses, it sure sounds like there are a few different mindsets on these GC badboys. My background (and current line of work) is in the semicon biz. I've designed many o' test board in my day and we virtually always employ multi-layered PCBs, dedicating one or more of those layers to ground planes. The concept is fairly straight forward... for any routed signal trace (and this goes for point2point wiring as well), you always (ideally) want a ground plane co-located along the signal path. For higher frequencies this is very important in order to maintain a constant characteristic impedance for the signal path. Any deviation from this impedance will result in a diminishment of ideal signal transfer from source to destination (i.e. reflections)... thus impacting signal integrity. Now, this usually only really matters for signal frequencies well above the audible range, but some argue there is some impact within the audible range as well. I'm not one of those arguers, but that's beside the point. Just offering up this contribution from my own experience and p.o.v.

Oh, and BTW, anyone with a decent o'scope that includes an FFT function could very quickly run some with/without comparison tests to determine if the GC is appreciably affecting the signal across the speaker load.

Cheers,

-tv

tsv_1 said:

Hi Guys,


Oh, and BTW, anyone with a decent o'scope that includes an FFT function could very quickly run some with/without comparison tests to determine if the GC is appreciably affecting the signal across the speaker load.

Cheers,

-tv

Click to expand...

Now that would be interesting!

Gordon Gray said:

Len,

If you like jazz, the first MS CD to purchase is the Clifford Jordan Quartet / Live at Ethell's.

GG

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll order it this week.

Hi Todd,

I will report back after Christmas when I put an additional sets of gc on the bass for the Odyssey's and also on the amp.It's going to take a lot of restraint to save them for Christmas.

I guess you had a lot of reading to do on this thread. If you are interested in a pair, I suggest the standard spade gc for your stator panels to start with.

Cheers, Greg

Funny how this thread does such a herky jerky fast forward after weeks of slumber.

For part of the cable thingy. What the fellow means is he is using silver plated copper wire, with a coating over every strand of wire. This is what underlies all Teflon insulated lead wire. I suppose it is possible that his 0.002 thick coating is also Teflon, but that is well below the thickness that material needs for any kind of mechanical strength or adhesion to a silver surface. The rest of the description is that of Litz type one weave. Hopefully he is actually meeting the 10 times effective surface area, when compared to a single solid conductor of the same copper area rule, that begins the qualifying list for Litz.

Does Litz sound best? Only if you get enough strands, so that it has less than 0.01% more RAC than RDC, for three times the rated frequency response in question. At that point, the cables have no audible and very little measurable difference between a 6 inch length and a nine foot length. They are absolutely phase coherent across the audio FR band and are immune to anything short of being draped over the top of a power transformer, without any woven shield over the whole thing. They are thin, ridiculously flexible, expensive to source the materials for, in bulk quantities, and much much more expensive, in anything less than those quantities.

They are a PITA to work with and a bit more fragile than ordinary Anaconda snake cable. When done right, with just the right amount of dielectric material, of just the right dielectric constant and absorption, they are sonically invisible, period. Nothing better, no matter the cost. I will let you all know when my own Litz cables become available, sometime in early 2011. they won't be quite as high a Q as the silver coated items spoken of, but then, they won't be as expensive either, as I already buy my 5+ nines copper Litz magnet wire in bulk, for Ground Controls and ridiculously over the top, information rich, high end output transformers for both solid state and tube amps.

Bud

UltraAudio's review of the Audioprisms:

http://www.ultraaudio.com/index.php...-cables&catid=37:full-length-reviews&Itemid=2

Interesting, and refreshing to see an "honest" review (for better or worse)!

Of note, I recently bought a pair of Ric Schultz' (bare wire non terminated) EVS Ground Enhancers (a knockoff of the Ground Controls), and finally installed them today on the negative (bass) terminals of my Summits. No time for extended listening today, but at first blush they seem to have lowered the noise floor a tad, but no discernable change in treble nor soundstage/imaging. I'm hoping to convince my wife, or one of the kids, to assist with a blinded comparison!

Actually, all of the reviews have been "honest", for better or worse, we haven't bought a single one yet and not all previous reviews have been positive.

I am interested by this reviewers comment about the stringed instruments sounding "prettier". It may have been the first time he has heard a stringed instrument with the "highs" embedded in a complete sound, as opposed to a more "impressive" and isolated, leading edge only portrayal. I am unsure just how a rolled off high end, one actually lacking the information, could be said to be "prettier", as opposed to just dull and uninformative.

Bud