thanks Dad.
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If it didn’t work like that on/off switches wouldn’t work either!
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A wooden box filled with crystals and copper bands… how very ‘new age’!
Also not connected to anything, therefore no complete circuit see above.
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What’s wrong with ‘brilliant’?
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Judging from the marketing text, i think there is a pretty good chance that the GroundARAY follows roughly the same idea as the Entreq boxes:
Each GroundARAY is painstakingly built by hand at Chord Company’s Wiltshire factory, including the system components themselves. The GroundARAY comprises a number of absorption devices, attached with a highly advanced double ultra-high-bandwidth connector system. The connectors are made to a very high standard, demanding time-consuming hand-assembly by factory technicians.
Each GroundARAY cylinder is filled with a carefully chosen material to deaden noise. The final assembly is then locked into place to reduce any effects from acoustic vibration.
The ‘highly advanced double ultra-bandwidth connector system’ part seems a bit odd since they appear to be passive devices, so i’m not sure how that would work.
But there are people on this forum that say they work. They’ve paid thousands for them and don’t seem disappointed.
You suggested in a recent post you don’t know everything.
Perhaps this is a case of you don’t know how they work.
Yet.
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Just because you are not sure how they work, doesn’t mean they don’t work.
For that reason i was careful to keep my comment neutral! 
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Has anyone done a blind test?
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Richard….the boys are being naughty again.
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The concept of a floating drain isn’t controversial and it seems like that is what it provides.
For example, my Luxman speaker cables have 3 cores and I asked them direct if this was for earthed speaker designs. They said “No. it’s a floating drain to reduce noise on the live cores. It shouldn’t be connected to anything at either end.”
And as has been said (though it took 700 comments to get there), signal ground and earth ground are not the same. And unless you have a dedicated earth post for the hifi, you really don’t want your signal ground ever meeting your earth ground. At least not without a very high quality earth shunt to prevent backflow from other sources of noise.
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It’s not the same box in the pictures you show. The upper is a fake. They work. Try them out if you can. I have one for my Ethernet. Great stuff.
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I just find it hard to believe Chord would be cynical enough to come up with something and market it in such a way if it’s complete bollocks. Perhaps I’m being naive…but they make really respected cables (of course there are plenty of folk who swear cables make no difference…) so why get into foil hat territory.
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Money. Extracting the last few quid from this dying hobby.
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Dying hobby? I can never recall a greater or more diverse range of products.
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Forgive my ignorance but is the point of the Earth as safety ground not that it is made of dirt, but that the Earth is huge and therefore provides a virtually infinite sink for charge, and hence a constant potential reference. A small box filled with dirt does not seem to be the same thing as Earth
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Indeed. Drive a copper rod (or other unobtanium hi fi premium metal) in to the earth outside the front door and star wire all your hi fi casework and earth points back to your rod utilising similar hi fi unobtanium cable.
Jobs an orange root vegetable.
The size of the earth yes. But the object used as the earth only needs to be sized relative to the signal.
For example, the case on most hifi is a large enough chunk of conductive metal, that this is generally used for the the signal ground. And it isn’t generally connected to earth ground because the case is generally quieter than what is on your mains earth ground (AC units, washing machines, etc. A dedicated radial or spur won’t help there without a shunt).
We could speculate to the ends of the earth. I might postulate that such a device provides a very low resistance path for noise. I still think it would be better to approach Chord Co. and ask them, ideally producing a white paper if they can. Naim did this with DR tech.
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Thanks, makes sense to me. But then, what’s the point of using dirt instead of the case metal or whatever else is used normally? The manufacturers’ descriptions seem to be drawing a magical connection between the boxed dirt and Mother Earth.
As for getting whitepapers out of Chord - good luck
Zen
I initially used the word controversy.
……only applied to Naim switch controversy.
It was a reply to Mike, concerning the function of the switch. I had said it was to connect Naim equipment to (insert correct technical term). Mike said it was to disconnect Naim equipment from (insert correct technical term).
The use of the term controversy was an exaggeration, an attempt at humour, sarcasm, as both statements are actually correct.
This was subsequently misinterpreted, which is fine, that’s what happens in forums.