Fair, if you have a bunch of money in your bank, younger people on the other hand are not entering this hobby in anything like the numbers, and products such as that discussed here become ever more prevalent, wildly over priced pieces of metal capturing that ever diminishing market of rich people.
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Don’t hold with that. Sonos, Muso endless products at the entry level, just different from the music centre, midi system, Dual days.
The simple answer might be: if it definitely works, then it shouldn’t be difficult to demonstrate this in a conclusive and repeatable manner, without relying on only personal / subjective testimony.
At this time, the GroundARAY ticks most of the boxes that would apply to pseudo-scientific products. That doesn’t mean that it can’t work in the way it is presented, but it does raise a few alarms. This could be resolved either by Chord themselves presenting more conclusive information about the way it works, or by others testing the product in a way that removes unintended bias as much as possible from the evaluation.
The problem with many of these types of products is that their efficacy is never conclusively proven. The Shakti Stones for example that i posted earlier have been on the market since the mid-nineties. But so far in 30 years it has not been demonstrated that they objectively have an effect, there are only magazine articles and personal testimony about them available. Yet they are still sold, and they are still bought by audiophiles.
Since there are thousands of these products on the market, if we as a community want to avoid that everyone has to go out and try each of these products for themselves, then ideally we could come up with an approach where we can say more conclusively whether products are likely or not to have a real, practical effect. It could save the community as a whole a lot of time and money, and it would help to promote honest and reliable information about products as much as possible.
In general though, technology should not contain any magical formulas, components or effects. If the way a product works is really unclear or even requires a degree of faith, then there is enough reason to be sceptical about it’s claims.
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Better idea, why don’t you just not bother?
You have the option of trying one but haven’t/won’t and then expect others to prove that it works or not, but so far have refused to accept their opinions, be they +ve or -ve.
It’s a hobby, have some fun. Stop whinging and try one.
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Poking the loop of surplus power cord into a glass milk bottle (or, if possible, an earthenware or ceramic vase) will shield it from extraneous RF.
To be fair he has avoided using the dreaded ‘b t’ phrase.
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Who’s whinging? There’s another forum called something like Audio Science Reviewed or similar. If you’re not familiar, it’s a chap measuring various aspects of mainly DACs and/or headphone amplifiers. Those that measure well are generally well reviewed, those that measure badly aren’t - seemingly regardless of how they actually sound (basically it ‘can’t’ sound good if it measures badly…). It’s interesting because there’s plenty of stuff that measures badly that I think sounds great, and vice versa. Trusting ears is one thing, but when someone is demonstrably proving you’re a cloth eared idiot it does get you thinking. It doesn’t bother me much either way - I’m open to the idea I like distortion / colouration. But I still like checking out the site because at least it’s provable
He’s busy working on the ‘Expensive Speaker Cable: Brilliant or Bollocks?’ thread.
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Speaker Cables must be categorised into ‘Boutique or Basement’
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It keeps people amused. I’m rather surprised it’s still trundling along to be honest. This type of product has always appealed to the tweaky tendency in some, otherwise how would black ravioli, oak cones, cleaning sprays and all sorts ever sell? I must say I was rather taken with the lipstick bling of the Ansuz, which make the Chord jobbies look rather pedestrian.
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Please would members respect forum rules - specifically regarding importing and referencing discussion/arguments here from other forums. Thanks.
Right that’s it, bollocks I’ve gone from zero to weird fascination. Next time I’m at a certain emporium near Leicester I’m going to try this thing. Remind me where do I stick it?
Go for it Lindsay. You soon won’t be able to get a Christmas tree, a turkey or pigs in blankets, so you may as well have a GroundARAY. Never mind food, feel those bollocks.
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That is brilliant!
Nordost has a well-written article on signal grounding in audio systems (search for “nordost importance of electrical grounding”).
The working principle is to create an ‘artificial’ ground, a sink of lower-impedance than the house earth ground, so that high-frequency noise on the signal ground will drain away, leaving a clean reference behind.
Naim’s ground lift switch is mentioned.
Jan
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That is about the first possible explanation on this thread that has made any sense to me. But… if the Aray is plugged into the back of say an NDX2, the noise goes into the Aray but then where does it go? The Aray is only small and is connected only to the NDX2 in this example. Is it somehow converting noise to heat and radiating it out?
Edit: having looked again at the Chord blurb, that’s exactly what they say the Aray is doing. Maybe I’ve found a tangible benefit - with rocketing fuel prices they can help to heat the house. The more HF noise you have the hotter they get. Everyone’s a winner.
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I’m not an engineer but that sounds dangerous to me. Wouldn’t that mean that in case of electrical problems, the GroundARAY would act as a lightning rod instead of current going to the actual/real ground?
And how would this work without there being a circuit / loop, as @Xanthe earlier explained? The GroundARAY is only an endpoint after all.
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There is no loop. The virtual ground is basically a spur taken from the components 0v. As you said, it’s an endpoint, it doesn’t go anywhere.