Grounding boxes

Why are you keen to dismiss someone who wants to apply some critical analysis?

Good point, well made, Paul.

The point is that even if it works the pricing could still be a rip-off. It depends on how it works which is why we are interested in that side of it.

As much as I’d like to see it, I genuinely wonder if a budget version would get many sales. I doubt it would appeal to high end system owners because they would want to spend 4 figures to fit in with their system and cable prices.

If anyone could get away with marketing one at a lower price it would be Schiit. “Schiit Kitti” anyone?

It's about context.

£2.4k for a box of 'secret ingredients'?

£130 for a fuse?

I've got an open mind about what works...but a closed mind about that sort of pricing.

I'll listen to both of the above but I absolutely won't entertain paying that sort of money for a magic box or a fuse.

Not in so many words no, but it’s been implied a lot.

Oh my argument isn’t about the price.

I struggle with Naim because it’s highly expensive for very average kit.

But I have spent a lot more than most would on both Speaker and interconnect cabling because I felt it was better than anything else I’d heard, and had wa willing to spend my disposable incoming on it. That’s my point.

If I were to demonstrate to you that exactly the same sound quality could be obtained for a tenth of the price you paid for your cables and interconnects would you then feel that you'd been ripped off? Or at least acknowledge that you had paid a lot more than you in fact needed to?

Too right, Sunshine. Too right. A case of me to know and you to find out. A bit like forum owners and their don't do as I do do as I say mentality.

I bet the Germans aren't having this discussion. I bet they're snapping them up.

Peter Belt must be looking down and pissing himself at this.

Gonna get me a meter and investigate.

So you'd have spent a lot more money than you needed to purely because of a lack of knowledge. There was something just as good and a lot cheaper but you did not know about it. 

So knowledge is important, it's worth having, it could, hypothetically, save you a lot of money. That's why a lot of dealers and manufacturers don't want you getting all interested in what's going on behind the curtain. They're also aware of the power of the imagination and how, accompanied by a little bit of subtle suggestion, their 'All you need to do is listen' advice will get them a sale almost every time.

Well the obvious answer there would be if you want to know then do your own damn capacitor shoot-out. 


I don't blame people for not giving away their secrets if that's what's putting food on the table. 


Although in the case of the grounding boxes I'm starting to move away from thinking that even the manufacturers don't know how they work to the far simpler conclusion that they don't actually work at all except in a psychological sense.

...and you'd be right.

Let's come at it from another way. Can anyone think of a field of scientific endeavour where they use wooden boxes full of Sh#t to improve the signal to noise ratio of an electrical device? Mass spectrometry? Sonar on submarines? Maybe they have a Sh#t tonne of them attached to the particle accelerator at CERN?

How can it be that with all the electrical engineers paid big bucks to improve signal to noise on a myriad of electrical and electronic devices the world over that not a single one of them came up with this solution?

Can there be a benefit to rearranging gnd connections between devices in an electrical system? Sure there can. Is the best way to do this by randomly plugging in wires to a cigar box full of cat litter? No, it's by following the rigorous application of decades worth of knowledge and experience in building complex electrical systems and measuring the results.

Do some people prefer something just because it's different from what they had? Sure they do.

I've just ordered a meter.

Going back to Peter Belt. Some thought he was a right nutter. And some (manufacturers included) thought there was something to be gained from his "shinanigans".

Well, the 'someone else' might be hard of hearing, or have differently-shaped ears or lack that vital 'sixth sense'. It goes to show that, to establish 'real' differences (leaving 'improvements' out of the question), blind tests are essential. That way, you won't be listening for a difference, because you won't know whether the gizmos in question is actually connected to the system.