Star Grounding

[Steve Williams]

Who uses this on their system?

[Gregadd]

Steve per Bruce's recommendation, I try to plug as many componenets as possible directly into the wall. I am getting good results. I do have to plug some components into an Isotel circuit breaker/power cube. II don't have enough wall outlets.
Here's a way we can spend even more of our money, High end extension cords!

[RogerD]

Steve I use star grounding. I have 4 20amp outlets with direct lines, but I also have a 12ga wire from my preamp to the preamp wall outlet center screw. My transport, DAC, sattelite receiver and monoblocks are all tied to my preamp individually with 14ga wire. I tried this with my Vac 140's but the benefit was negated because the Vacs use star grounding. My SS Platinum monoblocks do like the extra wire to the preamp.

If I lift the amp wire it is immediatley noticeable,like throwing a switch. The benifits are more transparency, highs that seem to float in the air, and a overall larger better soundstage. My C200 preamp is easy to do this because it has many screws on the overal chassis. I have never consulted a electronics professional about this, but a cable manufactuer told me that most power conditioners use star grounding.

I had a audiophile friend drop by today and he always comments how the speakers totally dissapear in my system, most impressive.

Roger

btw even though it is noticeable from the start, over about 30 minutes it seems to improve and may continue for a few hours.

[ack]

I do too - both mono amps and the sub are on the same power conditioner. Reason being that, placing them in separate conditioners (also outlets) introduces hum, due to ground difference between the different outlets! There is basically ground potential which manifests as hum. Star grounding solves this.

[Mark (Basspig) Weiss]

It's not always easy to implement. I have a dedicated 150-ampere, 240vac feed to the amp racks for my sound system. Everything there is star topology, however... my projector, computer workstations and mixing desk are on another branch circuit. Some ground loop hum comes through the HDMI connection to the PJ. But it's way down in -100dB territory and is only audible with the preamp volume cranked past 12 o'clock. I've worked on improving s/n because of the extraordinarily high efficiency of my speakers. Any little ground loop resulted in hum loud enough to hear throughout the entire house. I now have that down to inaudible with the use of careful wiring methods and flipping polarities of plugs on individual amplifiers and other components.

[DonH50]

I have in the past on my system but am not now (hard to achieve and not required, at least after some tweaks to eliminate ground loops). It can be difficult to implement correctly, particularly with an audio system, and is not a panacea... I use the idea much more often in test systems at work, where I have much more control over signal and power routing, and is still a pain (and doesn't always help).

Mark -- 150 A @ 240 V!!! Please tell me that's not for your home system...

[silviajulieta]

Dear Steve: As almost all of you I have too an electrical dedicated line and a true eart/ground connection. All my electronics are connected to the electrical source in " floating " fashion and only my Phonolinepreamp has direct earth/ground connection. In this way all the system has only one ground reference, works fine.

regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

[Mark (Basspig) Weiss]

Mark -- 150 A @ 240 V!!! Please tell me that's not for your home system...

Uh, yeah, it is. Assuming I had the breaker capacity, the system could top 200A load with sine wave test signal at full power. Each QSC amplifier can pull 92A and the Haflers, in the config I use, can pull close to 20A each.

[John72953]

What is Star Grounding? Never ever heard this term before.

John

[DonH50]

Uh, yeah, it is. Assuming I had the breaker capacity, the system could top 200A load with sine wave test signal at full power. Each QSC amplifier can pull 92A and the Haflers, in the config I use, can pull close to 20A each.

Scary, Mark, but I bet it sounds great! I'm guessing headroom is not a concern...