Spectral & grounding schemes

ack

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
May 6, 2010
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Boston, MA
At the advise of my dealer, and as I also found out myself, lifting the ground on my amps sounds smoother, and in fact, it removes a very slight hum out one of them. Recently, and because I am plugging everything into the Shunyata Denali 6000/S v2, I decided to experiment with routing chassis grounds (amps and preamp) to the Denali's ground plug, aka GP-NR, which is claimed to be connected to one of those noise-reducing NICs (as are the regular ground prongs). I am not sure I am hearing any difference, and I surely DID NOT get that slight buzz back, but was wondering if anyone else has tried something like this and what you hear...

Part of why I did this is because I measured a resistive path from the black speaker terminal to the chassis screw, of around 200 ohms

spectral-ground.JPG
 

Hiempie

Well-Known Member
May 6, 2016
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150
Hi Ack,

Have you any experience with playing floating (not using earth) on preamp and amp? How long do you play that way? Are you also using a special audio fuse in your cub board? I do 20 amp with a special earth pen for grouncing 0,8 ohm only in use for my audio.
More Music told me to do also but I haven't tried it yet I am a bit axious about not using earth?

Just curious about the blue parts on the cooling vin's where are they for?

Greetz Hiempie
 

ack

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
May 6, 2010
6,774
1,198
580
Boston, MA
Never tested with no earth ground. And I was wrong above about lifting the ground on the amps, at this point. This is something I tried a while ago, but instead, the Yggy2's ground is lifted, as I confirmed yesterday, and it was the source of the very slight buzzing I has having last year. Nonetheless, star-grounding the chassis of the amps, preamp and Yggy on the Denali v2 has rendered small but significant results.
 

stevebythebay

Well-Known Member
Oct 21, 2012
242
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948
My experience with all Spectral amps (stereo though latest Anniversary mono blocks) = low level hum. This, my dealer told me, was a typical problem, that’s erased with lifting ground. No matter whether the amps are plugged into the Everest, or as I do today, give each its own 20a circuit. As for using chassis grounding, I’ve found that nothing I’ve plugged into my Everest (or prior Denali 6000/T) benefits from the Shunyata CGS. Might give your approach for the Spectal amps a try. I’d played with signal grounding via star-grounding but also found little benefit. However that was using Ted Denny’s initial products. So there may be more effective solutions out there.
 
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Hiempie

Well-Known Member
May 6, 2016
67
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My latest change 260 to 300 RS no hum anymore! I believe the hum was caused by the transformer in the 260 the 300RS uses newer transformers better for the 230v 50 Hz environ here in the Netherlands. I use from the cupboard a special very good shielded Kemp cable direct connected to a 25 amp Siemens Cylindric fuse cardrige gold plated and seperate grounding 0,8 ohm only in use for audio.
 

TooCool4

Well-Known Member
Feb 7, 2013
960
939
925
England
Reviving an old thread, just a quick question ack. The blue things you have in between the cooling fins, is that for stopping any possible vibrations in the chassis? If so, do you notice a difference in the sound?
 

dan31

Well-Known Member
Jul 22, 2010
1,016
365
1,153
SF Bay
Ack no longer posts here. Maybe he will respond. I believe Ack was using pieces of sorbethane isodamp to keep any potential vibration from the chassis to a minimum. He uses the product extensively in his system.
 

TooCool4

Well-Known Member
Feb 7, 2013
960
939
925
England
Thanks for the info dan31
 

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