No it won't 'sink'. Take a car battery and connect it with one terminal to 'the dirt'. Nothing happens.
BUT you can use a length of dirt as part of a circuit - different concepts, different use. But it still is not 'sinking', it just acts as a connection between two different potentials.
The same goes for a sheet of steel. It will not 'sink', but you can use it as part of a circuit.
Jan
True, the circuit ground is not a sink, but lots of circuit designers treat it as such. When you ignore the fact that circuit ground is mainly a return path, then adding things like "ground side electrons" and the circuit or power ground connected to the "dirt box" device will seem effective; such devices will not be effective if the circuits are properly designed and layout, or there are other dominating deficiencies having a more dominate effect on the system sound.
Bit like downloading a 127 page book, read it till your head can't stand it anymore at page 45, to be informed you don't have a mind of your own.
PTL for the sanctuary of an unsavoury mindset.
PTL for the sanctuary of an unsavoury mindset.
So step 1 is not to buy badly designed equipment. It's easy to get right. So chose or build stuff that gets it right.
Your first step to enlightenment might be to stop refering to it as 'circuit ground'. Current flows from +ve and -ve rails back through the 0v point. Kirchoff is happy, the system is happy and 'ground' is not involved and should not be involved unless a fault occurs. Ground is for safety. Neutral is your (eventual) electron return.
Making sure your impedances are such that signals don't find a preferential route via the ground (safety) path requires a little thought, but as Marce has posted a link to that you know that the problem was thoroughly solved a LONG time ago. no flooby, no snake oil, just good engineering.
No designer I know threats it like that. I have a lot of diy friends that think of it like that, but that's because they are not a designer and don't know circuit theory 😉
Jan
You will be amazed with the unintended multiple paths the return current actually goes through in lots of circuits out there...which causes this kinds of grounding devices to have the capability to clean up sound...
If all linear circuits with flat responses were well designed, they should all sound the same. In fact, it would be quit difficult to find two devices to sound the same regardless of price.
I don't know about that. The equipment in my system is dominated by gear with balanced I/O where the return path is explicit and must work for the equipment to work. But even gear with unbalanced I/O is bound to have explicit return paths for both signal and power, or else it won't work well.
Placebophiles are convinced that the world is full of badly designed gear, and their perceptions are often biased to reinforce that myth.
Extremely unlikely.
BTW thanks for yet another example of how someone can read a piece like http://sites.ieee.org/ctx-emcs/files/2010/09/Archambeault-Ground-Myth.pdf (you did read it, right?) and perceive it as reinforcing ideas that most of us see it debunking.
Rule: People see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and read what they want to read, no matter what they see, hear or read.
Earth-NAP
Of course, the ultimate audiophile widget to snare audiophool $ would be a product which has some familiar characteristics or catch phrases, and should purport to treat a heretofore untreated (properly) problem.
For your consideration, I tender the EARTH-NAP.
This would consist of a pyramid shaped faraday cage, the width to be determined by multiplying the component breadth by pi, then multiplying that by phi.
The mesh ought to be made of audiophile approved teflon dielectric silver plated, copper stranded wire.
A lead of same suspends the pyramid above the component, then makes its way outdoors to an earth embedded silver plated copper stake.
How does it work?
What does it fix?
That's the NAP.
No Answers Provided.
Advance deposits enthusiastically collected.
Of course, the ultimate audiophile widget to snare audiophool $ would be a product which has some familiar characteristics or catch phrases, and should purport to treat a heretofore untreated (properly) problem.
For your consideration, I tender the EARTH-NAP.
This would consist of a pyramid shaped faraday cage, the width to be determined by multiplying the component breadth by pi, then multiplying that by phi.
The mesh ought to be made of audiophile approved teflon dielectric silver plated, copper stranded wire.
A lead of same suspends the pyramid above the component, then makes its way outdoors to an earth embedded silver plated copper stake.
How does it work?
What does it fix?
That's the NAP.
No Answers Provided.
Advance deposits enthusiastically collected.
I am very aware of the currents whizzing round a circuit board and can categorically say these boxes will do nothing but damage, it is effectively an antenna, I would not like to see what happens in an EMC lab on conducted immunity tests.
My whole job depends upon me positioning components and layout out the routes so that I minimise any interaction between signals that would be detrimental to the operation of the electronics, signal integrity and EMC. That is the point of good design and layout, there are no unintentional currents that I dont know about or the Electronics engineer in charge of the schematic has not considered. Its understanding signal flow and the return path, coupling methods between signals at various frequencies and minimising interaction between the sub circuits... Boxes of muck on the end of a wire dont come into it...
More.
http://emc27.elfak.ni.ac.rs/downloads/Grounding PEC'2013.pdf
I agree. But there are still some things that are not seen during EMC conductivity testing. I think the lab I used could only go down to about 50Khz.
Not all that relevant because audio product design is strongly based on testing throughout the audio band and below.
While dealing with power filtering, that was the range necessary. While it is easy to comply with requirements, but when complying with requirements results in muffled sound, that is when the fun begins.
I'm thinking that you've never seen "muffled sound" disappear when people are required to identify sound quality without non-audible cues.
For openers, please explain to me how an audio system that is designed to work without external grounding would have muffled sound if ungrounded.
Just saw this in another forum.
A zip of wav files using a grounding box.
https://m.sendspace.com/file/gcquhk
A zip of wav files using a grounding box.
https://m.sendspace.com/file/gcquhk
Muffled sound can be caused by many things, two people could use the expression while hearing very different things. So it is really not possible to provide an explanation unless listening and fixing a specific issue.
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