|
The
boys’ night in
On Tuesday
evenings, the husband of a couple who summer
in a town not far from ours drops by for
some listening as his wife attends a
life-drawing session. My Tuesday-evening
guest holds a PhD in electrical engineering
– a no-nonsense, measurements-and-numbers
kind of guy.
But flexible. His skepticism with respect to
audio’s weird-science accouterments was
earlier eroded by a simple now-it’s-on,
now-it’s-off demonstration of Acoustic
Revive’s RR-77, which operates, or so they
say, on a principle identified as the
Schumann Resonance. I’ve mentioned this
product in my Random Noise columns.
The important thing is, he likes good sound
and listens with an open mind. Before we
settled down, I asked him to look at a
statement accompanying AudioPrism’s Ground
Control. It discusses ground planes in an
historical context and segues to the GC’s
purpose and accomplishments.
My friend didn’t get it. The statement
wasn’t convincing, nor, he thought – at
least to look at – was the Ground Control
itself, consisting in the main of a few of
inches of copper wire encased in a tiny
sock. I don’t get it either, but I’m a
techno-dummy who knows better than to pass
along jargon I don’t understand. I listen.
Period.
So then. I began
with Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz
Standard, a nicely recorded, agreeably
aggressive CD released in 2010 (www.mingusmingusmingus.com
and
www.jazzstandard.com).
 But
I need to interrupt the narration to mention
that I’d installed an RCA-terminated Ground
Control at each of my NuForce mono amps’ RCA
inputs, along with another at my Integris
CDP’s negative RCA output. (I use balanced
interconnects.) I also have spade-terminated
Ground Controls at the negative binding
posts of my Sasha W/Ps, for a total of five
GCs.
The interruption continues. There’s weird
science, and then there’s weird science. The
Ground Control is the work of EnABL’s Bud
Purvine, whom AudioPrism’s Byron Collett
describes as a brilliant designer of
transformers and such. Purvine has
accumulated patents, an enthusiastic
following, and a presence on the Internet I
invite you to investigate. I need to return
to these fascinating little whatevers.
In the matter of a reliable A/B comparison,
it’s a lot simpler to pull and reinstate
RCA-terminated Ground Controls than to
remove and restore the spade-terminated GCs
at the Wilsons’ binding posts. For most of
us, the memory for other than gross
differences in sound is short and
unreliable.
To return to our story: the big-band disc
and a second demo, a beautifully recorded
Haydn string quartet on the TACET label,
elicited a comment I’ll not soon forget:
“This shouldn’t be happening.” You can
imagine the expression that went with this.
But it was happening. My friend was in the
sweet spot. As before, standing at my
system’s electronic components – in other
words, behind the speakers and facing the
wall – even I could hear it: with the amps’
and CDP’s Ground Controls removed, the
system relinquished a clearly audible slice
of liveliness and body. Days before, I heard
an improvement on my own when I first
installed GCs at the speakers’ negative
binding posts. There is nothing vague about
the benefit to an already excellent system
these five Ground Controls deliver.
I like my Tuesday visitor’s attitude. His
background and assumptions defer, need be,
to what he hears. Like Clement Perry (his GC
review here),
I’m sold on tweaks, but I don’t hold all in
equal esteem. A few in my system play a
pro-forma role. If I removed the
speaker-cable lifters, I doubt I’d hear much
of a difference. I figure that they do no
harm and perhaps a smidgen of good. And they
look sexy.
I hesitate to call the Ground Controls sexy.
Like the featherweight RR-77 – is there
actually anything inside that thing? – what
they do for a system’s sound flies in the
face of their seeming insignificance. The
GCs I’ve been using are identified as
Reference. The substantial list prices
reflect the cost of their XHADOW silver
connectors and the tariff we enthusiasts pay
for success.
Reference RCA,
$149.95 each.
Reference spade, $249.95 / pair.
You can check out the entire line, with
prices, banana terminations included, at
MusicDirect.com.
Website:
www.audioprism.com
Email:
info@audioprism.com
|
