Did you ever review your PM156 for us, Nick?
Not sure what country you are in, but you probably already have a ground rod for safety. It might not be ideally installed for conductivity, however if you can run ground wire directly from your hifi power to that existing ground rod, or where your building connects to it, you will bypass all the other potentially noisy things on the buildingâs ground network.
This is why it is possible to get outlets with lifted ground. And SR make a ground lifter.
BTW, there is some science around installing a rod for optimum conductivity (eg. depth, moisture of soil)
Having said that, I have a dedicated ground wire directly from hifi power to my house ground rod (ie. the earth of the dedicated 3 core power) and also SR Active Ground Block SE with a suite of SR HD and HDSX ground cables to every bit of kit and it makes a big difference.
@dbastin2605 I am not sure of what country you are in but here in the UK we have mostly dispensed with individual ground rods for each house or similar direct to ground earthing for individual houses. It used to be in days of old when the incoming water was a lead pipe that the house earth was connected to that. Now we have an earth cable brought into the house as part of the electrical supply cable and it is important to be aware of the consequences of creating an additional earthing route by adding ground rod(s) because in the event of an earth failure elsewhere on the power company network it is possible that large fault currents could try to find a route to earth (ie the ground rods) through the hifi equipment.
I am going to be using the Puritan Groundmaster to avoid this dangerous consequence of installing additional grounds and just for the information of anyone considering installing additional grounds and I think it will be helpful if I quote from Puritans information on this subject. (This is what I have to hand but obviously other manufacturerâs products are available).
âLong before the problem of high frequency interference on the Earth Line became as serious as it is today, audiophiles in the know were utilising additional Ground Rods to provide an independent Earth to their HiFi installations.
Elegant as this solution may seem, this is a colossally dangerous practice for the vast majority of current installations. This is because it risks the potentially massive current from any fault between your HiFi and your local substation finding the easiest path to Earth through your HiFi with expensive, and possibly tragic, results! This is why the practice of introducing directly connected supplementary or dedicated HiFi Ground Rods is specifically prohibited by current UK Wiring Regulations. (Except in very specific circumstances)**.
By utilising the Puritan Ground Master the hazards (and illegality) associated with the use of additional HiFi Ground Rods are totally avoided. And this is achieved without compromising the effective route to ground and hence the removal, of undesirable noise disturbance frequencies on the Earth Line.*
*With the Puritan Ground Master used in conjunction with an additional Ground Rod the potentially dangerous route to Earth of mains frequency currents is safely isolated whilst offending noise and disturbance frequencies are permitted a highly efficient, extremely low impedance route to ground ensuring their elimination.
**For the past 50 years houses have normally been connected using the Protective Multiple Earth (PME) system, whereby the Neutral Line is bonded to Earth at the substation and at other points along the way and with Neutral and Earth circuits separated at the point of entry to the building. This style of installation provides the greatest dangers if using additional ground rods without connecting though the Ground Master whilst other styles of household Earth connection will still benefit greatly with increased safety and performance by using the Ground Master.â
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Maybe I am very lucky in some ways. Where I live we use a single earth rod for each separate house like mine. So in my case, I have one earth rod, a large gauge wire connects the earth rod to a common earth buss in the main power board (ie. where the RCDs etc are) and my hifi power outlets earth are connected directly to that common earth buss. As I understand, it is not legal to use 2 earth rods here. But I suppose theoretically a 2nd earth rod could be installed right near the existing one and the same gauge wire used to connect the hifi earth to the 2nd earth rod, the earth potential of both earths would presumably be pretty much the same to avoid safety issues and it would totally isolate from the noise on the common earth buss. I am speculating though.
My guess is the SR Active Ground Block actively filters noise from the common earth. I have previously use Shunyata CGS in Triton to similar effect.
Noise from AC power is conditioned by a SR PowerCell 12 SE and Galileo SX power cords.
I am also lucky that my internet comes via fibre rather than copper, and I am optimising the hifi ethernet network to isolate from ethernet noise. This includes that my endpoint/DACs/Amps (dual mono Devialet Pro) is isolated from ethernet noise via wifi.
That is my attack on noise sources so far.
Well done! Thanks for sharing that text. They sure do know what they are doing.
Is it possible to turn off or dim the led on the front of the oladra?
LIGHTDIMS can be a great solution for bright LEDs. These can be purchased from Amazon. I have these on the LEDs of a few of my components that have LEDs that are really bright. My Antipodes server is not one of them.
Note that LIGHTDIMS come in few different varieties. The Silver edition is generally best for silver components, the original edition is generally best for black components, and the blackout version is best when you want to no light to come through at all.
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LED LightsâŚ
From the manualâŚ
Some users will wish to turn off the LED lights, particularly in a home theatre situation. To do so, simply use a very short click of the front panel Power Button to turn off the LED lights. The next time you do a one second click, the LEDs will light again.
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