Speaker Terminal Grounding Question

[cjf]

OK.... This may be the dumbest question ever conceived but I'll ask it anyway with head hung low

Is it safe to run a secondary wire from a speakers Neg terminal binding post back to a grounding lug on a power conditioner?

Another spin off to the first question would be, and as an alternative to the first question, is it safe to do the same thing (i.e. Run a secondary wire) from an amplifiers Neg terminal binding post of both the Left and Right channels back to a ground lug found on a power conditioner?

If by chance this is safe to do, would there be an issue with having both channels of an audio system terminate to the same single ground lug on the power conditioner at the same time?

To be clear, This secondary wire would be in addition to the regular Neg pole of a speaker wire which runs as normal from the amp to the speaker.

Thanks for any info you can provide and my apologies for the silly question.

 

[RayDunzl]

Is it safe

Do you know what you are doing?

In my case (see equipment list in my sig) it would be tempting disaster - a test of the amplifier's output short circuit protection scheme, assuming it has one (don't know!).

In your case - what do you have?

The general case would be "no problem", but then again, what do you expect to accomplish?

 

[tomelex]

any place on electronics marked with the earth or ground symbol can be tied to any other so marked terminal. Negative loutputs on amps are not always at ground, so no, don't do it unless you have a technician review your schematic diagrams of your gear. Adding more wires between components just allows for more electromagnetic interference (acting like an antenna) anyway. Just perish the thought from your ear/brain interface and all will be OK is my recommendation.

 

[cjf]

Do you know what you are doing?

Of course not, I'm just a curious cat several glasses of wine deep in thought. These things tend to come to me in such situations as I sit here enjoying the sound of my gear. What do you think of under the same conditions I now wonder?

[QUOTE="RayDunzl] The general case would be "no problem", but then again, what do you expect to accomplish?[/QUOTE]

My hope was that several veils of grunge would be lifted by such a modification and I could enjoy my system even more so than I do now but it sounds like it's not a good option and in this case curiosity may kill the cat

 

[cjf]

any place on electronics marked with the earth or ground symbol can be tied to any other so marked terminal. Negative loutputs on amps are not always at ground, so no, don't do it unless you have a technician review your schematic diagrams of your gear. Adding more wires between components just allows for more electromagnetic interference (acting like an antenna) anyway. Just perish the thought from your ear/brain interface and all will be OK is my recommendation.

Thank you for the info, I'll forget all about it from this point forward

 

[tomelex]

Thank you for the info, I'll forget all about it from this point forward

Just sayin you need to know your gear wiring before you start exploring. The article in EETIMES that you quote over in another thread here, is about interference mostly, as their solution was to use a coaxial cable which everybody agreed solved the problem. The interaction between your amplifier and speaker is complex, and in many amps with a feedback path the amp tries to deal with whatever is "picked up" by the cables to the speaker, even if it comes from other sources, including the amp itself. That book is a good read, I recommend you spend your tweek money on it, it will teach you a lot and is not written over your head, I read it as soon as it was published and its good stuff for an inquiring mind like yours

 

[cjf]

Just sayin you need to know your gear wiring before you start exploring. The article in EETIMES that you quote over in another thread here, is about interference mostly, as their solution was to use a coaxial cable which everybody agreed solved the problem. The interaction between your amplifier and speaker is complex, and in many amps with a feedback path the amp tries to deal with whatever is "picked up" by the cables to the speaker, even if it comes from other sources, including the amp itself. That book is a good read, I recommend you spend your tweek money on it, it will teach you a lot and is not written over your head, I read it as soon as it was published and its good stuff for an inquiring mind like yours

Yes, that article was indeed very interesting. I must admit that I only read the last two parts which talked about speaker cable interactions but intend to go back and read the rest.

In terms of my posting of the issue I have when using a short cable in my system I agree it has been a rather complex problem to resolve. At this point I'm just happy to have any resolution at all that is, for the most part, satisfactory. I'm now at a point were I'm trying to find an esoteric cable of resonable cost for the length I need to avoid the issue described. I can say for certain that it ain't been easy.

I've got a length of 4m Cardas Clear sitting here on the floor next to me ($$$$) that still doesn't fix the issue, most likely due to its very large wire (6.5ga) per pole.

I've got a length of 12ft Marshall Soundrunner (.99cents /ft) which is 10ga in size and is totally silent with no noise what so ever. But compared to the Cardas Clear, it sounds like shit! Even with the noise! Anyone who says all cables sound the same is indeed smoking crack!

My next move is going in the opposite direction. I'll be trying some Crystal Cable Reference and Siltech Classic 700l next which is thinner. My hope is that one of these will fix the problem (at a price).

Last resort will be to just stick with the cheap cables I am using now. In the grand scheme of things, they still sound pretty damn good

 

[Speedskater]

If it's safe, it's because the Negative speaker terminal is referenced to the chassis. Now the chassis through the Safety Ground/Protective Earth wire better be already connected to the power conditioner ground lug, so don't expect much.

Maybe you should consider a real grounding system (not a magic box unit).
Some real grounding systems:

Grounding Systems

SRPP :: System Reference Potential Plane
STGP :: Signal Transport Ground Plane
ZSRG :: Zero Signal Reference Grid
ZSRG :: Zero Signal Reference Conductors
ZSRP :: Zero Signal Reference Potential
ZSRP :: Zero Signal Reference Plane
MESH-CBN :: Meshed Common Bonding Network
MESH-IBN :: Meshed Isolated Bonding Network
PEC :: Paralleled Earth Conductors
PBC :: Paralleled Bonding Conductors

Conductive Structure

 

[DonH56]

In general, no. Not all amplifiers use earth ground as the negative terminal. For instance, many tube amplifiers do not, and bridged SS amplifiers will not. Connecting the negative speaker terminal to ground in those cases can (may) destroy the amp. In other cases, it adds another potential ground loop, so I would not do it anyway. If I felt the need to shield the speaker cables I would get copper or tinned looms (sheaths) or foil and ground that at the amp's chassis instead.

Unless I misunderstood the question, apologies if so -- day 22 at work, blah.

 

[cjf]

Thanks for the info folks, much appreciated

 

[cjf]

Me again, revisiting this topic.

So I've become aware of several speaker wires that appear to do something along the lines of what I wrote about initially but instead using the shield of a shielded cable. As an example, Synergistic Research has several cables that offer a way to Ground the shield of the wire back to the Earth pin on the wall socket. The cable essentially has a small pig tail that protrudes out from the Amp end of the cable that allows one to plug a lead into it which then runs back to a modified wall wart that only has the ground pin attached. This is said to offer a path of escape for noise found on the line that is strong enough to find its way thru the dielectric to the shield.

Thoughts? More Snake Oil? Seems like a reasonable approach to a simpleton like myself

 

[amirm]

I would not follow what they have done. I have not seen anything from SR that follows engineering principals that the rest of us understand.

Speaker signals are high amplitude and at low impedance (i.e. speaker load). This makes it very hard for any external signals to bleed onto them. It is like your cat trying to push your car. In other words, there is nothing broken there to fix.

 

[Speedskater]

Synergistic Research lives in an alternate reality and electricity works differently there.
On on hand, a shielded speaker cable (with the shield connected to the amp's chassis) can prevent RFI from sneaking in the amp's backdoor. An audio amplifier output is low impedance at audio frequencies, but radio frequency interference can sneak in thru the speaker terminals and get into the feedback loop.
On the other hand, a shielded speaker cable can make some amplifiers unhappy.
Both of these conditions are rare and situation specific.

 

[DonH56]

+1 to Speedskater.

I have found shielded speaker cables, or big ferrites, helpful in two situations:

1. Very long (100' +) runs when doing live sound; and,
2. When the amplifier was sensitive to EMI/RFI (one of these cases was a home very near a commercial transmitter).

Case 1 is actually related to, if not a subset of, case 2. In the primordial past I helped add shielding to a lot of cables in an effort to reduce the noise floor. Can't recall it ever made a measurable, let alone audible, difference except in case 2 above and I can count those on one hand (vs. hundreds of other trials). Only drove a couple of amps into oscillation IIRC, one of the early Infinity switchers, and either an HK or Spectral amp marketed as being extremely wideband. And I think those were both driving fairly heavy loads. This was in the 1980's.

 

[RayDunzl]

Having carefully assembled my system over a six year span at this location, I'm still happy to report "no noise".



But it's getting close to time to pull it all apart, do a thorough dusting and inspection.

Oops, it's naptime!

 

[Don Hills]

...

1. When the amplifier was sensitive to EMI/RFI (one of these cases was a home very near a commercial transmitter).

...

Been there, had that. Back in the 80s I lived under the antenna of a broadcast band AM transmitter. The RF field was so strong that placing the palms of my hands over my PC keyboard would cause it to type random characters. I had to wrap my speaker cables through large toroids to keep the RF out of the phono stage. (Surprisingly, I didn't need toroids at the phono input.)

 

[cjf]

Thanks for the info.

So it sounds like despite Synergestic Research being know for many voodo or questionable audio related tweaks grounding the shield of an audio cable via the earth pin on an AC receptical is at least one possible tweak that could work in extreme cases of EMI/RFI situations. I have no interest in all their talk of " Quantum Tunneling" and other madness...etc.

If nothing else I at least appreciate them offering an easy means to provide a ground to the cable in question instead of having to create a home brew method of doing the same thing.

 

[cjf]

Having carefully assembled my system over a six year span at this location, I'm still happy to report "no noise".

View attachment 2360

But it's getting close to time to pull it all apart, do a thorough dusting and inspection.

Oops, it's naptime!

Aahhhh, the Fire Marshall is on his way to hand out a citation or two here

 

[RayDunzl]

Meanwhile, at AXPONA 2018:

http://www.synergisticresearch.com/acoustics/passive/hft/

https://audiobacon.net/2018/04/21/axpona-2018-show-report-day-3/

 

[Wombat]

Meanwhile, at AXPONA 2018:

http://www.synergisticresearch.com/acoustics/passive/hft/

View attachment 12370

https://audiobacon.net/2018/04/21/axpona-2018-show-report-day-3/

There may be a member or two who purchase them. Now, how could Amir test them if they provided them for such?