Synergistic Research - Active Grounding

I recently moved to a house that is 125 yrs old and the wiring is less than desirable. I was looking into separate grounding options and I came across Synergistic Research who recommend to ground every cable, every piece of your stereo equipment into their active grounding block. They say it drastically reduces the noise floor.

Does anyone have this and can you speak to its efficacy? I am also curious if you can use just anyone's interconnects and ground them yourself or if you have to use the cables made by Synergistic Research. Any insights, anecdotes would be appreciated.

 

Im a fan of his products, they all work.
But for the cost of his "block" and the optional wires that connect to each component you can get a more effective product from PS Audio for not much more.

Stellar PowerPlant 3 – PS Audio

 

Ground loops happen when there is more than one path for the ground to travel. You would be adding those paths here.

I would identify the fault you have before looking for solutions. A solution which may be as simple as one wire with spade terminals connected between two component chassis screws.

 

HAHAHA. We all know how much of a fan you are of his products and lectures. Number One Fan! LOL

 

Dont forget when you get that new SR power cord, to plug it in, but dont dare turn on the component for 10 days or you will screw up the "burn-in" process.

Then he's got his "UEF technology" in nearly every one of his products but says NOTHING about it or how it works, just how awesome it is.

If it is so darn groundbreaking then patent it. He cant bc he cant back up any claims with data.

 

I have a full SR grounding system in place in my system and it works very well. Dramatic lowering of the noise floor. My components are all grounded to an active ground block, including my interconnects.

 

"Unfunctional Extraction of Funds" technology.

 

Are you using SR's fuses or outlets?

 

When starting out with the "high end" stuff a few years back around 2018, I had some SR Excite interconnects and Atmosphere Level 3 power cables. I didn't think they were particularly well made considering the price. Compared them to just thick hospital-grade power cables and some $100 interconnects. Didn't hear a difference at all. I tried to e-mail Ted Denney to ask about any technical details on stuff like "UEF" and got nothing about how he thought the "graphene shielding" made a difference or how the "1,000,000V Quantum Treatment" did anything.

Happily sold 'em and basically made my money back. Glad that there are cooler heads on audiophile forums including many of you here.

 

Do you use SR interconnects with the ground wire or do you ground your existing interconnects?

 

Two different subjects here

Electrics
If you are staying in this place for a few years have the electrics checked and redone if necessary.

Grounding boxes - work for me
This splits again in two
Grounding your earth
Grounding our components

Lower noise floor, more detail, background brought forward, more bass yadda yadda

Cheap try out from our friends in China for not a lot
170.1US $ 10% OFF|Box one HiFi Audio GND Amplifier Decoder Speaker Audio Grounding Box Tuning Box Power Purifier Electronic Black Hole Ground Box|Speaker Accessories| - AliExpress

Entreq is well known but horribly expensive and I'm not sure they work that well or at all

 

I may be wrong but the Cable company has a library of cables for demo. I bet you can demo this and see for yourself if it helps in your situation. Not solely depending on user comments.
Synergistic Research Active Ground Block SE

 

Not the fuses yet but I have the latest outlets and a Powercell SX conditioner. Both effective.

I've been redoing the entire system so my playback chain is improving daily. Next up is a turntable but even there I have had good results from their phono cable and record weight.

 

This review is a comical example of how much $#!+ that company is full of:

Archimago's Musings: MEASUREMENTS: Power Cable Redux. The Synergistic Research Tesla T2 SE, T3 SE and PowerCell 4.

 

I have the tuning bullets in my system. The differences in sound between them are not subtle.

 

I just put a Synergistic Research SE (red) in a PS audio juice bar for my Mac Mini. Much improved from the PC Audio/Hubble outlet in the box. I also like it better than an Audience Outlet for sources. I have a Audioquest outlet as well. Waiting for the new SR "Purple" model to come out around May/June or just buy the Orange for my sources.
A friend bought the "Orange" outlet and hes got the SE red, an Audience and Hubble outlets. Says the Orange is Crazy good and different. But was too detailed and lean for the Amp and Pre but was perfect for/improved the sources. $70k system. Im hearing it in a weeks time.
I find the SE red to be very detailed with a nice solid bass. Improved soundstage with it for sources Bit lean for an Amp or Pre in my opinion.
Audioquest has the most bass weight. Audience has a slightly bigger or more forward soundstage and the Synergistic Research models have Huge soundstage with great detail, leaset bass warmth.

The Synergistic Research Fuses are mind bending and again, 3 flavors to choose from.

 

Sure @LeeS, whatever man. Given that you are an Industry participant, permit me to be more than a little doubtful of your ability to be critical about any of the (often obvious) nonsense from companies like this.

Basically what I found a few years back with their "Tesla" cables ($600-900 at the time) were some <2kΩ resistors with LED on one end, some low-current, cheap China/Taiwan DC wall warts (maybe $15 retail), and some wire around the length of the cable. The cable was mostly hollow and puffed up to look impressive.

I see that in recent iterations of their very expensive power cables, they now use "Swiss Made" power supplies. Yeah... Upgrade!

BTW, please tell Ted that he should run "Redifining Refinement." through a spell checker? Poor spelling doesn't inspire confidence when you're charging $10,000/6'.

As usual, let's see some "Research" from these people instead of poorly edited videos and "bullets" that act as "yin and yang". Stuff like this give audiophiles a bad name.

 

The most impressive thing I found on his site were his choice of mics: AKG C414B ULS. Great sounding mics and very flexible. Other than that, put your chest waders on, major amounts of BS (and a whole lotta nothing/your typical audiophile wine descriptions) on that site.

 

Oh man... this stuff never goes away. It's on every audio forum. So, I'm thinking, should I step in this mess or not. Probably not, but here goes...
Sorry, I don't have much of anything constructive to add about the component mentioned. All I can say is the descriptions sound like snake oil to me.
If you really want to lower your noise floor, make sure all of your equipment is connected with shielded balanced interconnects, and use a good multistage industrial line filter on your power line to get rid of RF riding in on the line. Of course you should have a good ground to your outlets, for safety if for no other reason. Adding multiple grounds can actually create more problems than it solves in the form of ground loops, as mentioned above.
In my experience testing industrial equipment for RF susceptibility and electrical noise compliance, grounding is very important, but you would be surprised what works and what doesn't. Any time I've put any kind of filter into the ground line, it typically has not improved the situation, and often times makes things worse. You could probably do a lot worse than running a thick braided strap from your outlet directly back to the ground rod, and then star-grounding all of your equipment to an ordinary distribution block tied to the strap. This will equalize the potential of the components, and the braided strap will be low impedance at radio frequencies, therefore able to drain off the RF energy from the component chassis to earth. I've had good success with this method. Beyond that, think metal sheeting in the room (or ferrites on the walls made for this purpose) and balanced power distribution (used in some recording studios).

 

I saw that blog you posted. I'd like to say it was shocking. But, unfortunately not.

 

Agree, 100% - great that someone can call these companies out *and* back up why.

 

"Quantum anything" that's some high viscosity snake oil right there
but i do find his videos very entertaining in a bad way
hard to watch a guy with no natural rhythm shuck and jive

 

Wow, so much opinion on something that few have actually tried.
Whats consistent is that people that have listed to, lets say, Synergistic Research products are impressed. While Everyone else with criticism have actually never heard them.
LOL Its like Men discussing Child Birth!
Good Day Boys - Enjoy the Music.

 

There is not any substitution for the safety Equipment Grounding System of the electrical service of your home.
The term Earthed Ground, Equipment Ground, and Audio/video Equipment Circuit Ground, are not the same thing. But they seem to get all lumped together.

Synergistic Research Active Ground Block SE
I didn't read anything where Synergistic Research said the Active Ground Block SE was a substitution for the safety Equipment Ground. It sounds to me the device treats the Circuit Signal Ground of audio/video equipment. I didn't read anything where it said it replaced the EGC, (Equipment Grounding Conductor), of audio and or video equipment.
I did find this statement amusing:

The Earth does not possess some magical mystical power that will suck nasties from an audio system's Circuit Ground. For current to travel into mother earth it must travel back out of the earth back to the source.

And I am not sure what he is talking about here:

Just a guess he is referring to the Circuit Signal Grounds of components that are connected together by interconnects.
Some audio equipment's circuit ground scheme are poorly designed which can contribute to ground loops.

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For those of you that live in the US you may find this of interest for the grounding system in our homes.

https://www.jadelearning.com/blog/t...-new-informational-note-article-100-2020-nec/

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