There is obviously a lot of information on my website about grounding your hi-fi, the various Entreq pages go into this in quite a lot of detail, but one thing I have not really gone into is what happens when you ground an AV system, i.e. a home cinema receiver, blu-ray player, Sky Box and even a Television or Projector.
When you consider the profound improvements you get when you ground a 2 channel hi-fi system I had often wondered what would happen if I grounded my AV system? Even though I have grounded countless 2 channel systems I must confess that an AV system had never really crossed my mind.
So, I borrowed a Silver Tellus from the 2 channel system, some Everest grounding posts and 3 Apollo Ground Cables (to ground the AV Amp, 4K Player and Sky Q Box) and took them into the room where the cinema system lives. I made the relevant connections and powered the system up with a handful of discs I know really well to see what would occur….
The noise floor dropped significantly and as a result the level of detail I was hearing was incredible, the opening 10 minutes of Oblivion is always one of my go to movies and it was like watching it for the first time. The drop in the noise floor had me reaching for the volume control which led to being even more immersed in the movie, but without it being fatiguing or harsh when things get noisy, quite the opposite. Bass extension was lower and cleaner with less disortion.
In a way the benefits of grounding an AV system are not surpising when you think about it, an AV amplifier will have typically 7 (or more) channels of amplification, analogue inputs, digital inputs, HDMI video switching, networking capability, wireless and/or bluetooth, that’s an awful lot going on – even the best AV amplifiers out there will have noise in the signal path due to strains on power supplies, we add a ground box and we drain that away allowing the amp to breath easy.
By grounding the 4K player (an OPPO 203) both picture and sound were cleaned up, by removing the ground cable after a period of time easily allows you to see and hear what is happening.
I next moved onto the Sky Q box, now these are things great, but to be fair they are probably made for not a lot of money, produced by the lowest bidder. With a USB Apollo ground cable connected to the Sky Box I sat back to see what would happen.
The sound on Sky (even with 5.1 broadcasts) has always been a little lacklustre in my opinion, certainly when compared to Blu-Ray, now with the box grounded the 5.1 audio off Sky has a lot more going for it. More detail and depth, much better dynamics.
After having the Sky box connected for a couple of day I decided to disconnect the ground and revisit some of the material I had been watching to see what would happen to the sound and within seconds on disconnecting it you could hear what had happened, the performance changed and had become thin and not as immersive as it was. The picture was cleaner with less noise and artefacts as well
Now depending on what AV system you have a Silver Tellus along with 2 or 3 ground cables may be a step too far from a financial point of view, but don’t forget you could alway add a Silver Minimus with 2 ground cables and still get a brilliant upgrade without spending an absolute fortune!
I’ve subsequently taken a Silver Tellus and a few other bits (Silver Minimus and a Poseidon) around to a few clients I know well who have good AV systems to let them have an extended listen on this, everyone so far has liked what they have heard enough to justify making the upgrade.
If you are intrigued by this and would like to hear what can be done with you AV system please do not hesitate to get in touch!
