Cables & Accessories

Having good earth connections is essential for safety reasons and can eliminate many forms of mains-borne noise. The earth connection in a mains socket tends to pick up a lot of noise from the other equipment in your house, which is why many audiophiles consider a separate earth spike for their setup. However, having multiple earth connections in your audio setup can result in hum loops and contravenes the recently introduced safety regulations. Using just an earth spike on its own for an audio system earth also contravenes current wiring regulations and is an extremely dangerous thing to do.

The Ground Master allows for an additional earth connection in the form of a ground rod to be safely connected to your setup to effectively route noise out of your system to earth and yet still comply with the latest electrical wiring regulations. The Ground Master is fitted with two binding posts – black for connection to the external ground earth spike and green for connecting to your system’s earth.

To test the unit, I sink a 1.2m copper ground rod into the soil outside the window by my system. I then run a single core cable connected to the ground rod through the window to the aforementioned black binding post of the Ground Master. 

Sound quality
With the Ground Master connected, there is definitely a noticeable reduction in the background noise in my setup. Silences between tracks seem darker and, overall, I feel that the music has a slightly improved realism. NR

DETAILS
Product: Puritan Ground Master
Price: £165
Type: Earthing system
Read the full review in February issue 446