RG. One of the things that you’ve talked about is consistency across systems, especially when it comes to supports, cleaning materials or fluids and torque settings on fixings. Although you don’t sell equipment or accessories, do you think that the importance of consistency extends into component choice?
ST. In my experience, the better the company, the clearer and more consistent the thoughts and philosophy behind its products. That takes many forms, from selecting components or choosing topologies, right through to materials and construction. But one thing I feel is particularly critical is the attitude of the engineering team to electrical ground. I have a sneaking suspicion that synergy between components is largely down to similarities in their treatment of ground and their ground potential. If you have two products with very different ground potentials, noise will flow onto ground and we all know how much damage that can do. It helps explain why products that might be individually excellent don’t or won’t work together.
Taking that further, use electronics from the same engineering team and you have a much better chance of having a consistent approach to ground. Mix and match components and you have little or no idea how they’ll combine until you try it – and even then, the true nature of a combination only emerges over time. So, sticking to a single brand is certainly the percentage play, your best chance of success. When it comes to cables and power cables in particular, it’s crazy important – because you need to offer equal ground potential across the system, to establish a single, consistent ground plane. Just using the same length power cables connected to a single star-grounding point is a major step in the right direction.
RG. Does that extend to the mechanical grounding of components and the consistency of support?
ST. That’s harder to say. If for instance you take a CH Precision D1.5 CD/SACD player, a C1.2 DAC and an L1 line-stage, they all have the same chassis and mechanical grounding system, but each one has a very different resonant character and vulnerability. The D1.5 contains a transport that generates a huge amount of mechanical energy. The C1.2 contains a clock which is extremely vulnerable to vibration. In each case, the relationship to the supporting surface will differ, but at the same time, the closer it can be the better the results. Sit one on its spikes and the other on Sorbothane feet and you will totally change the resonant environment within the chassis – right where the signal is.
Totally consistent support should be the goal – even if the difference between component types means that it’s just not that easy to achieve. Anything you can do to help in that direction, like using identical racks or supports under the whole system, will really help the final results you get from the system. The CH pieces are unusual because of their grounding spikes, but companies that use different feet on different units are asking for inconsistent results.
