If you want to hear what the GC1.1 can do, I’d suggest that you try hooking it up to the ground terminal or an unused digital input on your DAC or CD player. After that, you can try shifting it to the ground terminal on your AC distribution block or line-stage. Because the noise it’s dealing with will vary from system to system, so will the point of greatest impact, so a little experimentation pays dividends. Whether you ultimately opt for a focussed or more general application will depend to some extent on the quality of the grounding in the system as a whole. The better that grounding (and, where possible, I’d always invest in the cost effective step of installing a parallel clean ground for the AC supply before spending money on dedicated grounding products) the more likely you’ll be to opt for the more focussed approach. That decision is also affected by the option to hook up a second ground cable, so in a scenario with a single GC1.1 unit, it is worth trying a pair of cables, either to multiple digital pieces (the DAC and a transport or server) or to the DAC and line-stage. In a situation where you are adding a GC1.1 to an existing grounding arrangement, again, it’s worth ringing the changes, but one place I’ve found the GC1.1 to work wonders is connected to a network switch and the ground post of the distribution block feeding the network components. Finally (and maybe we shouldn’t tell CAD) the GC1.1 works beautifully in analogue systems, especially with phono-stages. In a true dual-mono unit – like CH Precision’s P1 – the ability to run two leads, one to each channel is an added bonus and delivers a nice lift in performance over a single channel/single lead arrangement.
The arrival of the GC1.1 is as timely as it is welcome. If the GC1 was indispensible, the 1.1 more than fills its shoes, bring greater capability and versatility to what was already an excellent product. Try it: once you hook it up, I doubt very much you’ll want to remove it.
CAD Ground Control GC1.1 – $2,250 (plus tax)
Ground Control Cables – $350 each (plus tax)
