There are so many things that inexplicably affect the sound of hi-end audio it can just about drive you nuts. The good low impedance earth grounding I established for my house made a positive difference we could easily discern. But of course that wasn’t good enough, I had to screw with it to see if I could make it even better. And, of course, I screwed it up and had work to get back to where I was before.
I had a good ground established, with two 16’ foot rods bonded together, connected with 4 gauge stranded copper, clamped to the rods. I’d heard that solid core could be better, so I bought 25’ of solid core and some exothermic single weld cadweld devices (these things are pretty cool, they use a pyrotechnic material to form a welded bond inside a crucible between the rod and wire). I added the wire on top of the stranded, in parallel. End result was that the benefits I’d realized disappeared! I’m guessing some sort affect occurred due to the bare wires touching each other before the rods, or running parallel, or both. So, I ended up gambling and leaving the solid core and ripping up the stranded. The end result is that I think I’m back to about 98% of where I was. The main impact has been to bass and, in careful listening, I think I’m still just a tad light on the lower bass from where I was after my initial installation of the low impedance earth grounding. I’m going to try a couple more things and then just buy some more 4 gauge stranded and put it back the way it was if I’m still not happy. Don’t you love this hobby?