Lifting the Ground

At this moment, I have all grounds floated but two days ago I had only the cdp grounded.

Stehno, just curious about your CDP. My Arcam Alpha 9 accepts a three wire plug and cord with an IEC connector. The male connector on the CDP only has two blades for connection, the hot and neutral. No equipment ground blade for connection to the CDP chassis/case. Have you checked your CDP IEC male connector on the back of your CDP?
jim

Jea48, as you probably know most all components have 3 pronged connectors for AC. But as you point out a few will only have two. My old APL 3910 had only two because APL snipped off the grounding blade at the IEC connector exiting out of the chassis.

All Esoteric units have the three prongs. However, Esoteric seems to insist on using only their power cable for the G25u Master Clock Generator. Because their power cable only conducts the hot and neutral leads and no ground.

Hope this helps,

Stehno - what improvements did you hear when you lifted the ground on your system components (minus the CD player)?

Do you run your amp thru a power conditioner? I was told by my dealer that running an amp thru a power conditioner would degrade the sound. What's been your experience?

Do you agree with Jea48 that there's little risk in lifting the ground on a high wattage SS amp? I have my preamp, CD, and turntable plugged into a Tice power conditioner; and I run my SS amp straight into another wall socket. Are you recommending floating the ground on everything, to include the amp?

Do you agree with Jea48 that there's little risk in lifting the ground on a high wattage SS amp?

Rockyboy, in no way do I imply lifting the safety ground on equipment means little risk of an electrical shock hazard. You the operator must weigh the risk factor. I do not have any of the grounds lifted on my equipment. My system dead quiet. I have never had a ground loop hum problem. I guess I am just lucky.
jim

Rockyboy, depending on the resolution of your system and the quality of line conditioners one should be able to hear a much lowered noise-floor, better soundstaging and imaging, and less negative sibilance. And perhaps improvements in other categories.

But keep in mind that for the past 5 years I've used what I consider the best line conditioners available. And this alone dramatically enhances such electrical changes. So when I lift the ground on a given component, I'm actually lifting it on the line conditioner or perhaps at the wall. I'm also using dedicated line conditioners (one for each component).

Without proper line conditioning one has far more serious sonic issues to address than just the potential sonic harm induced by a common ground.

Floating the ground should have little or nothing to do with the amp's power output because it has to do with cleaning up the dirty AC. As for safety, so long as one component is properly grounded, safety issues should be minimal.

Lastly, everybody has very dirty/noisy AC (a few worse than others) coming in from the street. It's the nature of the beast and it must be dealt with properly.

-IMO