Grounding screened speaker cable

[jcarruthers]

One of my hobbies is being an amateur mechanic on my two classic cars. Both of them have a modern ECU installed. How does this link to hifi?

Well, one of the important parts of the ECU is grounding the shield of the cable that connects to the crank sensor to the ECU. If you don't ground the cable then you get huge amounts of interference in the signal and things go very wrong.

Has anyone done this or does this? Clearly grounding is important as anyone who hasn't grounded their turntable knows. In fact for the screening to work it would need to be connceted to something.

It would be quite easy for me to crimp a ring terminal on to some cable connected to the screen and use the grounding lug on the bottom of my Brio-R.

I am surprised it's not a big selling thing, for the cable companies it's surely a way to sell snake oil if nothing else.

 

[jcarruthers]

Thinking about this more — it could be grounded to the ground from the speaker output?

 

[chebby]

I think some Tannoy models have a fifth terminal for connecting a 'grounding' lead to the amplifier chassis.

 

[eggontoast]

One of my hobbies is being an amateur mechanic on my two classic cars. Both of them have a modern ECU installed. How does this link to hifi?

Well, one of the important parts of the ECU is grounding the shield of the cable that connects to the crank sensor to the ECU. If you don't ground the cable then you get huge amounts of interference in the signal and things go very wrong.

Completely different scenario's which don't have any correlation.

Has anyone done this or does this? Clearly grounding is important as anyone who hasn't grounded their turntable knows. In fact for the screening to work it would need to be connceted to something.

Turntables are grounded to the amplifier so you don't get any potential difference between the ground on the turntable, and the ground on the amplifier as this would cause hum. It's not done for screening purposes.

It would be quite easy for me to crimp a ring terminal on to some cable connected to the screen and use the grounding lug on the bottom of my Brio-R.

It would but would provide no benefit.

I am surprised it's not a big selling thing, for the cable companies it's surely a way to sell snake oil if nothing else.

You could always email Russ Andrews, they are sure to start selling something ;-)

 

[BigH]

Supra 3.4 speakers cables need to be grounded and I think they have been around many years and still get good reviews.

 

[jcarruthers]

As I understand it if you don't earth the screen you're likely to cause more issues than not?

I am not trying to find something where there isn't — just bemused by screened cable that isn't grounded anywhere — it's next to useles if it isn't?

 

[jcarruthers]

A good explaination why not to use it here:

http://www.mediacollege.com/forum/showthread.php?1388-Speaker-Wire-Shielded-Versus-Unshielded

 

[nopiano]

"The screen is meant to be connected at one end only, to a ground screw or to the chassis of the amplifier, whereas the shield should be left disconnected at the other end (the loudspeakers end)."

So says the author of the article here, about the Supra 3.4 S cable mentioned above.

http://www.tnt-audio.com/accessories/ply34s_e.html

Seems logical to me, but had always believed this would only be needed if you suffered from extreme interference. [Like the story years ago about the vacuum cleaner in a house near Wrotham which would reproduce Radio 4 (because it was near such a powerful transmitter)]