DIAMOND SOUND Ground Unit

A grounding unit that does not – technically speaking – ground, yet it can dramatically transform the sound that a pair of speakers sends to your ears. A red rag for those who can't explain exactly how it can work, a lure for those willing to venture into less explored waters in their quest for better sound. The Czech manufacturer bravely jumped into such waters and not only didn't drown, but swam away with a very interesting concept that is fully competitive with anything in the ‘grounding’ market segment.

So, what's the deal with the Diamond Sound ground unit? I am afraid I can’t give you any elaborate explanation other than to describe what it looks like - it is a litre-sized milled aluminium cylinder filled with rare ore that connects to a chassis or a spare connector of the device that is to be ‘grounded’. As the Diamond Sound unit is not grounded itself, it does not provide ground in technical terms. At best it can work as an equipotential terminal block if you connect several devices to it.

"Virtual ground units" are nothing new in hi-fi. The biggest proponent of such solutions is arguably Per-Olof Friberg of Swedish Entreq, who two decades ago filled a wooden box with a mineral mixture, called it Tellus, and raised hell. The Tellus was said to improve the performance of equipment that was connected to it and it really did so, and people were willing to pay money for it. Entreq continues to sell such grounding boxes in many variations till these days, only the sums you need to pay have grown outrageously since 20 years ago. With gnashing of teeth and with the vision to take a bite of the growing ‘audiophile grounding’ market other manufacturers have jumped on this train - not only dozens of nameless manufacturers of Japanese and Chinese provenance (where the whole thing in fact originated), but also established names like Furutech (NCF), Nordost (QKore) or Synergistic Research (UEF and their whole grounding program), who tried to infuse at least a semblance of technical competence into the whole "grounding" issue. Is there any competence at all? Isn’t it enough to take a box, fill it with a mixture of minerals, and connect it to a spare inlet/outlet/chassis of your device?

Sort of yes. There are many how-to-do instructions available on the internet, so you can try ground your audio components by, for example, a bag of soil or by a pot of quartz sand from your local hobby depot. To make it more efficient, rare mineral chips from a bijoux store can be added. And you will hear how it affects the sound, for better or worse. However, you also can spend years by perfectioning the formula and then prepare to be amazed how far you can push the performance of your audio system. Or you can buy something from someone who have walked the hit and miss path and saved you of all this hard work. Enter Diamond Sound.

Diamond Sound

Atanas Zelazkov's background is in robotic lines, advanced machinery, and CNC technology. As such, he is much closer to engineering than Swedish farmers, to start with. As a music lover he is also exploring ways to make the music sound better at home. He teamed up with Roman Werner, an experienced hi-fi matador, gathered the grounding devices available on the market to hear what they do, and tried to build a grounding periphery that would trump them all.

The Diamond Sound Ground Unit is a silver-anodised aluminium cylinder with a diameter of 120mm and a height of 160mm. The unit is passive, so it doesn't take any power; it connects with a conventional speaker banana, for which there is a ready-made input in the central gold-plated part. The units are quite heavy, weighing over 4 kilos each, so they need to be placed on a solid base. On the positive side, they are easy to test, you don't have to disconnect existing audio components nor switch anything of. Just connect the Diamond Sound unit with the right cable and there you are.

I was happy I could join ongoing prototyping and that’s why, over the course of several weeks, I lived with eleven (!) variants of the unit. From each other, they differ by metals from which the banana inlets and electrodes inside were made, as well by the composition and amount of the mineral mixture inside. Each has its own ‘sound’ and each projected into what I heard in a different way depending to what component it was connected. It is important to realize that such peripheries behave in each system in its own unique way and observations are usually not transferrable from one system to another. In other words, what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. The only way to find out is to ask for a no risk demo unit and give it a try. The manufacturer is outgoing and very honest in its approach. Should I summarize in few words how each of the units I used during the prototyping affected the sound, I would provide this characterization:

Type I – black background, flow and warmth, softer and fuller bass, dynamic comfort, slightly narrower lateral soundstage.

Type II – open and transparent sound, firm and punishing bass, improved focus, shallower depth of image.

Type III – similar to the Type I, with more open sound, sparkling treble, and more air.

Type IV – similar to the Type II, more nuanced, softer bass, more sound treble.

Type V – very holographic, amazing depth of image, a bit thinner vocals, less body.

Type VI – more agile, more hi-fi-like, flatter dynamics, the music has less flow, it tends to sound mechanic.

Type VII – the soundstage is anchored to the ground, the sound is darker, more muted, a bit more matte compared to others.

Type VIII – natural soundstage, a bit nervous treble, punchy bass, cymbals are grainy.

Type IX – very expansive sound, great articulation and separation within it, less colours, a violin is perhaps too agile.

Type X – sounds like a triode amp, saturated, rich, sonorous, clean, physical, articulated, black background.

Type XI – wide and deep soundstage, less distinct imaging and therefore less 3D, not so dynamic, relaxed, vocals have less body.

Although I was told in which construction parameters the above types differed from each other, I am not going to pass this information to you for this is the know-how of Diamond Sound.  Anyway, the purpose of the exercise was to validate assumptions that led to the final designs that combine the best of all the eleven worlds. The guys from Diamond Sound have decided to launch 2 types, E1 and E2, each having distinctive ‘voicing’:

Ground Unit E1 – for blacker backgrounds, firmer and more colourful midrange, better musicality, better articulation, improved articulation, and deeper soundstage.

Ground Unit E2 – for more open and resolved sound, more air, quicker transients, accurate imaging, punchier and improved bass textures.

Both the E1 and the E2 make the louspeakers disappear and immerse the listener in a deep and wide soundstage.

In this phase of exploration, the manufacturer provided me with plenty of connecting options, all based on pure copper coaxial cables. Just for case I also tried several other cables, solid cores, stranded wires, coaxials, metal foils, copper, silver, and silver-plated copper. I tried single wires, braided geometries and Litz, and I tried to bundle the cables to decrease AWG. Each variation provided alteration of what I heard. As expected, the configuration that was the best for one album, was not the best for another. Yet, by trying over 40 combinations, I was able to slowly identify the one-fits-all solution. Diamond Sound further refines the unit’s interconnecting cables with the help of Ernest Varga and Peter Hubaček of π (Pi) Audio Cables, and I am really curious what they will come up with.

So, the ground unit’s end is terminated with the banana, the other end is terminated by whatever connector you need - XLR, RCA, USB, Ethernet, Schuko, and more. A component’s chassis can be grounded by a simple lug, or by a bare wire attached to the grounding nut, if the component has it. You can also try and ground racks, speaker plinths, speakers (via minus terminals), and even yourself. You can multiply the Diamond Sound units too, two, three or more in a star arrangement. I found significant improvements with up to 3 units, then the law of diminishing returns took over. Some experimentation is needed for each set up is different.

Bending space-time continuum

So, in which way does the Diamond Sound Ground improve the sound? If you find the right application for it, it completely naturally pairs itself with the components and acoustics of the room, bending space-time and putting me on a stool in the studio with the musicians. As regular Audiodrom readers know, I often use Alison Krauss’ A Hundred Miles or More tracks because it is both superbly recorded music and also one of those albums where you have a visual check of who is standing where for virtually every track, as videos from the sessions have been published. You know which instruments are played, what height the performer's mouth or the microphone is at, and how e.g. the violin is moving in relation to the microphone. The instrument is not static and the spacing of the points where the bow touches the strings can be tens of centimetres as the mic sees it. In general, I'm very happy with the way my whole setup displays these spatial nuances, and the overall level of imaging accuracy has jumped up dramatically with finishing the TAD Revolution One project. And Diamond Sound pushed it furthermore to absolute perfection. The unit needs some time to settle, so when rewiring, give it at least 20 minutes before critical listening. I can say from my personal experience that it sounds even better the next day, after that the sound gets stabilized and no changes are happening.

A ground unit cannot bend space-time continuum, of course. However, it gave me the feeling as if the walls of my room were replaced by a membrane that changed its shape depending on a piece of music that I was playing. The whole soundstage is very immersive with the Diamond Sound, yet it does not lose precision of imaging and tonal accuracy. The size of the ‘soundstage’ in a listening room is of course a combination of the recording, speakers, and acoustics. The more refelctions, the more spacious soundstage, the less accuracy. Also, how drivers in the speakers are in phase plays a major role, and – finally – the way we listeners perceive the phantom images based on our previous experience. I do not have any explanation for how it is possible that the Diamond Sound units can affect the perception of from where the sound is coming to my ears, but they do.

A sound-sorting line

In a successful configuration, the Diamond Sound ground units give more energy and power to music. The combination of increased dynamics and tighter bass transforms the ballistics of the speakers, as if the amplifier was replaced for a much more powerful combo. Plucked bass shots through your Kevlar vest, sort of. The background is quieter and cleaner, so the sound emerges from it with bigger contrast, with more power. It is quite addictive and when the Diamond Sound unit is removed from the system, the music suddenly becomes weak and grey.

The Diamond Sound unit sorts the sounds by their own distinct profiles, delineates every single instrument in the mix, and the music seems to be more organized. No wonder that more complex music pieces profit the most out of it, not the usual compressed Norwegian female vocals accompanied by double-bass. I mean symphonic and chamber music, big bands, bluegrass ensembles, choral works, operas, and the golden names of 50’s and 60’s (Fitzgerald, Armstrong, London, Cole, Sinatra, …) that were accompanied by whole orchestras. The Diamond Sound unit can untangle these complexities as if your ears were connected directly to the tape they were recorded on. For example, Britten’s Te Deum (Westminster Choir, St.Mary Virgin Cathedral, Chesky Records) was recorded with one microphone that was suspended in front and above the choir in the cathedral. With the help of the Diamond Sound, I have the organ and the choir in my room, including the air that surrounded the singers and that passed through the pipes.

Progressive metal of Systematic Chaos (Dream Theater) is a typical product of our compressed dynamics era, not does it provide anything that resembles a soundstage, but it is a good album with wonderful cuts and beautiful instrumental lines, like the guitar solo at 3’ mark of In The Presence of Enemies Pt.1, that Diamond Sound helps send to my ears sorted out to molecules, as if I was plugged to the guitar jack. Dtto the monumental Repentance, that sounded organic and organized. I’d love to have this album reissued and uncompressed.

Summary

Without beating around the bush, here’s my message: You’d be stupid not to try the Diamond Sound Ground unit(s) in your own set-up. It is the only way to find out what it would do for you. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

Diamond Sound - Ground Unit E1

Diamond Sound - Ground Unit E2

Price per unit: 850€

Contact: Diamond Sound, tel. +420 725 838 038, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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