“For over a decade my mantra has been to get grounded,” writes Jacob Heilbrunn in US audio magazine The Absolute Sound’s October issue. Heilbrunn has gone to far greater lengths that most to lower the noise floor in his audio system, seeking to reduce the ground resistance to as close to zero ohms as possible. So in reviewing Computer Audio Design’s (CAD) Ground Control units, could there be any further ‘ground to gain’?

Heilbrunn is clearly a man on a mission. In his first home he installed “a separate, iconic earthing array, copper grounding rod for the subpanel that was tied to the main ground.” In his current home, he “encased several hundred feet of copper wire in the laundry room in a substance called bentonite and tied it to the main breaker panel,” as well as installing “a heavy-duty Equitech transformer to deliver balanced power to the dedicated outlets for my stereo.”

“Is there any further to go?” wondered Heilbrunn, when tasked with auditioning British-American company Computer Audio Design’s Ground Control Units.

Founded in 2011, CAD offers a wide range of passive ground-control devices, ranging from the diminutive GC1.1 to the mighty GC-R. In each case, the devices are easy to use, as they’re not plugged into a wall socket, being passive in operation: simply run a wire from the GC into an unused input of an audio component.

Designer Scott Berry, an electrical engineer, had his interest in creating the Ground Controls sparked while designing CAD’s digital-to-analogue converters (DACs). He became convinced that high-frequency noise was key to preventing digital audio from attaining some of the attributes of analogue, and thus became obsessed with doing something about it.

“Deploying the units in my system turned out to be a head-snapping experience,” remarks Heilbrunn. “The overall presentation was audibly different” and “my audio buddies who listened were riveted, as well.”

“The most notable attributes were a richer tonality and blacker backgrounds.”

“The plaintive character of [James Blake’s] singing, the emotional depth, the sheer plagency came through even more forcefully…. The extra dollop of blackness that the CAD imparts seemed to widen the soundstage, creating an even more expansive vista.”

“On LP’s such as Michael Jackson’s Thriller, it definitely helped to render the musical lines more intelligible, reducing any lingering sense of smear or stridency or aggressiveness in the treble region – a thrilling experience.”

In the words of David Bowie, “Ground Control to Major Tom / You’ve made the grade. Upon inserting the CAD into your system, you may well feel the same way.”

Find out more and locate your nearest specialist retailer at www.computeraudiodesign.com

Read Jacob Heilbrunn’s review in the October 2023 issue of The Absolute Sound.

Addendum Jan-24: you can now read the article on full online at www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/cad-gc1-1-and-gc-r-reference-ground-control