I’ve been interested in audio since I was a kid. At twelve my mom bought be a rinky dink turntable / amp combo that even at that age I could tell was crap. It wasn’t long before I was lobbying for a real receiver and a decent turntable, both of which I got before my 13th birthday and kept all the way into college.
It was at Cal Berkely in the late 80’s that I started frequenting the handful of high end audio shops in that area and caught the bug for better sound. Not long after I graduated I had a VPI HW-19 turntable, a Conrad Johnson MV52 and PV11 tube amp and preamp and a pair of Celestion SL6S speakers on Chicago stands.
That system, along with various different interconnects, speakers cables and cartridges kept me going for the better part of 3 decades. During that time I took a hiatus from audio, mainly so I could apply my limited spending budget toward travel and more modest forms of retail therapy.
Another reason for that hiatus was my thinking, rightly or wrongly, that I was going to have to at least double the investment I’d already made in my system to hear a substantial improvement in sound, and it took me a long time to feel like I could afford to make such an investment.
Furthermore, in those days I subscribed to a viewpoint that, if today’s audio forums are any indication, is still a common one in the audiophile world. This is the view that with audiophile gear we get diminishing returns on our investment. Sure you can get better sound by buying an amp that costs twice as much as the one you already have, but you are unlikely to get twice the performance for your money. And once you approach a price point that borders on the stratosphere you’re spending A LOT more for relatively little improvement, or so this thinking goes.
In the past few years, step by step and component by component, I’ve managed to gain some serious ground with the sound of my system. Over that time I cannot think of a single example of a diminishing return. In fact I can say with all honesty that in literally every case, the return on each investment has either met or exceeded the cost of that investment in relative improvement in sound. And in some cases I’ve found ways to get much better sound for little or no cost at all!
What I’ve come to realize is that as a system improves, really improves, seemingly smaller changes often have an outsized impact. When I bought my Merrill Williams REAL 101.2 turntable with a Triplanar tonearm two years ago my system improved A LOT. It was the single most expensive upgrade I’ve ever made and fortunately it was worth every penny.
When I put that turntable and tonearm on a Townshend Seismic Platter, a much smaller change and a modest investment by comparison, I’d say I got at least 25% better sound from my turntable and tonearm. And that would be a 25% improvement relative to the cost of the turntable and tonearm, not just the cost of the platter.
Meanwhile that 25% number keeps going up with each subsequent change to my system. Getting the turntable and tonearm right meant that not only was there no diminishing return on that investment, but just the opposite. The high level of performance that the Merrill Williams and the Triplanar gave me meant getting great value from the Townshend platter and from every change I’ve made since.
After buying my new turntable but before passing the old one on to it’s new owner, I installed a Dynavector Karat 17dx cartridge on it for him. I did the set-up in my home on my system and at that time I was not all that impressed with the the 17dx. The cartridge came highly recommended by a source that I trust, but I still had to wonder if I would get the $2250 it would cost back in performance if I bought one for my table.
Fast forward a year and a half and I did install a 17dx on my Triplanar and it was a bona fide REVELATION! Where was that GINORMOUS soundstage and subterranean BASS when I heard the 17dx on my VPI? Apparently it was waiting to be revealed by a turntable and tonearm that could reach the level of performance necessary to convey the ENORMITY of that cartridge’s strengths. Once again money well spent.
I should add at this point that using better equipment to add value and performance works just as well with records as it does with equipment. Every time I make an improvement in my system I get better sound from my best records, and the better those records are the more improvement I hear and the more value I get from that investment.
This is especially true of my Hot Stampers, which keep getting better with every upgrade. Yes they are expensive, sometimes shockingly so, but I’m consistently surprised by how hard it is to beat the records I’ve bought from Better Records. In fact, I don’t think many of their loyal customers even realize how good the records they’ve bought from BR actually are because not that many audiophiles have built their system to reveal a Hot Stamper in all it’s glory, but that’s a story for another time.
Conversely, the also-ran records will very often sound worse, and the worse they sound the more obvious it is with every system improvement. I’m losing count of all the times I’ve revisited a record that I THOUGHT was good, perhaps even CERTAIN was good, only to discover that the latest system change I’d made was showing me its problems. It can be discouraging, but I’ve learned to remind myself that as someone who is passionate about acheiving the best sound possible, it’s just part of the learning process.
So in the interest of taking another relatively inexpensive yet significant step forward in the sound of my system and my best sounding records, I reached out to my friend and TBR contributor Alex Bunardzic about acquiring a grounding box. A friend of Alex’s, Mike at Ventus Audio in Vancouver BC, gave Alex a prototype of a grounding box he was working on last year, and it had left quite an impression on him.
The improvement Alex heard in the sound of his system with Mike’s grounding box was so dramatic, he felt compelled to write an article about it for this site. When I read Alex’s article, I wanted to try one of Mike’s grounding boxes right away, but at that time Mike and Ventus Audio were still in R & D and did not have one ready for the market.
When I reached out to Mike a year later about a grouding box I now saw displayed on the Ventus webiste, he said he had one ready to sell and offered to ship it off to me. He also agreed to let me return it if I didn’t like it, a 30 days policy that appears to accompany all of Ventus Audio’s products and one that I find increasingly welcome and essential.
A shipping snafu caused the Ventus grounding box, called the “Grab”, to arrive a full 2 weeks later. During that time there was a fair bit of back forth with UPS that Mike dealt with willingly. I appreicated his very high level of service in a situation that was clearly not his fault, and his confidence that we’d resolve the situation and I’d soon recieve the box put me at ease.
When I did recieve the Grab and took it out of the box and unwrapped it, I was pleased to see it was nice looking and that I’d have no qualms about it sitting next to my rack in my listening room. I also had an easy time hooking it up to my phono preamp and amp with the included RCA cables.
The manual recommended giving the Grab 20 minutes to work it’s magic for optimum performance, and as I was waiting I realized I didn’t really know what the heck this thing was doing. So I reached out to Mike with some questions, which he was kind enough to answer for me:
TBR: Can you explain the technology behind the Grab? How does it work exactly?
Mike: Every piece of audio equipment is exposed to radio frequencies (RF) and electromagnetic interference (EMI), all of the time. So are the AC cables, which, along with the necessary electricity also bring a kind of “dirt” into our sound system in the form of this interference.
The equipment’s metal box and chassis act like a shield to protect the electronics and the signal it produces from RF and EMI in an attempt to keep the component’s signal as “clean” as possible. However these interferences remain in the component, and if they are to be dealt with will need to go somewhere outside of the component.
That’s where the grounding box comes in. It absorbs almost all of the RF and EMI interference and leads them away from our sound system. You could say that the grounding box is in effect “cleaning” the signal by removing those interferences from the component.
Sounds AMAZING doesn’t it? And yet, it seems grounding boxes represent a relatively new technology in the audio world. Do you or does anyone you know have one of these things? Alex is the only one I know who does and when he got his he seemed to have never heard of such a thing before. I certainly hadn’t.
My guess is most audiophiles don’t have a grounding box in their system, but many or most do have some sort of power conditioner or power management device, in part for the same reason they might have a grounding box. We all need a convenient place to plug in our gear and we want surge protection for it. But for those of us who’s primary interest is getting better sound, we LOVE the idea of a device that offers both of these things AND the ability to “condition” our power, somehow making it “cleaner” than it was when it came out of our wall plugs.
The problem is, while all of these devices will certainly deliver the first two features, they almost invariably fail in the last department. Whatever power conditioning / management devices do to “clean” our power DOES reduce noise, but it ALSO reduces other things in our audio signal, namely the subtle transients that make the sound of our system transparent and revealing. As one salesperson at a local store once put it to me when describing a power management device he sold, “it’s basically a power strip that doesn’t suck.”
Back when my own system was not nearly as good as it is now I bought my own power mangement device on the recommendation of that local brick and mortar. Then I wrote a glowing review about it that I posted on this website. In that article I praised this device for it’s ability to “lower the noise floor” in my system.
I can’t give you a link to that post as I’ve long since taken it down and deleted it. As my system improved it became clear to me that what that power device was doing, quite simply put, was making my system sound worse.
But a large part of what made me buy that device in the first place was that I did hear a kind of “improvement” with it that fed my desire to have it do what the Ventus Grab ACTUALLY does. The Grab does remove noise from the signal, and it does it without any audible degredation. So while the Ventus Grab won’t give you any extra outlets or surge protection like a power conditioner does, it WILL clean up your power AND make your system sound better.
The Ventus Grab is, in fact, remarkably good at “cleaning up” the sound. It reduces distortion and actually does lower the noise floor. Since connecting my phono preamp and amp to the Grab, I’ve been extremely impressed with how much more open and transparent the soundstage is when playing my better sounding records. Instruments and vocals are realized more fully and more realistically, and they are presented with more air and space around them.
Separation between instruments and vocals now happens so easily and effortlessly, I find myself settling in to listen with a similar ease. Without the distortion caused by RF and EMI, top end extension is dramatically improved. I’m not having to work so hard to hear things, which is a big help for someone who does regular shootouts.
Just last week I was shooting out 3 different copies of The Beatles’s Rubber Soul and I was struck by how much more clear and present the vocals were. The backing vocals in particular could now be heard easily, with each individual voice clearly discernable behind the lead, and the lead vocal now sounding more lifelike and “right there” than ever.
It’s also remarkable the way the Grab helps to reveal bass with startling palatability and presence. No longer muddling somewhere in the background, standup bass and bass guitars claim their rightful place in the soundstage, still behind the other instruments but just as articulated, present and tonally relevant as those up front and nearer the mic.
Meanwhile on classical pieces, where my system had seemed to strain to pick up the sound of horns and percussion across the expanse of the hall, these instruments spring to life effortlessly with sharp, well defined transients, giving new life to recordings that had sounded veiled and dull in the past.
The dramatic improvement in clarity and effortlessness I’m hearing with the Ventus Audio Grab are what make it worth its 40+ lb weight in sonic improvement. Records that required extensive throwing of breakers in my electrical box and a thorough Talisman treatment for my system with each play, now come to life with an ease and generosity that has me falling in love with analog all over again!
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been playing as many records from my collection as I can find time for, and so far the Grab has been consistently impressive, revealing my best sounding records in sometimes unexpected ways. Perhaps the best example of this came with The Eagles debut, a record that has always sounded good and increasingly great as my system has improved, EXCEPT for the song “Nightingale.” That song has consistently sounded terrible to me, even when playing the White Hot Stamper I had on hand and wrote about not long ago.
So when I put on that track and I could FINALLY hear clarity and separation in the loud chorus of backing vocals that had, in the past, sounded intolerably blurry and “blare-y”, it made all the difference. I was both thrilled and relieved to hear a song that I’d written off as a poorly recorded outlier take its rightful place among the many wonderful tracks on what is arguably one of the best recorded rock albums of all time. “Nightingale” may never be my favorite song on Eagles, but at least now I don’t have to lift the needle off the record whenever it comes on.
The startling efficacy of the Ventus Audio grounding box had me excited again about my system and its potential, not to mention curious to know more about the Grab. So I emailed Mike.
TBR: Can you tell me what you filled the box with?
Mike: We did experiments with different materials. Inside the box are some parts and the materials we chose, which are those capable of “dissolving” or “neutralizing” interference, figuratively speaking.
TBR: How did you determine the size of the box?
Mike: We did experiments with the size, shape and volume. This led to the current 4 model sizes we offer.
TBR: Will a smaller box with less of what’s in it work less well?
Mike: Yes. A grouding box of smaller volume will also improve the sound, but less than a bigger one. We feel the product sizes we offer now work the best.
TBR: Did you test this?
Mike: Everything we make we tested extensively over a long period in different audio systems. Any issues we found along the way would result in some adjustment to the product, if an adjustment were possible. And in the cases where an adjustment were not possible, we would re-design the entire thing.
For example, our Grab demo model in the picture on our website looks similar to the one I sent you, but it’s altogether different.
I’d like to mention that the most interesting discovery we made in the design and testing process for the Grab was that it helps to get rid of static electricity. I expect turntable owners in particular will like this feature.
TBR: What about a bigger grounding box? Will a bigger one work better?
Mike: Yes. Our experience is that a bigger box does work better, but bigger also creates some issues with production. On the other hand, for those interested in a custom built grounding box, the size of the box is potentially limitless.
My research tells me that the biggest player in this relatively new Grounding Box game is the Swedish company Entreq. Entreq has a grounding box they call the Silver Minimus Infinity that retails for close to what the Ventus Audio Grab sells for.
I haven’t tried the Entreq Silver Minimus Infinity (stay tuned), but let’s look at the numbers. The Silver Minimus costs $850 and weighs 2 kilos. The Ventus Grab 2 costs $900 and weighs 20 kilos. As near as I can tell, the price of these things goes up as they get bigger. If you want an Entreq GB with that much mass and “cleaning” power you’ll need to spend over $3k!
I have a good friend who’s an extrememly talented chef here in the San Franciso Bay area, albeit not one of the most successful ones. She came to dinner a while back and spent a lot of time talking about other chefs in the area, identifying those who’s talents were based on marketing and hype (these tended to be the more successful ones) and those that, in her words, were “the real deal”.
Friends, as audio products go, the Ventus Audio Grab 2 is THE REAL DEAL. The marketing might need a little work and I’m doing my part to add a reasonable dose of hype, but I assure you, the product is DOPE.
If your system has reached a place where you’re hearing big improvments with small changes, such as the Townshend Seismic Platter (have you gotten one of these yet? What are you waiting for?) then you’re going to love the Grab. And even if your system is not QUITE there yet, get one anyway as you’ll still hear a big improvement that will only get bigger as your system gets better.
Forget diminshing returns. The Ventus Audio Grab is a product that will help you get substantially more performance from EVERY component in your system for a relatively modest investment. And if you don’t like it, you’ve got 30 days to send it back.
DON’T SLEEP ON THIS ONE! Contact Ventus and buy a Grab now before they start charging a lot more money for them!
Check out the Ventus Grab
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