New Shunyata Altaira Grounding System

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by Famester V1

Excellent idea!
I wish I would have seen this sooner.
I had my electrician sink 2 ground rods outside my music room, run a ground from the outlet to the rods, then ran a pigtail from the outlets to the Altaria to ground everything.

You could also add a CGC ground cable from Altaira to the GP-NR ground post on your Denali. That would accomplish the same function.

[miner]

I just placed my order with Ivan. The wait begins…. I do not have a Shunyata conditioner but Ivan assured me I can use it with my PS Audio P12 by grounding to the chassis. I suppose a Denali may be in my future.

[Vintage Pete]

Originally Posted by miner

I just placed my order with Ivan. The wait begins…. I do not have a Shunyata conditioner but Ivan assured me I can use it with my PS Audio P12 by grounding to the chassis. I suppose a Denali may be in my future.

The placing of my order is imminent. Rather than grounding to my P12 chassis, I'll be using the Shunyata grounding plug adaptor. This should do the same thing and will be more convenient in my case. Accessing the rear of my P12 is quite difficult.

[Clyde2]

Originally Posted by Vintage Pete

The placing of my order is imminent. Rather than grounding to my P12 chassis, I'll be using the Shunyata grounding plug adaptor. This should do the same thing and will be more convenient in my case. Accessing the rear of my P12 is quite difficult.

Looking forward to reading your comments and reactions! I hope your experience is as good or better than mine.

[Formerly YB-2]

Are the terminations on the Shunyata ground cables banana at the Altaira CG & spade at the amp, etc., end?

[Masterlu]

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

Are the terminations on the Shunyata ground cables banana at the Altaira CG & spade at the amp, etc., end?

Modular; they can be anything you wish. Cables start at 1.0M w/ custom iengths of .25M increments.

[Formerly YB-2]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

Modular; they can be anything you wish. Cables start at 1.0M w/ custom iengths of .25M increments.

So any Wireworld cables would work as well as Shunyata cables......

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

Are the terminations on the Shunyata ground cables banana at the Altaira CG & spade at the amp, etc., end?

Ivan provided some useful information. In real world use, I find it easier to "dress" the cables by having bananas at the end you'll plug into the ground posts on the Altaira units. You can also connect up to two devices to a single Altaira ground post, which will require one of these two cables having a spade connector. The spade has what might be referrred to as "dual-diameter" spade design, as shown here:

Because of this design, you'll obtain the best "seating" of the spade onto the ground post by putting it in from the "side" so that the spade "seats" down onto the post of the ground terminal fully, as shown here.



You can certainly run it in from "the top" or "bottom", but be mindful that when attached "vertically", because of the asymmetric shape of the ground post shaft (where the binding post shaft is narrower in the horizontal orientation vs. the "vertical" orientation) of the binding post and the "dual diameter" of the opening of the spade, the spade will not sit fully "down" onto the binding post shaft when positioned vertically (either up or down). It will still work fine, but it won't be quite as tight a connection as when it's run in the from the side.

Also, for other types of terminations you may require, you can order specific "tails" for making connections to other types of devices. For example you can order an RJ45 tail to connect a ground cable to an unused port on an Ethernet switch, or a USB tail to connect to an unused USB-A port on a DAC, network bridge or streamer, for example.

Here's a pic of USB and Ethernet tails:


So, if you need to use a termination with a "tail", order a "base cable" with bananas on both ends, then you can simply snap on the specific tail for the device you want to connect to, as shown....

Base cable with a USB tail snapped on...


Base cable with an RJ45 tail snapped on...


There's a variety of tails available for conecting for just about any device you may want to connect to an Altaira. The cool thing about the tail system is, if your set-up or the types of devices in your system changes, you don't need to buy another cable, you can just purchase a new tail for your new device.

The Altaira system is very well thought-through in this regard.

[Formerly YB-2]

Very good.
So, no problem using the CG unit as a SG?

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

So any Wireworld cables would work as well as Shunyata cables......

No, that's not an accurate assumption. If you're going to say, make a connection from an RCA or XLR jack on a component to an Altaira, you cannot use regular RCA or XLR interconnect cable; the cable must be designed internally to be safely and properly used only as a ground cable.

Same applies to other cable types, e.g. BNC, USB, S/PDIF, RJ45, etc.

I don't know if Wireworld makes specific cables designed to function only as ground cables; I'd discuss that with Ivan.

This is all discussed in the Altaira Grounding System documentation. Before installing an Altaira system, it's very important for safety reasons and proper use for end-users to read all the Altaira grounding system literature from Shunyata before-hand.

First, read this:
https://shunyata.com/download/22713/

Then, read this:
https://shunyata.com/download/22713/

Then, read all the Altaira information linked on this page:
https://shunyata.com/altairaroadmap/

The Altaira system is truly a "game-changer", to use an over-used phrase, but users really need to do their "homework" first to understand, for their specific system set-up, how to select, safely, and properly configure an Altaira system.

Again, Ivan will be a great help here.

Cheers!