Chord
GroundARAY and Roon Nucleus
August
18, 2021
Marc,
I
was looking for pricing on the Chord GroundARAYs and saw that Roy Gregory had actually reviewed them in The Audio Beat. I’ve been playing with
these quite a bit recently and I have to agree with his findings, especially as regards
their targeted nature and value. But, although Roy mentions the HDMI unit in conjunction
with TV images, I think he missed an obvious audio application that could be of
considerable value to many of your readers.
As
soon as I heard the range included an HDMI version, the first thing that popped into my
mind was the Roon Nucleus. I own a Nucleus Plus and use it with a Nordost Qsource power
supply. In my travels, I've also used the Nucleus with its own power supply, as well as
with a number of the other linear power supplies available on the market. I have always
been wary of what the Nucleus contributes in terms of noise on the system ground,
irrespective of the power supply used. It’s also difficult to do much about it
because it doesn’t offer too many spare outputs. Except that just about no one uses
the HDMI socket.
Plugging
the GroundARAY HDMI into my Nucleus Plus (directly connected to a Mark Levinson No.585)
eliminated much of the background noise that was smearing clarity and midrange dynamics,
whether using the Nucleus or my Neodio CD player as the source. Results are going to vary
with systems, but swapping amps to a Luxman L-590AX II, adding the GroundARAY to the
Nucleus was a bit like supercharging the 30 watts of class-A power coming out of the
little Luxman! It wasn’t just better -- it was way better. I checked this
out on a client and he clearly heard the benefits, listening to the turntable. Okay, so
the difference wasn’t as huge as when using the Nucleus as a source, but it was still
significant.
But
what’s more significant is the number of readers out there with a Roon Nucleus in
their systems. In my experience, the GroundARAY HDMI offers a simple and meaningful
upgrade, not just to the Nucleus but to the complete system, making it well worth
investigating.
Stirling
Trayle
Audio
Systems Optimized
Added
August
1, 2021
Marc,
Please
add me to your e-mail list. Love the site.
Carl
Easton
You've
been added. To join TAB's reader e-mail list and find out about new articles
first, send e-mail to rl@theaudiobeat.com.
-Marc Mickelson
