I suppose if you look at it on a caveat emptor basis, many of the “audiophile” accessories that charlatans, flat-earthers and perhaps even the plain stupid offer are harmless. And they provide a good laugh for those of a more rational mindset.
However, I see that Russ Andrews (RA) has also dabbled in earthing and grounding, a subject that is best approached in strictly scientific and engineering-based way. See:
https://www.russandrews.com/images/p...20Mk4links.pdf.
It starts off with :
“What is Earthing and Grounding? It is clearly crucial in any guide to improving your grounding that the basic practical difference is explained between earthing and grounding. The two are often confused and it helps to understand what each does.”
Not so, of course. Earthing and grounding are simply Trans-Atlantically different terms for exactly the same thing or group of things. I suspect that the intent was to differentiate between protective (safety) earthing/grounding on the one hand, and functional earthing/grounding on the other. But in this field, if you can’t get it right at the starting line, then “don’t pass go”, etc,
This misuse of the term is confirmed a bit later on:
“Earthing is for safety! Earthed equipment should always be connected to your earthed ring main.”
And:
“Grounding is the term we use to talk about connections to ground of the RFI signals picked up by the various exposed metal parts of your HiFi system. These connections are not safety related and are best connected with wires which you will need to fit to the casework,..”
Of course, functional earthing/grounding connections need to be carefully considered so that they never interfere with or compromise the protective earthing system. So they
are safety related in that they must be designed to avoid creating any safety problems. A warning to this effect early on in the piece is surely a “no-brainer”, at least for a competently written paper. Blithely saying that functional earthing/grounding is not safety related is inappropriate.
I haven’t sifted through the various grounding (meaning functional earthing/grounding) connections that RA recommends, but I suspect that some are questionable in terms of their effects of protective earthing and in respect of the regulations, although the latter would vary by territory.
Returning to science and engineering rigour, this site:
https://web.mit.edu/jhawk/tmp/p/EST0...ps_handout.pdf does I think provide a much better and professional analysis and synthesis in respect of the earthing/grounding of audio and audio-video systems, with emphasis on noise reduction. In comparison the RA paper looks like a “fail” on a topic where failing is not harmless.
Cheers,