Hello Matthias,
I am very glad that the forum is open minded – thank you for your detailed response. Some of the American forums have made me cautious: there are lots of quite angry people on them. I like it here so far and am impressed by the positivity of the posts 🙂
Your use of powder inside connectors is very interesting. My own interpretation of these effects is along the lines of ’noise‘ being absorbed or otherwise redirected, so your ideas here make sense to me and I will try them.
I’ve attached a couple of photos that illustrate very effective (i.e., audible) use of the agate. You will see one end of my throttle cable. The other end is where all of the ferrites are. In one photo, there are beads wrapped around the cable. In other other, it is a large (120g) piece of agate. It’s all banded agate – I haven’t tried any other kind. Like you, I find that ferrites have a bigger effect.
The best effects of the agate have been on the ethernet side of things, but they also change the sound when used on power cables – this latter application was odd to me and I didn’t like it. In contrast, I love the effect on the wireless client and also on top of my streamer (at the rear). Moving the large piece of agate even a couple of mm on the little wireless client changes the sound: there is a ’sweet spot‘ where the effect is optimal.
I have used grounding boxes and the effect here is broadly similar to the good ones, only much stronger and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper.
Best wishes,
Harry