Kojo CrystalE Grounding

[Plasmod3]

We are now distributors for Kojo Technologies and this has been super popular in Japan folks winning the gold awards in the local Japan stereophile publications . I can confirm this is very effective in my systems and as people who know me i only sell stuff that work! Let me know if you will like to experience the CrystalE 

 

Lets look at the CrystalE grounding box

 

Kojo was a pioneer in the audio industry in the development of ground boxes. The Kojo Crystal E inherits from the previous Force Bar series and re-examined the materials, structure and shape of the ground box to elevate your audio system to the next level with better definition of instruments and micro-details.

> Improved Grounding Design
Kojo optimized the design of the Force BarEP model to achieve superior grounding capabilities.
1. The shape and dimension of the ground box has been redesigned to achieve 1.75x the surface area.
2. Kojo introduced a 0.5mm gap between each layer to eliminate the effects of inter-layer interactions and increased the surface area of each layer.
3. Kojo optimized the number of layers and materials of each layer. The ForceBarEP model consists of 6 layers – (1)copper/(2)brass/(3)copper/ (4)brass/(5)copper/(6)steel. The Crystal E consists of 8 layers – (1)stainles steel(SUS)/(2)Brass/(3)Copper/(4)Brass/(5)Copper/(6)Brass/(7)Copper/(8)Brass.
4. Kojo redesigned the body. While the Force BarEP used 2mm stainless steel in the top cover and 1.5mm aluminium in the bottom, the Crystal E uses 2mm aluminium in the top cover and 2mm steel in the bottom. This reduces the centre of gravity of the unit and greatly improves music performance.

> More Secure Connection
While the Force BarEP uses a M4 screw with a rowlet to allow the ground cable to be attached without dedicated tools, the Crystal E uses a SUS M4 binding screw(Philips Screwdriver No.2 size required) to ensure a more secure connection.

– Improves S/N resulting in music with better scale, definition, dynamics and richness
– Comes with a set of ground cable accessories(one RCA ground cable, one spade ground cable)
– *Can be used with Kojo Clone series ground cables for even better performance
—
Product Specifications:
Virtual ground terminals: M4 × 2 terminals (stainless steel screws)
Dimensions: (W)80mm (H)35mm (D)111mm
Weight: 775g
Accessories: 2x 1.2m dedicated grounding cable, 1x RCA plug-Y terminal (M4) cable(gold plated), 1x Y terminal (M4) – Y terminal (M6) cable(gold plated)
*Y terminal size: M6 (recommended mounting screw size m4 to 6)

 

Explore the Crystal E with me at

 

 

[Plasmod3]

[shailesh]

Any indication of pricing ?

Edited August 4 by shailesh

[Plasmod3]

On 31/07/2023 at 11:56 PM, shailesh said:

Any medication of pricing ?

will message you:-)

[lumholtzii]

Apologies for the long post.  I thought I’d drop some comments / personal experiences in this thread, purely as a happy customer of Ian’s and as someone with no financial or other interest. I just happened to take up his offer of trying the Kojo CrystalE and then ended up buying some.  Also, when I was digging around on the web to try and find out info / opinions on these units I could find very little in English, and Google translate was wearing thin for me. If this starts a bit more accessible commentary of people’s experience with Kojo gear, then it might be a good thing.

 

Prior to getting onto the Kojo units I’d been making some progress on improving the sound of my system from installing a separate ground rod and Puritan groundmaster and linking things up to it, as well trying some different ground boxes. It was clear to me that there were sizeable gains to had in SQ improvement from grounding.  I’d also come to realise that grounding for audio is a bit of kooky ‘dark art’ to those of us who aren’t electrical engineers, and perhaps it is even to some e-engineers as well.

 

Anyway, cut to the chase.  Impressions of the Kojo CrystalE

 

Do they play nicely with an existing grounding system?  Put simply, yes. In most cases they have been complementary / supplementary.  You could leave the CrystalE unattached or independent of your grounding system and they work great, but in almost every instance they sounded much better when they were drained to the grounding system - the only exception was for my power amp.  If you don’t have a grounding system then they work well by themselves, but there's a bonus if you have an existing star grounding system - some serious bang for buck.

 

Clarity of sound:  I’ve tried various other grounding boxes with different degrees of success but there was always a bit of colouration / muddiness to sound (was it my gear or the ground box , cable ?, I couldn’t never tell).  

For me (or perhaps more my partner), the tell-tale marker isn’t hi-res files or any particular recording, but it’s the dialogue from TV series or films, particularly those in quieter passages or alternatively in noisy filmed sequences. The CrystalE on the dac & preamp helped me get a much clearer and focussed representation of dialogue and that alone is a big win. BTW they were great on the TV too for the digital audio send and picture, but I've ended up using the smaller sibling the Crystal EP RCA in that location.

 

Soundstage: wider, cleaner (lower noise floor) and sparse / empty in a good way, sharper imaging than anything I’d achieved previously

 

Size: these units are small and tidy enough to be easily tucked out away.

 

Flexibility: Being able to daisy chain units together can be useful to intensify the impact – but I know that you can also do on some other brands as well. 

 

What I did notice that the units they seem to be sensitive to the choice of ground lead, which I hadn’t noticed before.  While some might see this as a negative, I see this as a bit of positive as it means that there is a lot of scope / flexibility to the voicing that you can achieve for a particular component. Sure, this does require a bit of time and effort, and careful listening, but it has been worth the effort that I have put in so far.

 

One of the bummers is that it turns out most of my home-made grounding leads that I had taken a lot of care with pre-Kojo do sound awful, as do the cheap silver wire versions that I’d bought online. I found that standard ‘give-away’ cables with each Kojo unit were much better than anything else I had at hand. More recently I got to experiment with the Kojo Clone 1 and 2 cables.  They are much better than the standard cables, are quite different to each other … but yes they are an extra cost. What was also weird was that the cable used to drain the CrystalE to an analogue or digital bus bar also has a strong influence on the character of the sound a component – almost as much as the lead between the component > Kojo. 

 

It’s a dark art indeed ! -  I’ll admit to being a bit of a cable-skeptic for grounding leads – I’d never heard much of difference before, but it was pretty obvious with CrystalE. …. I still have quite a bit of work to do on the selection or building of grounding cables !.

 

‘Musicality’: As someone who has grown up with vinyl and then digital formats I am one of those people who has always struggled with digital for its lack of emotional engagement, for want of a better term.  I love the ease of Roon / Qobuz and it accounts for 80% of my listening, but it’s still often emotionally sketchy or bland for me.  Using them on any single component had a positive effect for me.  But as an experiment the other night I fitted CrystalE to each part of the streaming chain (router > switch 1 > switch 2 > server > streamer > dac  … yes, 6 boxes!) and then forgot about it about while cooking dinner, …… until weirdly it felt like Lucinda Williams was singing in the next room. Some glimpse of emotional content not previously rendered from a recording well-known to me, and from a different room.  My digital chain is a long way from being fully optimised, but I can see that these units with right cable are likely to be useful tool for whatever digital direction I go. And being passive, I don’t need to find another socket or expensive power cable!

My two bobs worth at this point on my journey.  I hope is helpful to some.  Sorry for the long post.

[MLXXX]

2 hours ago, rantan said:

@March Audio @MLXXX @The Mad Scientist

 

From a post above, "Soundstage: wider, cleaner (lower noise floor) ..."

 

It is remarkable how many tweaks these days are found by users to  "lower the noise floor" and/or "widen the soundstage".

 

If someone was actually experiencing audible hum at a normal gain setting when seated in the listening chair they might need to look into minimising earth loops or providing a separate (real) earth I would have thought.

[Plasmod3]

12 hours ago, MLXXX said:

 

From a post above, "Soundstage: wider, cleaner (lower noise floor) ..."

 

It is remarkable how many tweaks these days are found by users to  "lower the noise floor" and/or "widen the soundstage".

 

If someone was actually experiencing audible hum at a normal gain setting when seated in the listening chair they might need to look into minimising earth loops or providing a separate (real) earth I would have thought.

might need to have a listen - armchair listening might not work:-)

[rantan]

1 hour ago, Plasmod3 said:

might need to have a listen -

 

Perhaps it could be possible to have one of these do a "member tour", which has been very constructive in the past? This would allow people to evaluate the item in a meaningful way as a part of their existing system.

[Plasmod3]

25 minutes ago, rantan said:

 

Perhaps it could be possible to have one of these do a "member tour", which has been very constructive in the past? This would allow people to evaluate the item in a meaningful way as a part of their existing system.

Definitely:):) how best to do it so we can keep a yrack of the demo units ? Open to ideas:):)

[rantan]

In the past, the idea was that any interested members could advise of their wish to participate by posting in this thread.

After a list of those interested has been compiled, one member has the unit shipped to them and they evaluate it over a week or perhaps ten days and then ship it to the next member on the list who would do the same.

This was (very ) successfully done with the IfI Zen Phono stage last year and many members benefitted greatly by being able to asses its merit when they otherwise may have not ben able to do so.

It also resulted in many members actually purchasing the item and being very happy to do so on an informed  basis.

[Plasmod3]

2 hours ago, rantan said:

In the past, the idea was that any interested members could advise of their wish to participate by posting in this thread.

After a list of those interested has been compiled, one member has the unit shipped to them and they evaluate it over a week or perhaps ten days and then ship it to the next member on the list who would do the same.

This was (very ) successfully done with the IfI Zen Phono stage last year and many members benefitted greatly by being able to asses its merit when they otherwise may have not ben able to do so.

It also resulted in many members actually purchasing the item and being very happy to do so on an informed  basis.

Sure lets start on the list here:). Happy to show what the unit can do

[Fidelity Sounds]

[Fidelity Sounds]

Just now, Fidelity Sounds said:

Installed Crystal E last year 

[Plasmod3]

Good on you !:):) i love my crystal e:):)

[Jambo2]

I have already been interested in trying signal grounding, but the devices i had seen were rather large, so I had not dipped my toes in the water, but when Ian informed that he had become distributor of Kojo devices and that they were small and reasonably discreet I was quite interested. Ian was kind enough to send a twin pack for me to try. It had two Crystal E’s in the box. It came with spade and rca cables.

 

But I said to Ian I wanted to try USB for my CH C1.2 dac as that has a usb port, so Ian kindly also sent a usb terminated cable. I did try one Crystal E on the CH C1.2 connected with the supplied RCA cable to a spare RCA output port on the C1.2, but could not detect any meaning full sound changes. The USB port also did bring any worthwhile improvements. 

 

I left one in the system for a few and still no changes. I informed Ian of the fact and he said try it on the CH T1 clock, so I popped into Jaycar and got a couple BNC to female RCA converters plugs. I plug the converter to my CH T1 and than using the supplied RCA cable to the connector and in turn to the Crystal E. Now this bough an immediate change, much sharper/cleaner with blacker back grounds to the sound. I was very much loving the new sound of the system and rang Ian to let him know, he suggested try connecting the other Crystal E to the CH T1 as well, so again using BNC convert plug I connect another Crystal E to another spare BNC port on the CH T1. The same thing happend again more sharper sound and more detail and blacker background . But on a longer listen I felt it was a little too much, most of the time it was ok but on certain tracks it was just a little tiring on a longer listen. 
 

So I  took one out and left one on the CH T1, I then I connect the other using the USB cable to my Pink Faun music server on a spare usb port of PF. Now we’re cooking ! You should have seen the smile on my face. I loved it. 
 

Ian and I had a chat and I decided to get/purchase the Jtune version which is 1.6 times the effect of the standard unit and as I felt two was too much on the CH T1, hoping the one 1.6 effect would be just about be ideal for the CH T1, my gut feel/hunch proved spot on. I also got another Jtune version for the Pink Faun. I returned the standard twin pack back to Ian. 

The Jtune version is the same size as the standard unit, just a bit heavier - I assume it has more plates inside. It also  does not come in twin pack and is more expensive. But I’m pleased with the purchase and the sound improvements obtained. 
 

p.s I also tried one on my switch (Ian supplied a RJ45 terminated Clone cable) and obtain positive results here as well. But that will have to wait until funds allow. 

Edited August 16 by Jambo2

[jackruss]

price?

[Plasmod3]

8 hours ago, jackruss said:

price?

Message sent:):)

[dwbasement]

Hi Ian,

Can you PM the price ?

 

Cheers

Dennis