Re: Audiophoolery?
 

It's not authoritative, I realise, but there's no mention of electric shielding in the absence of magnetic shielding here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage.

You'll know of course that, except when they are constant, the electric and magnetic parts of the EM field are inseparable (curl E = -dB/dt, curl H = Jf + dD/dt). Anything which affects one will have at least some effect on the other. The magnitude of that effect is less at lower frequencies, but it is still there, even down in the audio range.

Cheers,

GJ

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

That coal bunker in post #80 looks like a "posh" version of the photo I showed in post#18.
I would love to get hold of one and test the black stuff to find out if it really is indeed coal.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Blue arctic cable with gold connectors, they dont look as good as the toaster leads but they
cost more so they must be better :laugh2:

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

The blue outer makes then look like arctic, but they do have silver conductors, and only 18pF/Metre capacitance! A bit of an overkill for audio methinks.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

It looks like wikipedia reflects common usage rather than

Faraday invented his screen to demonstrate magnetic coupling between two coils was not capacitive as some others had suggested. The whole point was that it segregated electric and magnetic fields.

While Maxwell's equations show that you cannot, for alternating fields, affect one without affecting the other, it is quite possible to have a significant imbalance in the relative strengths of the two components in the near field of an object.

It is possible to make E-field and H-field probes which measure each component individually.

It is possible to generate one field disproportionately more strongly than the other, at least in the near-field.

An electromagnetic wave-pair comes winging along in free space, many lambda from its source. The two waves are in equilibrium, each inducing into the other, settled at 377 volts per metre for every ampere per metre.

It hits a Faraday shield which shunts the electric field component. On the far side of the shield, there is very little electric field wave, but the magnetic wave continues unabated. As the magnetic wave moves further beyond the shield, it induces a growing electric wave accompanying it, and that wave strts inducing back into the magnetic wave until the pair balance in equilibrium with 377 (V/m)/(A/m)

On the input side of the shield the shunted electric wave is reflected with phase reversal, and as the electric wave travels, it similarly induces a magnetic wave and they too eventually in the far field of the screen settle as an equilibrium pair

Seen in the far-field, Faraday screens don't look like screens at all. In the close field they do something useful, principally to electric field components.

A lot of the things we do are in the near field.

If you're building a sensitive receiver, then you want a proper screening box to put it in, not a Faraday screen.

If you're building a transformer, a Faraday screen between windings may be rather desirable to block capacitive coupling of rubbish on the mains, but you don't want a magnetic screen, that would ruin the transformer operation.

It is very advantageous to have separate names for general and field-specific screens.

David

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

"Blue arctic cable with gold connectors," I love reading the blurb these purveyors of pricey gewgaws come out with, it's like the spiel you get in posh restaurants. Who writes this twaddle? Maybe they've brought back Shelley, Keats And Joyce from the dead and have them slaving away in a cellar writing adjective laden odes to over priced bibelots.

Andy.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

More importantly I would love to get hold of one of these "earth" boxes and test its performance.
Several versions are offered by different manufacturers but they all seem to consist of an insulated, generally wooden, box with an electrical connector, usually a binding post, to attach a wire and some form of metal strip / wire / mesh inside to make contact with the in fill.
The infill is of various materials, coal has been suggested as one.

We all love to snip and joke about these and true, the claims made as to how they work are hilarious and are not supported by any known scientific theory. They should be totally useless.

BUT has anyone actually, objectively, tested one, both electrically and by listening?

Peter

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

For a first approximation a bag of coal with a spike in it should suffice in an ABX test and measurement.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Yes, this is exactly right.

Even in the far-field they look like screens in the amplitude sense. As you say, there's a back-reflected wave outside the box and conservation of energy says it's taken its power from the incoming wave, leaving less to propagate beyond the screen.

When I was building these I was concerned with GHz radio waves and 10-100 nanosecond pulses and the screened rooms were quite large (~10m scale) so I wasn't always in the near-field. But the cage shown on that vibration table certainly would have been NF inside. We lined the room with copper foil but we never thought the idea of using mumetal as well, or even a cheaper high-permability material, was realistic. I don't know if anyone does. Given that the building contained a particle accelerator I know that they used non-magnetic steel to reinforce the concrete though !

Presumably that does have something to redirect the magnetic field too (shame there are no free monopoles to short it out ;)).

Cheers,

GJ

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

All this talk of Faraday cages now makes me realise why my aunties Budgie could hit those high notes!

Not only was it grounded, it was in a way, shielded from outside interference. The sandpaper in the bottom of the cage must have acted much like one of the oak boxes, also mentioned earlier.

You'd of thought cuttlefish must have some impact on enclosure resonance.

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

And would they admit to it. Surely the whole point of the sort of apparatus discussed in this thread is that no testing is required or possible, just faith.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

It's impossible to do that test without being affected by it and also affecting the outcome.

Anyone who has stumped up 13 grand for a badly made box of black grit and a few metal strips is not going to admit it was a waste of money.

No-one who's laid out so much brass can remain impartial. Heisenberg!

Any test done with a DIY version , however similar will just get decried by the believers as invalid because it wasn't a real one.

Take a wire outside (PME permitting!) and drive a nice copper coated steel rod into your garden, and use the whole planet!

David

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Even if there was a zero result "they" would say it's non conclusive "my ears are better than any other measuring device". What larks!

To (miss) quote Flanders and Swan "I never listen to music much, it's the high fidelity".

Mind you a glass (or two) of good scotch and "The Planets" sounds marvellous on my engineering based HiFi, try and measure (a good measure, two fingers is about right) that!

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I visit another forum that's dedicated to hifi. It wouldn't be fair to name it. Being sold on there are some second hand mains leads, varying in price from 90 to £120. I mean, the current travels through fuses that are a few thou thick, so what use are 'big' cables?!! The difference in impedance between thick cables and normal ones is the square root of sod all. And in any case, combined with the mains ring main, it all makes no difference whatsoever, and certainly not to the sound. The mind boggles at the level of snake oil being consumed.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Surely a second hand one would be worth more as it's already been "burned in"

"Do you want to save your N.O.S. tubes from further wear?" Then you need a cable cooker.
I would love to put my scope on this thing and find out what it's really doing if anything.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

A thought just occurred to me: How is being a hi-fi bore any different from being a real ale drinker? To anybody "outside the circle", beer is just beer and music just sounds like music.

But then, a pint of real ale doesn't cost any more (sometimes less!) than a pint of cold fizzy water with flavourings and ethanol (Your bias may be showing a little here -- Ed.), and there is a difference you can taste. When it comes to expense, ticking off beers on a chart is not in the same league as spending £100 on a few metres of fancy cable .....

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

The 'cable cooker' takes the biscuit. Careful you don't 'overcook' it though (the FAQ are hilarious).

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

My cables are so old I think they are "broken in" already. As to beers, they do have different tastes (all lovely) but the evidence is gone, yum yum.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

My speaker cables are now about 50+ years old. perhaps that's why the music I listen to is old as well - takes all that time to travel along the cable - but sounds just as good as it did back then.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Interestingly, the Indian guy called Ajay Shirke that owns Siltech and Crystal Cable also owns SME and Garrard. His company is called Cadence Audio https://cadenceaudio.com/what-we-do/cadence-companies/ . I did not realise that he also owns Spendor.

Craig

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Here is a pic of what is inside https://www.ls3-5a-forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=544231

Craig

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Ah so there is more than a brick in there, seems like a waste of good components.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I think I had better get my special purging resistor out.
It is a great tool for purging all the bad electrons out of cables and especially amplifiers and power supplies.
It can be seen in action purging bad electrons out of a power supply.
The pesky things had been taking short cuts in a transistor so badly than a new transistor had to be fitted before purging.
The bad electrons go away after being made to go around the corners on the six sided former a few times:-D;D:-D

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Clearly audiophoolery knows no bounds.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Shirke, apart from being a very successful industrial entrepreneur, is and always has been an audiophile (I'm avoiding audiophool). He actually set up Cadence to manufacture electrostatic speakers, amps and so forth, but has decided instead to spend his money in buying audio companies.

And judging from what he has done SME, all he has actually done is put a new MD in place, put money in and let it get on with doing what it does and progressively introducing new product - and building up its subcontract engineering activity.

And whatever you think about stupidly expensive cable like Siltech, they have been in business since 1983, so they clearly sell product. And anyway, if someone is wealthy enough to spend 60 grand on a single cable, what do you care? It is no more daft than buying a Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron, or Rolls Royce - hey it has four wheels - why not just buy a Panda? What a motorphool!

Don't get me wrong - as you know I completely agree that there is a whole lot of madness out there to suck in the non-scientific gullible. But I'm not about to knock a guy who steps in to save one of the finest engineering companies out there - SME. It was on the cards that they were looking to close the place, bulldoze it and sell the land for housing. As far as pure money was concerned that would have been a lucrative deal in Steyning in Sussex. And that would have been a tragedy. So thank you Mr Shirke.

And at least he keeps manufacture in the original place, unlike the Chinese who transfer the entire manufacture and often product development lock stock and barrel to China. Quad, Wharfedale, KEF, Castle, Audiolab - all gone to China.

Craig

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I couldn't help but notice inside the 'cable cooker' a lack of audio grade wiring and lack of high end components. The way that electrolytic is 'tacked' to the 12V DC socket, not best practice. Presumably the unit runs from a wallwart PSU, hopefully not a SMPSU, think of the noise injected into your expensive cabling!

Hmmm, although the cable cooker was not designed to pass an audio signal, you'd of thought it would be nicely put together.

I wonder how a bunch of paralleled interconnects would sound after have 12 volts at 1 amp running through them for a week? Am thinking, bench PSU one end, and an old car filament lamp at the other.

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I agree, there is a world of difference between the treatment of SME and Spendor compared with the fate of some other renowned names.

David

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

There is a subtle principle there that has to be handled in the field of measurement equipment (real scientific and engineering stuff, no fairy dust)

It takes cunning to design a new instrument with better performance than the previous state of the art. This involves making something which is better than the equipment used to make IT. Some serious creativity is needed.

I rather suspect the cable cooker does not fall into this category. It's pretty crude and not that well built. It's a motor for spinning prayer-wheels and the issue is whether prayers work.

David

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

A great shame the Leak name faded and hasn't yet been revived.

Great to see some UK based manufacturing companies though, still going.

Agreed, it's a difficult thing to measure/quantify cable nuances, and to make a device to release their magic would be a trifle difficult.

I do have spectrum analyser, distortion analyser, RMS noise meter and 'scope. Would we realistically see any real 'before' and 'after' changes with such humble test equipment? Not likely I'll wager, but possibly worth a shot.

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

To think I spent 38 years at my shop in South West London selling 5 amp twin flex for 25p a metre....I knew I had done something wrong even back then but nobody told me the secret.
All I can say is if ill informed and gullible guys believe this tosh then so be it and good luck to the guys that manage to extract vast amounts from their wallets yet still keep a smile on the poor deluded souls face. Regards, John.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

My point is, whether he's an audiophool or not, when it comes to making money - and I'm not against that! - he's seemingly as happy to sell high-end, no-nonsense, 'credible but expensive' SME products as he is cables that cost a mortgage and make no audible difference. No scruples, money talks, and that's generally the way of dealers in the audiophoolery market. Peter Belt being one such person.

The notion that someone has enough money to spend 60 grand on a single cable is not one that I "care about", indeed I find it quite funny, ridiculous even, hence the whole audiophool thing that we're now discussing and enjoying. Paying a large amount of money for a Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron, or Rolls Royce is not a valid simile, you will get an awful lot more of a motor car and objective, measurable added value than say an old Ford Escort.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Ah, if only you'd known, John. During the odd quite patch you'd have been sat there steadily stamping little directional arrows along that 5A flex and erasing the decimal point on the price tag....

David

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

On a point of detail, 'audible difference' is a phrase which is used in two distinct ways.

Some people use it to mean a difference which passes a rigorous test e.g. double-blind ABX comparison (actually harder to carry out than we might imagine, but that's a separate issue).

Other people use it to mean the situation where there is a perceived difference in the 'heard experience' inside their heads. They would argue that that is the more useful definition when it comes to judging home entertainment equipment, and I might even agree with them actually.

The question of whether a product has been sold on the basis of objective scientific untruths is a different one. I disapprove of that. Where life gets difficult is when a listener's subjective pleasure depends on them believing the objective untruth. Then I might have to decide whether it really is best to pee on their parade.

Cheers,

GJ

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I had a customer for whom money was no object. He had all sorts of esoteric equipment in his listening room. I went with him to a hi-fi exhibition and the reps all flocked to him to sell him the latest thing. I was therefore excited to hear his sytem - and it was terrible! Everything was mis-matched and his room was like a tunnel. Of course I said all the right things and he went back to his listening pleasure, even if better results would have come from a system costing a fraction of the price.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I once was at an exhibition where a cost-no-object, but apparently DIY system had been set up for punters to listen to with rows of seats in front of the open baffle speakers. These were driven by ginormous shiny valve amplifiers, source was probably CD as this was long before the recent vinyl revival.

And the sound was...

Terrible!

Yet all these people were seated nodding away in time to the music and apparently thinking it was great.

The other extreme was at one of the London Hi-Fi shows held in a hotel in the 90s. The small rooms weren't ideal and the sound most people were getting was harsh and unforgiving. I then wandered into another small room which had a pair of enormous horn loudspeakers squashed into it. The speakers looked such a mismatch to the room I thought 'this is going to be awful'. Then the music started playing: valve amp fed by a turntable. It sounded great and I could have sat there all day, my ears went ahhh after all the harshness.

The moral of the story: Don't judge by appearances, technology or price tag, only by what it sounds like!

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

When does all this turn into exploitation? Are these folk not effectively being 'groomed' by all the hype so they can then be parted from their cash? Yes it's fine to make money honestly and to give fair value but to take advantage of those who are vulnerable and profit shamelessly from it is not on in my opinion.

Steve.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I'm going to say it, 'cryogenically treated' valves?

Discuss ...

The thought of popping all my valves in a dewar-full of LN2, gadzooks! What are the chances of the vacuum 'escaping'?

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Do you suppose we could talk an audiophile into having his ears and brain cryogenically treated? Or maybe an April the first article?

We could wax lyrical about how it had to be liquid helium and not common nitrogen. How while his brain was superconducting he could understand Delius and Mahler, how tuning dots worked and he could hear a pin drop in the next county.... but he lost the understanding as he came back to room temperature although he still remembers that he had it. All that remains of his adventure is that he levitates while asleep.

David

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

That is so often the case. And more often that not I find that the main 'culprit' is the speakers. Many audiophools seem to be drawn to esoteric limited edition ones made by self designated speaker gurus who take months to knock up one pair. And they sound awful, just random - but 'fashionable' - drive units and a dodgy, over simplified crossover in a poorly designed box with a frighteningly attractive piano finish. If you like that sort of thing. If only people would stick to makers of no-nonsense monitor quality speakers such as high end models from (to name a couple) B&W, Spendor, Harbeth etc. Those guys have been designing and building speakers for use in the most demanding monitoring applications for donkey's years. :shrug:

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Cryogenically treating the brain is easy, whacking great scoops of ice cream, responsibly sourced, organic, in recyclable tubs too. They're free to choose the flavour.

The ears? Perhaps a snow machine whose mains lead is 2 metres long, uses oxygen free directional copper and costs circa £1500 a centimetre, thereby giving the reassurance of 'quality'.

Joking aside, I once went to a Hi-Fi show in the late 90's. A dealer was selling 'isolation' platforms at something like £2000 a go. The improvement in the 'sound-stage' was apparently something to behold used on say, a CD player. Using a platform on the source, pre-amp and power amp would 'apparently' be astonishing! The dealer had 6 of these platforms under the CD player, 6 under the pre-amp, 6 under each power amp (one for left, one for right) plus, 6 under each loudspeaker.

£72000's worth of granite with gold spikes. How did it sound, in a tiny hotel room, next to the lift? Not a clue, the bloke was standing on carpet & I had a job to understand him. Too much distortion! Should've used some of his own granite platforms, he muttered something about 'music' and the ability to play it.

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I became aware of the effect of room acoustics on sound one evening in the 1970's when I had nodded off listening to the radio and was woken by the stereo test tones that used to be broadcast on Radio 4 after shut-down. As I moved myself to get up from the sofa to turn the radio off, I found that moving my head affected the loudness of the test tones. By suitably positioning my head I found I could completely null out the sound in either ear. I guess that you would need to clamp your head in a fixed position to ensure a proper comparison between systems, and even then, all the other items in the room wold need to be identically positioned too. I guess that, other than when comparing speakers, to eliminate room acoustics you would need to use a good set of headphones.

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

In the Victorian era, photographers had wooden clamps to stabilise people's heads so they didn't move and get blurred with the very long exposure times they had to use. The clamps were designed so they could not be seen from the front, so if re-introduced, they wouldn't intrude on the path for sound from speaker to ear.

Could this be the next big thing in audio listening? Piano finish, spiked feet, exotic woods, alloys and composites. There are possibilities. But you'd have to get the price up to an acceptable level.

David

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Leak (the brand name) was owned by Wharfedale. Back in the early 90's I was Technical Director of Wharfedale, and we re-introduced Leak products. This was a totally new line of high quality gear.

I'd recruited a young guy called Steve Sells (now Engineering Director of NAIM), and let him off the leash to design the best power amp he knew how, no holds barred. It was a stunning piece of work.

We also tied up with a guy who had designed a digital pre-amp (or more accurately control amp) - which was astonishingly radical in 1990.

Then I engaged a design company called Creactive, and their founder Hans Petersen did the appearance design.

We launched the line at what used to be the Heathrow Penta audio show, attended by the elderly widow of Harold Leak.

Then the recession bit, Wharfedale imploded, the board (actually an individual snot goblin, who I won't name) fired the CEO, then his PA, then the Ops Director, then me.

And those stunning Leak products never saw the light of day thereafter.

I have no idea who now owns the Leak brand name. But if it was part of Wharfedale when Stan Curtis sold the company to the Chinese, that is where it is, moribund again.

Craig

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Craig, that's a bit of audio history I'd not heard of, fascinating stuff indeed, and a huge shame, what happened to the 'demo(?)' Leak equipment made under your wing? I believe the Leak name is now owned by Hinchley or Tamura? Something to do with transformers.

I have a bit of Leak equipment, Stereo 20, Point One Stereo plus matching Troughline II with a stereo decoder designed by a chap called Tim De Paravicini, all running a pair of B&W's.

This being my 'fleeting' trip down Hi-Fi lane in the late 90's, still sounding nice. How did they achieve such sonic possibilities back then, with carbon comp's, standard gauge wiring throughout, screw terminals and AC wiring within all the sources/amplifying stages?

On a different note, one thing I'd not heard of, 'Quantum Stickers'. Yep, £135 a go, https://www.audiocomav.co.uk/tuning-...-stickers.html not sure they'd survive on a set of EL84's.

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I have absolutely no idea. They were on a shelf in the electronics lab when I exited stage left. Probably got junked into a skip because there was no-one left who knew what they were.

They were heady days. I introduced ceramic domes for the tweeters. Sourced them from Idemitsu Petrochemical in Japan. The Young's modulus to density ratio were far higher than the traditional aluminium or titanium domes, which figure determines the first break up mode. Alumina pushed that to 55kHz. CVD diamond was my preferred material, but at that stage was far too expensive. Now it isn't and B&W have diamond dome tweeters, pushing the first break up mode to approaching 100kHz. The important thing is that those resonances are high Q, and when close to the audio band, the phase shift associated with the resonance means that the tweeter is no longer minimum phase, and shifting it out as far as practical makes that ideal condition more closely approached.

And oh dear - as I said earlier, any audio product that uses the term "quantum" is by definition complete and utter snake oil. Did you read the blurb on that page? You could use a simple sentence generator and put random pseudo-technical words in and write that sort of copy!

Craig

Craig

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

This thread has opened my eyes to a whole new world, one of which whereby I'm seemingly not alone being happy as a 'spectator'.

Some of the blurb, hyphenated, in some cases, x10 to the power indices etc, wowsers, who writes that up? Bluffing-splifora could describe the terminology.

Speaker technology has become a science, and come a long way as a result. Some of the materials used are truly breathtaking. Sadly, though not always, house in chipboard. I did see on the web today an audio isolation platform made from, & I kid not, 'audio-grade' MDF.

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Some more quantum fairy dust

https://www.audiocomav.co.uk/quantum...-enhancer.html

There are pictures on the web of someone who took a Bybee quantum slipstream purifier to bits (you put these in series with for example your speaker cables). It turned out to be an 0.025 ohm wirewound resistor with a black coating.

Marketed by Bybee as reducing quantum noise (which they say is 1/f noise). Now there is absolutely nothing you can do to reduce 1/f noise. And even less an 0.025 ohm inductive wire wound resistor, which interestingly would have its own 1/f noise contribution.

Craig

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

Had been wondering about those little devices, looking suspiciously like power resistors in heatshrink.

On that very website, they sell aluminium 'stickers' which you apply to either the front, or rear, of your Hi-Fi separate, releasing a whole new world of sonics, apparently. Who'd of thought, just one sticker on the outside can make such a huge improvement.

I wonder, with a quantum sticker on each ear-lobe, and an aluminium sticker on the forehead, would everything and everyone sound like a decent stereo system? Add a foil shower cap to keep those dastardly cosmic rays out along with mains bourne RFI ... Oh the possibilities ... The central locking on your car, or neighbours lawnmower, would have never sounded so good.

Truly astonishing what's out there, pebbles to attach to your audio leads, as mentioned earlier in this post, stickers, keeping speaker leads off the floor, wooden boxes full of, well, who knows ...

One thing that did make a huge improvement to the sound of my Hi-Fi, since our cordless 'phone with mains charger used the same power outlet, cleaning the mains plug earth pin of 'earthed' equipment with an old duster & a spot of Brasso. Before, you could hear the 'phone being charged, with a high-pitch 'weet weet weet' noise, after the Brasso, the noise had gone.

Very old MK plugs they are, had badly tarnished brass contacts.

Mark

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

That is what I do too. Tarnish is bad. The only thing to make sure is that all traces of the brasso are gone. An alternative is green scouring pads to break up the tarnish, with a wipe over with IPA to get rid of the dust.

Of course the same thing happens inside the socket too, but a spot of contact cleaner on the now clean mains pins and then push it in and out a few times is all that is needed.

I've also found that older MK mains plugs (particularly the rubber ones) had silver plated fuse clips inside, which get thick black tarnish. I usually just dump those and put on a new plug.

Craig

Re: Audiophoolery?
 

I once fitted a few Bybee 'bullets' to a pre-amp for a customer (he had bought them second-hand for a lot less than the list price). Before I did I put a multimeter across them. The measurement said they were indistinguishable from a piece of wire, although I suppose they might have been 0.025 ohm. Bybee's literature didn't include much guidance about where to put them (now, now, it's a Sunday, stay polite ;)) so I think I fitted a couple in the input leads, one in the HT rail and the rest where they were clearly visible. Despite being a self-confessed believer in 'foo' even my customer couldn't hear any difference. So I took them out again and he moved them on.

Cheers,

GJ