15th May 2020, 11:06 pm | #1481 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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Alas the wonderful Peter Belt is no longer on planet earth (if he ever was) but is using morphic rainbow film in the great audio hokum in the sky. Who but PB could market this wonderful selection of stuff, with cryptic instructions on how to use each: http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/product-information Alas there is no linked information for the strangely beautifully named “Friendly” Four legged stance device. Craig |
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16th May 2020, 12:55 am | #1482 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
PB? Was he related to David Icke? Though the last time I flew over it, Arran was still there.
I like friendly four-legged stance devices. I call them horses for short. They make great friends. Like scrabble we could assign point scores to words acceptable to people on the esoteric fringe. Quantum is a bit passe. Morphic ought to score higher. Transfinite might be worth a lot, they haven't latched onto that one yet. In this way we could grade marketing output to see who's ahead of the game. It's almost all tripe, but those claims translate into sales and the money is real enough David
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16th May 2020, 8:16 am | #1483 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Whatever happened to Belt? He first came to my notice as the maker of rather good headphones - electrostatic and dynamic, and a few years later he turned up purveying all this...stuff. Perhaps the dark side paid better.
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16th May 2020, 8:58 am | #1484 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
The 'free improving techniques' are beyond sanity. How can anyone fall for this.
http://www.pwbelectronics.co.uk/free...ing-techniques |
16th May 2020, 10:02 am | #1485 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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16th May 2020, 10:07 am | #1486 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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Craig |
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16th May 2020, 10:48 am | #1487 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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20-odd years ago I used to run Engineering at Oxford Instrument. Large split pair superconducting magnets used to have a real problem in getting to design field. Took a while to find that the main machined stainless steel structure was (at least for the application) like a donkey's hind leg. Often 100 microns out of flat, which is more than enough. The solution was to rough machine, and then dunk the 100-200kg lump in a bucket cryostat of liquid nitrogen. Pull it out and let it get back to room temperature, and then final machine it to dimension. Problem solved. Now although CD's have inbuilt stress from the injection moulding process, it is far from clear whether freezing to -20C has a similar effect, and whether it is important for sound quality. All I'm saying is - maybe. I've got an open mind on this one. But the best ever kitkat bar is one frozen in liquid nitrogen and eaten cold! And that is a fact. It always amuses me when you see chefs on TV doing some culinary process using liquid nitrogen, with goggles and gauntlets. Because of the boiling of liquid nitrogen, and the low heat capacity of the vapour, you can cheerfully dunk your hand in a bucket of LN2 for a number of seconds without harm. The nitrogen boils around your hand and forms an insulating sheath. Liquid helium is another thing entirely - the vast majority of the cooling power is in the boil-off vapour at 4.2K. If you get any part of your body in the way of a significant amount of LHe boil off you are in serious trouble. Less than a second will damage tissue and subcutaneous nerves. Surprisingly dangerous stuff is liquid helium. Craig |
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16th May 2020, 11:22 am | #1488 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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It does seem a bit anomalous that the traditional practice for annealing stress out of a material is to heat it up rather than cool it down. But maybe what really matters is that the temperature changes and it's that process which frees up the dislocations etc and allows the structural disorder to be reduced. I know with hot annealing that it makes a big difference whether you let the piece cool nice and slowly (tempering) or whether you plunge it into some coolant (quenching). Cheers, GJ
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16th May 2020, 11:41 am | #1489 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Iron has two crystal structures. A high temperature face centered, non magnetic structure and a low temperature body centered magnetic structure. Alloying will change the temperature change and make it more reluctant to change. Hence dropping the temperature will promote the low temperature phase. I have no idea whether CDs have a phase change but a lot of plastics have a ductile/ brittle transistion.
High temperatures are used to reduce stress. I went inside the first pressure vessel of the Hunterston nuclear reactor before it was heated to reduce welding stresses. Some laboratory experiments predicted that the vessel would sag by four inches - and it did. A gentle fry of the CDs would reduce stresses and flatten all the little pips so eliminating background noise. |
16th May 2020, 12:01 pm | #1490 | ||
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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The crystal form of the final product is really determined by hot or cold annealing. But since we were dealing with structures reacting massive forces and held at 4.2K and lower, the low temperature annealing process was the way to go. Craig |
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16th May 2020, 1:12 pm | #1491 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Freezing then may have some esoteric benefits. But paper under a corner or pinning back a curtain is beyond sanity
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16th May 2020, 1:25 pm | #1492 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
I did a bit of time at Arcam (twixt jobs) in the late 80's, their Delta 90 amplifier has two circles of copper track on the PCB (about 20mm diameter with 2mm track). Mr Belt did that, ridiculous!
The photo attached shows them. Last edited by Guest; 16th May 2020 at 1:28 pm. Reason: Added a photo... |
16th May 2020, 2:31 pm | #1493 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
They fell for it?.... they believed him?
They let him in the door? Oh dear. David
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16th May 2020, 2:38 pm | #1494 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
In the May 1989 edition of Hi-Fi Answers there was a little booklet called: A Decade of Tuning Tips (Part Two). I happen to have this wonderful document
In in the normally fairly sensible reviewer Jimmy Hughes acts as a conduit for Belt's ideas. Apart from the usual nonsense of ensuring that every book in the listening room has to have an odd number of pages by adding a blank sheet to each, there are even stranger things, "While on the subject of mains plugs, a very beneficial form of charge control can be achieved by scribing thin lines on the live, neutral and earth pins and on the plastic safety sheaths on the live and neutral pins. The illustration shows fairly deep lines for artistic effect, but in practice you only need a light scratch. You should treat every single plug in the house, not just those that feed your hifi system..." He then goes on to describe how to do phono plugs and speaker plugs with the same method. An odd number of scratches of course. And on, and on... Craig |
16th May 2020, 2:47 pm | #1495 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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The paper-under-feet (of whatever colour) and curtain-corner capers sound like a case for an OCD consultation. Not joking. Colin |
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16th May 2020, 3:04 pm | #1496 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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A correction: Peter Belt died in 2017 not 2015, at the ripe old age of 87. He took St Peter some morphic cream and rainbow foil. The angels were allegedly singing more sweetly after application. Craig |
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16th May 2020, 3:23 pm | #1497 | |
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17th May 2020, 8:39 am | #1498 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Beltism things your stick onto your equipment are alive and well https://telos-audio.com.tw/sticker/ but using the word Quantum.
Oooh yeah - graphene too! Turns out they at least did their research on their company name Telos. Apparently (thanks Google) it is a term used by Aristotle to mean "the supreme end of man's endeavour" None of it cheap https://www.thecableco.com/telos_audio_design.html In particular the $80k cable run-in machine, internal photos on Telos's website https://telos-audio.com.tw/qbt-cable-run-in-machine/ . |
17th May 2020, 10:31 am | #1499 | ||
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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17th May 2020, 12:23 pm | #1500 | |||
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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One of the other nuggets to be found in said book is the fact that the actual efficiency of a Class A power amplifier on programme material is of the order of 1%... |
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