snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com (Snoopy) (10/29/87)
[ followups have been set to rec.audio only ] Okay, gang, you think you've heard everything, right? WRONG! Check out the October issue of _Hi-Fi Answers_ (a magazine from the UK). The article "Gifts Of Unknown Things" is absolute *must* reading! Some brief quotes: "Linn noticed how a telephone and battery-operated alarm watch caused a similar deterioration in sound quality to an extra loudspeaker, and once again the sympathetic vibrations theory was used to explain it. The flaw here is that battery watches without an alarm mess up the sound just as much as those with." "Further tests showed that a battery on its own -- especially if wired with a resistor across its terminals to make it pass current -- caused deterioration in sound quality." Obviously they should have used a metal film resistor and wired it with 4 gauge finely stranded oxygen free wire. :-) "Next he found that sound quality improved when various objects within the room -- a brick fireplace, a door -- were wiped with the treated foam." Gee, I wonder if I could use my zerostat to treat my fireplace, or if I need the official foam? "But the biggest surprise came when Peter tried treating the battery with a resistor across its terminals -- to his amazement he found that this item actually improved the sound in the room after it had been wiped." "The answer turned out to be simple: leaked energy from the AC mains supply. This was having the effect of ionising the air which in turn created a complex network of charge potentials across the surface of conductive objects. The presence of stray electromagnetic fields interacting with this leaked AC field seemed greatly to increase the ionising effects, thereby worsening the sound." Obviously, Peter Belt is either a genius or a lunatic. I suppose the first question is: by what mechanism could ions affect the sound? Snoopy tektronix!doghouse.gwd!snoopy snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com