interesting magazine article
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| Posted on September 6, 2011 at 15:58:00 | ||
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From Positive Feedback, volume 6 number 2, written by Max Townshend ,page 26. Not sure if the magazine exists any longer but at the time the article was copyrighted, in 1996, and the mailing address was: 14852 N.E. Glisan Portland Oregon 97230 The article was titled "The Emperer's New Sound (A cautionary tale for today). These are excerpts: I am always interested in new gadgets and techniques for improving the sound of audio systems, provided that they do actually work, and also provided there is a plausible scientific explanation for how they operate...My interst was therefore aroused one day in the mid 1980's when an unusual item of mail arrived on my desk. It consisted of a 12 page typewritten document and a square of silver foil, about 4 inches across, with a chess board pattern of 64 printed black squares....The instructions claimed that the small squares, cut out and stuck in strategic places around a hi fi system would literally "transform" the sound. As an engineer who had worked with electrets and electret films, I was naturally quite interested in the claims made for these small squares, for electrets they claimed to be. So interested was I that I contacted the folk responsible and invited them to visit me and give a proper demonstration. I won't mention their names here, as they are friends.....The husband-wife couple arrives at my home...with abag containing amongst other things, electret foils. They asked me to play my system....(system description follows). I put on a record, and my visitors told me that the sound was really poor because there were a number of "adverse fields" causing bad sound: but that I was not to worry since all could be remedied. Their first area of attention was the record player, which I was authoritatively informed had an "adverse field" coming vertically down from above, and the only cure was to apply two electret foils. AT this, I informed my friend that the "adverse field" in my house didn't come straight down, but rather came upqards at an angle of 45 degrees from the North West. My Fiend's immediate reaction was to ask "How do you know?", to which I retorted "How do you know it's vertical?" He replied, "I just know." I let this comment pass, and the foils were religiously positioned, one on the inside edge on the trough near the record center, and the other on on the left hand side of the pick up arm pipe, just behind the headshell. We replayed the track that I had previously been assured sounded "terrible", and while my friend went into ecstasy over the amazing improvement his electrets had just made to the system, I could absolutely no change to the sound whatsoever. When I informed him of this he said I was obviously not a good listener. He then became aware that I was using a remote control and informed me that "all infra red controllers ruin the sound." When I advised him that it was not IR but direct wired DC, he looked at the box in my hand, recognized the cable as a mains flex, and stated that "All mains power leads cause a serious degradation to the sound and the only cure for this problem is to put an electret foil on the control box, i inch to the right of where the wire comes through."Willingly I allowed him to place a foil in the special location, and I was immediately told this addition had made the greatest improvement to the sound he had ever heard. Once again I could hear no change. He was so enthusiastic about the alleged improvement that he started to dance around the room quite an excited manner , extolling the the massive improvement to the sound. Unbeknownst to him, I had had actually removed the foil within seconds of him placing it on the control box, and yet, throughout the remainder of the session, he continued to proclaim that this was the biggest improvement he had ever heard. ....Regularly throughout the performance, reference was made to positive and negative fields, forces,etc. and when challenged about the misuse of such well defined scientific terms, I was informed that " I was not to challenge any claims scientifically," but rather, I should accept "accept all that was said without argument." Well, as can be guessed, I never heard any change to the system at any stage during the performance, and when I informed my friend of this fact, he countered by informing me that the sound of my system was the worse he had ever heard and that it was totally beyond salvation. With that my two guests packed their bags and left in a huff.... (final paragraph deleted) At any rate, interesting reading form the 1996 volume of the Magazine. Stu
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