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In Reply to: RE: Some further thoughts on ends posted by Norman M on May 10, 2014 at 16:10:13
>>> "Well, don't you think how the direction of her kitchen's water faucet in an adjacent room affected the sound she heard was funny?" <<<
Norman, it may have appeared funny at initial reading back in 1987 but what would you want her to do ? Keep absolutely silent ?
Enid was employed to write, for a Hi Fi magazine, her experiences on what could and did affect her 'sound'. So, she systematically identified what she referred to as Gremlins in her listening environment which had an adverse effect on her 'sound' and then described ways she had tried to 'deal with' those Gremlins. You are only looking at it from a reader's point of view - why don't you do the exercise of putting yourself in her shoes and think about how YOU would have dealt with the whole subject back in 1987 ? AND, just how you would like the subject to be dealt with NOW - in 2014.
Imagine you are 'Norman the Scribe', writing articles describing your experiences of listening to music. YOU find that repositioning the kitchen's water faucet or (if my memory serves me correctly) placing a towel over the said water faucet in the kitchen improved your sound, what would you do - keep silent because people might laugh or mock you ?
If you found that a crogenically 'treated' CD sounded better than a non treated one, would you write about it or would you keep silent ?
If you found that applying a particular chemical to the label side of a CD or to the labels of vinyl discs gave an improvement in the sound, would you write about it or would you keep silent for fear of being laughed at ?
If you found that applying a colour to the edge of CDs gave an improvement in the sound, would you write about it or would you keep silent for fear of being laughed at ?
If you found that applying a demagnetiser to LPs and CDs gave an improvement in the sound, would you write about it or would you keep silent for fear of being laughed at ?
Regarding that last one, after READING of various audio journalists' experiences, one member of the audio profession actually wrote a letter to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) Insinuating fraud surrounding the Furutech CD demagnetiser.
To Quote from that person's posting of what he wrote :-
>>> "I'm working on an article for a major audio magazine about fraud in marketing for audio products. I noticed you gave an award to the Furutech CD "demagnetizer" and I'm wondering on what basis you determined this is an award-winning product. As best I can tell this device is pure snake oil with no basis in science. So please forgive such a direct and possibly rude sounding question, but did they pay you for this award? " <<<
If you found that positioning some of the tiny ART devices in the listening room gave an improvement in the sound, would YOU write about them or would you keep silent ?
If you found that positioning such as the Schumann resonator device, the Less Loss device, the Stein Music Harmonizers in a listening room gave improvements in the sound, would you write about them or would you keep silent - - knowing that you would get such responses as :-
>>> "Interesting?
Nah. It's just another dalliance brought forth by the mentally ill for the mentally ill and which does nothing more than saddle this industry with yet further embarrassment.
That Stereophile of all publications should brand it as "intriguing" in their show report is truly sad." <<<
Enid was nothing if not courageous. But they still got to her in the end !! Over 25 years on and the audio industry in general is still not prepared to come to terms with "Gremlins in the listening environment" !!
Regards,
May Belt,
Manufacturer.
Follow Ups:
I was only pointing to the water faucet phenomenon as being (outrageously) funny. A towel over the faucet might only have been a little bit 'funny', but she wrote that if the faucet pointed N/S, E/W and positions in between it produced differences in the sound heard in her adjacent listening room. In reality if I had gotten up from listening seat numerous times adjusting the water faucet's precise position, then possibly hearing differences in the sound, I would have concluded that my head/ears weren't precisely in the same position each time, or I was mistaken and try to forget about it, (but definitely not have it written up in TAS).
What if changing the direction of the faucet arm did ACTUALLY CHANGE THINGS?
I can think of several EM/RFI kinda changes off hand.
A water faucet is nominally grounded through the cold water pipes, etc., but what if that ground was less than ideal? What if the plumbing in her house/apartment was NOT grounded at all?
Altering the spatial location and angle of a faucet arm would then change it's relationship to RF energy, and how it interacted with same.
If the pipes WERE grounded, changing the direction/angle would change the location of a ground rod extended in space. If it were between an RF source, and her playback system, then altering the faucet geometry would also alter the amount and details of the RF energy visited upon the playback system.
In one case the faucet arm is acting as an antenna, in the other, a shield. Of course, there is an infinite number of variations between the two, involving simultaneous antenna/shielding actions.
These are just two trivial examples I can think of off of the top of my head, without invoking quantum physics, or more involved scenario's, such as corroded copper oxide pipes and rectification issues, etc..
Perhaps Enid wasn't so "out there" after all.
Jon Risch
So do you then contend that it's impossible to listen to 'everything but the kitchen sink'?
a customer who lives in a high RF area, where Rf was so high first generation Yamaha CD players would not function because the rf would cause the cd to skip erratically from receiving the RF to the logic circuit, reported that he could hear music from his bathroom one morning while washing his face. Standing up the music disappeared. Bending over the sink he realized he was hearing music from the faucet, simply picking up RF and playing it back......
FWIW
... it's not hard to see why she was so easily dismissed, and not simply because she was operating in more "primitive" times. Amazing what she could hear through her Maggie MG-II speakers (mine were far less revealing).
she used the water pipes to ground her system. But that was long ago and I lost all my back issues of TAS
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