Isolation Ward From ebony pucks to magic foil, mystical and controversial tweaks.

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RE: More Speculations on rocks

Posted by unclestu (D) on May 2, 2011 at 12:52:26

In Reply to: Speculations on rocks posted by unclestu on April 20, 2011 at 15:33:04:

Ran a whole host of back to back experimentation last night. had not really tested tourmaline and rose quartz, but did so. Previously I had only experimented with some cut and faceted jewelry findings, small stones faceted about 2 mm across.

Rose quartz has a darker presentation, with more muted top end, and a definitely murkier presentation as a result. Tourmaline is much better but has a slight upper midrange hump and is not as extended in the top end as the amethyst.

Surprisingly a reshaped sugar cube (spherical) proved to be overall superior to the above two, having a slight upper bass hump but good dynamics and a fairly even frequency response. Lumps of rock sugar sounded terrible, BTW. However, a cubical sugar cube also sounded very bad so a lot may have to do with the actual physical configuration of the crystal structure itself.

In light of some later comments about the Stein which somehow involves a blue LED and a crystal, I tried a bit of experimentation utilizing an white light led flashlight and a a cathedral spear of citrine that I had, about 1/2 inch in diameter and about 2 inches long. New Agers consider this spear to be very "powerful" and I have never found another spear quite like it.

Shining the led into the base of the crystal yielded an improvement in the system top end, extending the top end a bit more. Shining through the sides yielded no noticeable improvement and in fact there might have been a slight degradation in sound. Shining through the crystal top yielded quite a noticeable improvement in sound: harder transient attacks, yielding a crisper sound, and greater details in tonality which gives a firmer soundstage and greater depth and general placement.

It made no difference holding the crystal or placing it upon a firm or infirm surface. Covering the crystal and light with a pillow diminishes the top end slightly. The Stein uses a blue light led ( about 420 nM) and I suppose perhaps a higher and shorter wavelength light may through more energy into the crystal. It is interesting to note that the crystalline latticework of the quartz based items is a spiral, thus perhaps accounting for the difference in sound from shining the light through the sides vs the top. The bottom of the spear, it should be noted, had been attached to the matrix and thus was partially occluded, perhaps accounting for the difference. Unfortunately my only double terminated quartz crystals, ( Herkimers) are imbeded in matrix.

I am going to purchase an UV led flashlight and grab my laser pointer for further experimentation.

Stu

Edits: 05/02/11

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