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

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some observations ( and a request for Elizabeth)

Posted by unclestu (D) on May 27, 2011 at 16:41:19

In regards to Quartz "wands" exposed to light. Using an LED flashlight with UV, green, white and a red laser, I've experimented with shining the LED down a quartz crystal (based on an second hand description of the Stein device).

Shining the light through the six sides of a quartz wand produced poor sound quality (M faces) Shining the light down through the top produced much more audiophile sonics. Illumination on the sides actually sort of clouded the sound: illumination from the top produced various effects depending primarily upon the frequency of light. This is with the crystal mounted on a sofa 5 feet from the components and not in contact at all with the components.

UV (400nM)produced the most upper frequency information. Next was light (broadband, obviously), then Green ( about 560 nM) and then the red laser ( 650 nM) with the frequency range being affected dropping as the wavelengths increased.

With the battery ground tweak, or the ground tweaks in general, the following observations were made.

As voltage of the battery goes up ( seriesing the batteries), the upper frequencies get emphasized, to the point where running three 9 volt batteries in series lead to an unbearable top end tilt. Increasing the current ( ampere hours) seems to help the bass.

Adding a capacitor certainly adds to the bass, but then the charged cap is akin to adding extra current capacity to the battery.

I haven't tried it, but Elizabeth has written that adding a ferrite to the ground loop made a significant difference in sound. She has not described the affect, but I suspect that adding a ferrite is equivalent of adding an inductor, making the electron discharge from the wire more consistent and "even". The effect, without actually having tried it myself, I suspect, would be in the bass regions. A bit of elucidation from Elizabeth would be greatly appreciated here.

The funny thing about the ground wire tweak is that the loop is critical to the performance. Early on, I made the ground loop tweak with some copper foil , four inches wide, figuring that since Bud Purvine said the surface area of the wire was critical and that Litz wire was the best. The foil was too wide for an RCA so I soldered one RCA to each end of the 6 inch long foil. Plugging one RCA produced a very minimal difference in sound, however plugging in the two RCA's produced a much more noticeable and positive difference. The surface area of the wire ( foil in this case) has not changed, just the loop.

I suspect the loop adds a slight inductance to the Purvine "electron cloud". This would explain why Elizabeth's use of the ferrite is also beneficial. It also could mean that spiraling the wire to simulate an inductor would also be of benefit.

More later


Stu

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