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Now we have access to small quantities of interesting, unusual nanomaterials.... how long will it be before resins and composites are discovered or invented that have unique properties ? I'm working on one right now to be injected into AC plugs, receptacles, and similar gadgets... her's my theory about the sonic differences we hear, there are two fundamental factors, one is raw conductivity, anything made with thick silver buss bars will be a heck of a lot more conductive than things made with cheap, impure brass which is probably recycled from junk metals filled with unknown oxides, carbides, intermetallics, ferro metals, bits and chunks of carbon, wastes, slags, etc... and the other factors, where much of the voodoo and mystyfication arises, is high frequency acoustic resonances which are modified by metal platings?? If you take the contact prongs out of your Oyaide and clink them together (assuming you have any high frequency hearing left after iPod) you will hear a very plangent, musical "plink"... I would be fairly sure that this is the fundamental of a series of ultrasonic harmonics that are exited by micro-vibrations, such as caused by the inductance of an amplifier drawing current... in that sense, the combination of metallurgy, geometry, and platings are making an electrical equivalent of a Tchang Resonator... sooooo.... (and we will soon enough have the answer to this question) what will happen if we make nano-resins which can powerfully absorb and dissipate these ultrasonics ? If the tines go from prettily ringing along in sympathy with the current draw to a velvet silence of stealth hardware ? Will another curtain of information be drawn back to reveal yet a deeper plane of hidden information ? Do we reach the point where we have squeezed the last available drop of data out of the recording, after which all that reamins is the hissing of atomic motion ?
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the noise floor can be lowered by tuning most connectors IMO. The Pass and Seymour 5266-X is a very quiet plug but suffers for a plated neutral prong and magnetic metal parts. I would guess it's head shell and the mounting of the parts is the key. You might need to rethink your approach to include the ability to adjust the tuning of your dampening material.
If more contact pressure is better for the sound, which is the common experience when cheap or worn out outlets are replaced with spec-grade, then it follows that less modulation of the pressure will be better.
Are you using carbon fiber outlet cover plates?
looked into nanotubes as well... problem with nanotubes is that they are a BEAR to disperse in epoxy... you need a powerful ultrasound stirrer, and buckyballs are out because they are neurotoxins, as of the last report I read... there is a machine shop in Russia that will mill you some nice depleted uranium cones for a more glowing sound... but DU is so not PC I thought I'd not use that....
you might consider developing your own plate laminations using carbon fiber cloth. Barium titanate powder would increase the epoxy's dielectric constant and improve coupling of radiated noise to the carbon fibers.
Get this... one of the tin doped variants exhibits a *negative* young's modulus.... in other words it bends in the opposite direction of flexure, even diamond wont do that, and it is seriously piezo-electric...
Sooooo... what happens if BaTi03 is bound with an electo-dissapative like a graphite matrix ? Hmmmm... are microflexions then generating microcurrents that can be resistively drained ? Say, if diamond is present is will provide a hard substrate for BaTi03 to be compressed against, and is high purity graphite is included, the resulting piezo energy is then drained out ? What a truly fascinating and bizarre but logical idea.... like a physical substance that behaves like an active damping platform, but moldable and injectable, and environmentally friendly ? Off to see if they'll sell me a bottle of it...
Your ideas are new to me and sound like a great possibility for damping.
I once worked for a fellow involved with Ramtron, which developed the ferroelectric memory described in the Wikipedia article at the link.
However, the reason I suggested barium titanate as an additive is to increase the dielectric constant of the epoxy surrounding graphite fibers in a laminate such as used on the Oyaide outlet cover plate. This would make the laminate more effective at damping the electric field components of RF standing waves, by analogy with the way the high permeability layer of TI Shield makes it more effective at damping the magnetic field components.
I actually understood what he was saying. Now you go and muddy the waters... LOL
Hyper pure graphite is kind of fascinating.. it doesn't have the greasy "wet" quality of bituminous graphite, it looks, feels, and behaves like a novel material... I mean...not THAT novel, but it suggests things.... once the carbon load exceeds about 22% the material changes from an insulator to a conductor....
is that AC devices have the 60/50 Hz resonant frequency to contend with. The Oyaide duplexes use rather long flat pieces of metal which obviously will have an associated resonant frequency. Most ends use similarly dimensioned metal receptacles which will further emphasize resonances.
It may behoove you to investigate asymmetrically dampening the metal work, in order to reduce sympathetic resonances.
Just a thought, YMMV, certainly.
Stu
Interesting... using these compounds as another (and seemingly very difficult) way of tuning a system... to "dampen" or "tune" resonances in plugs, receptacles, et al will require an extraordinarily diligent approach, a sublime touch. A little may not be enough, a little too much a little too much...
As you well know, overdampening anything can have a negative effect. One Marigo dot in the wrong place, a bit too much dynamat and...failure.
Those though can easily be rectified/reversed. Seems applying a compound of resins would NOT be easily reversible and that some carving or drilling might then be needed. This seems a drawback to an otherwise interesting theory. Good luck!
"...You're all welcome to stay for the next set...we're going to play all the same tunes, but in different keys..." -Count Basie
YOu are now past the organic bone injections are you? LOL
Sooo, micro-arcing, microphonics, mechanical vibration, conductivity of the base metals, and wave resonances aside, what else do you surmise is going on there? Hoodoo that voodoo that you do so well.....
OK, how about keeping us posted on your actual results? ONly thing that matters is that, theory being debatable anyway. And if you madly succeed where no man has gone before and start shipping the goods, line me up for a discount.
her's my theory about the sonic differences we hear, there are two fundamental factors, one is raw conductivity, anything made with thick silver buss bars will be a heck of a lot more conductive than things made with cheap, impure brass which is probably recycled from junk metals filled with unknown oxides, carbides, intermetallics, ferro metals, bits and chunks of carbon, wastes, slags, etc...
Ok. But so what?
In other words, how exactly will that manifest itself in a way which will have an impact on the signal being output from the component in question?
If you take the contact prongs out of your Oyaide and clink them together (assuming you have any high frequency hearing left after iPod) you will hear a very plangent, musical "plink"... I would be fairly sure that this is the fundamental of a series of ultrasonic harmonics that are exited by micro-vibrations, such as caused by the inductance of an amplifier drawing current...
Except that when you're actually using your Oyaide outlet, the prongs haven't been removed from it. They're still inside it with the blades of an AC plug shoved into them. So what's the point of how they sound in a situation which has nothing to do with the situation they're actually used in?
And as above, how would any of these microvibrations manifest themselves in such a way which would have an impact on the signal being output from the component in question?
You seem to be wanting to draw conclusions based on your "theory" but so far you haven't even advanced your theory to first base.
se
Yes... our charmingly obdurate naysayer... Steve, sometimes you're right on and sometimes you just like screwing with people because you got some strange DNA in that braain of yours.... ok, like DUH... anybody with have a frontal lobe knows it isn't going to sound the same because DUH... the resonant structure is not the same... however, that doesn't mean that there will be NO resonances.... simply that they will be shifted, some frequencies efficiently turned into heat, some not... even a man as, ummm... broadminded and errr... flexibly imaginative as your esteemed self hopefully realizes that..but here goes nuttin'.... I'm not laying out Kant's Categorical Imperative here, all I'm saying is that I'm willing to bust a few expensive receptacles and hear the result... tres empiricist.... if it sucks... so it sucks... but we'll be that much the wiser... and if it blows one right out of the park, then everybody learns something on my dime and my time... or would you rather we all sit around in lawn chairs and pull on lukewarm beer and trade stories about the good old days when Philo Farnsworth built the only real television sets, everything after Farnsworth being a self serving fraud perpetrated by pseudo scientific cokeheads ? Man... if we had you on the case instead of Thomas Edison we'd still be burning whale oil lamps and treating syphilis with mercury salts...
Steve, sometimes you're right on and sometimes you just like screwing with people because you got some strange DNA in that braain of yours.... ok, like DUH... anybody with have a frontal lobe knows it isn't going to sound the same because DUH... the resonant structure is not the same... however, that doesn't mean that there will be NO resonances.... simply that they will be shifted, some frequencies efficiently turned into heat, some not... even a man as, ummm... broadminded and errr... flexibly imaginative as your esteemed self hopefully realizes that..but here goes nuttin'....
Then what was the point of removing the contacts and clinking them together? Everything with mass has properties of mechanical resonance.
In any case, the questions still stand. How exactly will those mechanical resonances and the less conductive brass manifest themselves in a way which would have an impact on the signal?
I'm not laying out Kant's Categorical Imperative here, all I'm saying is that I'm willing to bust a few expensive receptacles and hear the result... tres empiricist.... if it sucks... so it sucks... but we'll be that much the wiser... and if it blows one right out of the park, then everybody learns something on my dime and my time...
But what's actually learned beyond the fact that subjectively you may or may not prefer the sound with the outlets filled with goop?
And if all you care about is the subjective result, what was the point of postulating your theory regarding mechanical resonances and conductivity?
Man... if we had you on the case instead of Thomas Edison we'd still be burning whale oil lamps and treating syphilis with mercury salts...
No, that's where your line of thinking gets us.
You "theorize" that the patient is ill because he has "bad blood." So you open a vein and relieve him of a couple of pints. The patient manages to recover. Ergo, it must have been due to relieving them of the "bad blood."
Of course if they die, well, then it's just "God's will."
se
your thinking is simply weird.... sometime a postulate helps you form an action plan, or just get some conceptual grip on your subject.. these aren't eternal truths that we're sweating here, only idea that may point us in the direction of making better stuff... As for Scylla and Charybdis, I'm postulating that their true names are Steve and Eddy....
sometime a postulate helps you form an action plan, or just get some conceptual grip on your subject..
Sure. But the postulate is typically based on some line of reasoning rather than being an end to itself. Otherwise you may as well postulate that your system sounds different depending on what the exchange rate is between the dollar and the euro.
these aren't eternal truths that we're sweating here, only idea that may point us in the direction of making better stuff...
But does it?
That rather depends on how you're defining "better." If you mean "better" in a purely subjective sense, then what's the point of presenting an objective postulate?
And having started out with an objective postulate, and given the potential ambiguities of subjective listening, the latter in and of itself does not necessarily prove the former. So again, what's the point of presenting an objective postulate in the first place?
And even if we were to simply bury our heads in the sand and ignore the potential for ambiguities due to subjective listening and just assume that what's subjectively perceived is an accurate reflection of the physical reality, how does this even prove your postulate?
Let's say the gooped up outlets sound different from the stock outlets. Was it due to the changing of mechanical resonances as you postulate? Or was it perhaps due to something else? Say, the dielectric effects of the goop. Or maybe even some combination of the two. Or maybe something else completely.
How would you know? And at the end of it all, what have you truly learned?
The way I see it, all you can possibly know is whether or not you subjectively prefer a gooped up outlet to a non-gooped up outlet. And this can be done without having to present any sort of postulate let alone an objective one.
So what's the point? Why not just say "Hey, I put some goop in an outlet and it sounded better"?
se
Ummmm... unless I have misread reality in some awfully humbling way, aren't we all subjective creatures limited to sensory experience ? I never dated a photograph of a beautiful girl, nor tasted one of Robert Parker's reviews... although I could form some rough estimate of what the experience might be like, in that vein I have often imagined what a piece would sound like based on a published description.... and then being the studly Uberdude that I fortunately am, actually date the chick and she's a four star wacko, the 98+ wine is not bad but where are the plummy jammy kumquat avec beefsteak notes with a hint of yuzu rind balanced with cuban cigar ? And as for that $50,000 amplifier that every 25 year oil Private Equity billionaire MUST own or be deemded a clueless subhuman insect, quite good actually and no need for a central heating system any more.... so I quite rationally ask myself, being quite rational... how does one compose a material that lowers noise without introducing artifacts ???.. nothing fancier that that... because when all is said and done, this is a signal to noise game, and you can either boost signal or reduce noise either broadly or in various shapings thereof and that's about it... so my fevered brain wants to know, HOW do you whip up some..... errrr... "goop" which has the capacity to vibrate along with ultrasonic noise and turn this annoying parasite into heat without introducing other noises into the audio band... am I asking for too much ? Are my expectations of life unrealistic ? Should I have a sex change operation ?
Ummmm... unless I have misread reality in some awfully humbling way, aren't we all subjective creatures limited to sensory experience ?
Certainly. Though not all which occurs within our subjective perception is necessarily an unerringly accurate reflection of external sensory input.
so I quite rationally ask myself, being quite rational... how does one compose a material that lowers noise without introducing artifacts ???.. nothing fancier that that... because when all is said and done, this is a signal to noise game, and you can either boost signal or reduce noise either broadly or in various shapings thereof and that's about it... so my fevered brain wants to know, HOW do you whip up some..... errrr... "goop" which has the capacity to vibrate along with ultrasonic noise and turn this annoying parasite into heat without introducing other noises into the audio band... am I asking for too much ?
I wouldn't say it's so much a matter of your asking for too much as your not asking enough. You seem to be coming to conclusions based on assumptions for which there doesn't seem to be any facts in evidence to support.
That's how religions get started. Not how we get at the truth of a thing. So if you're trying to start a religion, then I'd have to say you're well on your way. If not, then you haven't even made it to the starting block.
Let's start at the beginning.
Upon what exactly are you basing your assumption that there's noise being produced in the first place? What's the source of the noise? How significant is this noise? What's its magnitude compared to say the ambient noise in the listening environment? Or the noise produced by the active devices in the equipment? Or the thermal noise produced by the resistors used along with the active devices creating the circuit? Or the thermal noise of the conductors that connect everything together?
You assume the noise is ultrasonic. Why would this be the case? And if it's ultrasonic, how would we hear it anyway?
And finally, as I've asked before, how does this noise manifest itself in the circuit in such a way as to effect the signal being output from it?
se
Until Alexander Fleming happened to notice something, quite by accident, a *spoiled* petri dish, and normally molds were viewed as nuisance contaminants, but Fleming looked closely and observed (note here the idea of observation preceeding any formal model, he just looked and saw an unusual phenomenon) that there was a ring of antisepsis around the mold colony...
Or the guys at bell labs who *knew* that transistors were not suited for portable radios ?
Or the generals in the first world was who "knew" that the machine gun was a highly overrated weapon ?
Or the head of the patent office who thought it should be closed because everyhting that could be invented already had been ?
Basically I'd say your imaginal life is one long(winded) process of making sure your mind is tightly closed against anything but the narrowest of specifics.....
For example, how do you know changind a receptacle makes any difference at all ? Would you have levelled these same arguments against *any* manufacturer who makes a better receptacle ? Would you insist that platings make no difference ? Probably...
From there we proceed to the even more enlightened position that no innovation makes any sense unless you can fully account for all the variables in advance.... becuase you are thereby isnsisting that *any* innovative effort that cannot fully explain what it is about is somehow either 1, irrational, 2, deluded, or 3, in bad faith...
Which is, well, extremely stupid, and well, even stupider than it looks on first blush, becaue you perform the truly idiotic mental acrobatic of lumping together a willingness to go outside of one's famiar turf on the basis of some speculation with the "founding of religion". Give me a break. You need an I.Q. of about 80 to find that philosophical position satisfying...
But you can't be that dumb. Or.. maybe you can....
nt
Makes sense to me. Let us know how it sounds after the dampening technique.
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