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After reading all the posts here about crystals and their effects, I decided to do a little experiment to see if I could measure what they were doing. I went to Michaels craft store and purchased a few strings of amethyst and rose quartz chips, which are among the crystals which inmates had found imparted improvements to their systems.
The idea was to measure the effect in attenuating emissions from a small switching power supply that is used to charge my cordless screwdriver, using a spectrum analyzer package called TrueRTA, which can not only give an idea of the total amount of emissions, but also the frequency spectrum of said emissions, from just above DC to 20kHz.
First step was to set up the experimental apparatus.
1) An RCA patch cord was plugged into my laptop on one end; the other end was left open to function as a probe for emissions.
2) The probe was secured in a soldering "helping hands" station and positioned above the switching supply at a distance of about one inch or so, close enough to the supply to pick up strong emissions but far enough away that I could slip a baggie containing crystals between the probe and the supply without changing the distance between them.
Here is a photo of the apparatus with and without rose quartz crystals in place.
Next up - the findings...
Follow Ups:
and see what they tell you.
One problem with using your ears is that there is grey matter between them, and there is ego's embedded in that grey matter. Human nature does not allow for completely unbiased opinion that after spending bucks and time on a tweak that the grey matter honestly believes (after all that work) that it does sound better. Or sometime during the process one got over their indigestion or the ambient temperature/atmospheric pressure went up/down or any for the other million things that affects our beings
So it goes.........
I respect your opinion, but do not agree with it.
It's like many times someone will say because a person spends alot of $$$ on an item (not crystals, their cheap) That the more expensive will sound better because "ego's embedded in that grey matter" and the person has spent big $$ on an item.
I do not follow this type of thinking as my own experience has shown me that many times when I have compared items, I have on a number of times preferred the item that doesn't cost as much, sometimes much, much less it was silly. We can be Ego based people, but some of us have gotten over our Ego's!
What I do see, often, is people whose ego is attached to a notion that, since the negligible part of science they managed to wrap their heads around, doesn't explain WHY something could work - it truly doesn't work.
We can argue hard science .vs "what out ears hear" until we are blue in the face and never come to a solid conclusion. We all make our own reality. Some people believe in the fairy tale story of Jesus. Despite the fact that science, historical facts and even common sense fly in the face of the story, it is very real to millions of people.
What we need to crack the crystal debate wide open is the following scenario:
Find a group of audiophiles that praise the power of the crystal. At least 10. Have them listen and compare the same system set up the following ways:
1. No crystals
2. Crystals
3. Bags of colored plastic that look like crystals
Let the audiophiles know when 1. is being used, but do not hint to the fact that any plastic crystals are being used.
Have the audiophiles rate any 5 attributes you can think of.
I would be willing to bet large sums of money that scenarios 2 and 3 would receive equally high praise .vs scenario 1.
Only if there were significantly higher praise for 2 then 3 would you be able to prove the existence of God.
"Idiocracy" had it all wrong. We'll be there way sooner then 500 years!
to your scientific graphs. you might consider putting different colour LED's for different divers, that way you will know when your hearing the tweeter and not get confused and think it's the woofer. :O)
*
You still end up using your ears in the end, to make the final determination, don't you?
I do not try every tweak that becomes a fad. I will choose based on what I think makes sense and perform the tweak, if it does no harm it will stay.
I just find that most of the differences I have heard in the past are so small that I consider it a waste of time and would rather be just listen to music. I actually spent weekend without making one change, just listening
So it goes.........
nt
OK, the reason for these experiments is that I have a very specific issue I would like to address, namely, some residual low level noise in an EQ unit for my speakers. The noise spectrum looks almost exactly like what is in the plots below. I have been able to greatly reduce the level of the noise using TI-Shield around the power supply, and was wondering if crystals would help lower it even more. Based on my data, they will not, so I do not need to listen to them for that purpose.
Listening tests for other applications will need to wait as I am in the midst of tearing apart and rebuilding the power supply for my tube preamp using a CLCLC topology and low DCR chokes. I have found that the best way to audio nirvana is through actual circuit changes, not minor tweaks - tweaks have their place, but only as final touches, IMO.
It would be interesting if you could test a carbon fiber AC outlet cover and report your results.
Crystals should probably not be viewed as some sort of universal salve, a panacea, a silver bullet. They can't necessarily solve all the woes that might plague one's system, like residual noise. They are not magic beans. But used properly they can transform the usual generic, paper-mache sounding system into a much more accurate, entertaining and musical one.
The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.
Tootles
what kind of RCA patch cord are you using?
Was the charger actually charging your tools?
Stu
See the "validation" post below for a control experiment I ran using TI-Shield in the same setup.
The patch cords are generic mic/RCA cords I use to connect my PC to a mic preamp when I do speaker response measurements. The power supplies were charging the batteries when the measurements were taken.
If not - what do you think is the reason?
In response to J. Risch below, you wrote:"I would have loved for the experiment to show a HUGE effect, as I would have then had a new tweak for my system, but alas that was not to be."
Don't you think it's kind of backwards logic? Meaning, it would seem natural to try a tweak first, and if it works for you, then try to find an explanation "why" through measurements. Doing measurements first, and then dismissing a tweak without trying based purely on these results, sounds suspiciously similar to "all SS amps sound the same, because they all measure extremely low in THD" kind of nonsense.
Edits: 04/05/11 04/05/11
Poor bastards, they have my sympathy.
It makes no sense.
O
I completely disagree.
It has been stated numerous times that this tweak is based on absorption and dissipation of emitted radiation by the crystals. It has also been stated that this can be measured using a Greenlee handheld meter that is sensitive in the range of 50 - 500Hz. I had a means to measure and verify that absorption objectively before I went sticking crystals into my equipment, so I did it. I did not find any effect in the range of frequencies tested.
I have not tried the crystals in my equipment at this point. Nowhere did I state that there was or wasn't a sonic benefit or "dismiss" the tweak, I simply did an experiment to measure whether they did anything measurable within the range of the equipment I have available. They did not.
Perhaps they have an effect at higher frequencies - I don't know, but I'd like to see someone make a measurement and report the findings, and I certainly wouldn't attack him or call him "backwards" for doing it.
Good start, now for testing up to wireless networking frequencies, not just the first 2%
I tested the first 2% for two reasons:
1) That was the limit of the software I was using.
2) That range far exceeded the range of the Greenlee tester previously cited as evidence of an effect.
If you have equipment that generates signals and allows testing up to the gigahertz range, then have at it!
It's simply a strawman to assume that a particular type of crystal operates/functions for ALL RF frequencies.
Hello: I've been following the threads about the effect of crystals. It strikes me that many of the sonic effects of crystals are similar to or the same as ERS paper regarding the reduction of EMI / RFI noise. ( Also, the Shakhti products come to mind. )
If this is so, wouldn't the ERS & Shakhti be easier to work with?. From what I've read , there is a certain amt of experimenting w. the ERS paper / Shakhti to get them optimized . Take Care, Vasil
However, the ERS seems to work better at the very high frequencies. The crystals seem work at a slightly lower range.
The Shakti works extremely well. That being said, however, I find that using individual crystal allows me to position them closer to the source of EMI/RFI. In that sense I get sightly better results, say curbing the EMI off a TT motor , for example. I have used ERS to wrap motors but the fields generated are toroidal in nature and a lot of energy spews upward ( and downward). On a CD spin motor or TT it is difficult to use ERS or the physically large Shakti in such locations.
Stu
Below are the TrueRTA graphs from the experiment. The first is the background radiation in my workroom, the second is the emissions from the switching power supply being used as the signal source, the third is the emissions with the bag of Rose Quartz in place, and the fourth is the emissions with the bag of Amethyst in place.
As you can see, the supply produced a prodigious amount of radiation, and neither the Rose Quartz nor the Amethyst had any effect on that radiation. When the plots are overlaid in True RTA they fall exactly on top of each other.
This is in contradiction to the results Elizabeth posted wherein she used a Greenlee GT-16 non-contact voltage meter to show that crystals completely attuated the radiation from a power supply umbilical cord. I checked the specs of the GT-16 meter and it is capable of detecting emissions in the frequency range of 50-500Hz, clearly within the range of frequencies in the plots below. Again, my experiment detected NO ATTENUATION at all from either Rose Quartz or Amethyst crystal chips.
BACKGROUND:
SUPPLY EMISSION NO CRYSTALS:
EMISSION with ROSE QUARTZ IN PLACE:
EMISSION with AMETHYST IN PLACE:
Good work! You did an excellent job of documenting your tests and results.
I do agree with Jon, you're likely not seeing the switcher's main emissions as it's probably running at a few hundred KHz to make the magnetics cheaper and smaller. But it doesn't look like they do much at 60 Hz so that's a good data point. I'm not concerned that you and Elizabeth got different results, after all you guys are measuring different things in different ways without calibration or control. It's all grist for the mill.
I'm fixing to try some similar things myself with a hopefully more controlled source and over a broader bandwidth so I'm glad to see what you did. It sure seems to me that if indeed they work by absorbing energy that we should be able to catch them in the act!
Regards, Rick
crystals rather tightly packed In a bag be pressed down, with a grease on surfaces gave best results.
A bag of loose, clean Quartz allows a lot of EMR through.
Th various treatments given crystals matters. Exactly why i do not know. The Crystals used by Elizabeth had a Silicone grease applied. Which gave the (apparently desirable coating of a non conductive product, some use mineral oil and dry fry etc to dry out, another suggests antistatic spray, and third the Silicone grease.)
For example the Tigereye xxmini were very poor at blocking EMR dry, but after treatment with the grease, were very effective in blocking EMR.
This is from Elizabeth's original post on the subject:
"My test was fast just to see if my new pile of small crystal bits work. The Greenlee GT-16 non contact voltage detector (works great, highly recommended) would go crazy from the(separate) power supply umbilical of my VAC Standard preamp.
Using just the thinnest possible layer of rose quartz crystals (1/8 to 1/4 inch ones) in a baggie pressed flat, stopped any emanations.
The checker is very sensitive too.
So they do cut the EMF completely."
So, what I did was consistent with that (no grease was used in her test) and, in fact, I used a thicker layer of Rose Quartz and Amethyst than she did, which should have doen a better job of absorbing/blocking the emissions. The tester she used was only sensitive to the range of 50 - 500Hz; I measured 20 - 20KHz.
between your rose quartz and stock - no crystal plots vs. the amethyst. There at 20 kHz at my highest allowed zoom (before everything turns to fuzz), the tan data line appears to be just below the chart line for -84dB, where the other two are almost 1 dB above, obscuring the black line. You've got the original; it could be the tan is not as bright as the others and harder to pick out visually.
There is nothing I'd call a significant difference there - those plots are averages of 100 scans each, with some baseline noise present.
"So, what I did was consistent with that (no grease was used in her test)..."
But her source was different, and her detector was also. I'd say the tests really were not very comparable. Doesn't mean that either was wrong however, it takes a lot of controls to have truly comparable tests, take cold fission for example...
I agree that it was worth a shot in light of her results, the key thing is to weight the results properly. It takes a lot of data points pointing in the same direction to start framing conclusions.
Regards Rick
And that's what makes the idea that placing a Single Crystal or several small crystals on top of a preamp, on top of a power plug or on the RCA jacks of interconnects so "mysterious" - a lot of EMR will still be allowed through. Furthermore, "blocking" RFI/EMI is not the same thing as absorbing it -- i.e., lots of materials are capable of blocking it. And if it IS "blocked" where does it go? It doesn't simply vanish.
Science my friend, it's simply science.
Blocked energy can't go anywhere so it just keeps building up until it invokes a loss of structural integrity event destroying the apparatus along with the experimenter. It has now been shown that the craters on the Earth previously thought to be due to meteor impacts are simply the scars of previous experiments.
May the force be with you.
R.
PS: Lenz was the most famous 'doubter' and look where he is now: dead as a mackerel!
Wait until CERN achieves success with their latest toy!
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 04/06/11
The crystal in question will get warm.....
I'd suggest putting some quartz in the microwave. I'll bet it gets warm, and not from its moisture content which may be what......1 or 2 percent?
Too much is never enough
There are multiple problems with your measurement attempt.
1. Use of a basically "shielded" RCA cable, with a tiny amount of "unshielded" center pin at the end, does not a good probe make. Used open circuit (as it appears to be), it MIGHT be capable of picking up gross and overwhelming amounts of E-field, but would also be prone to small amounts of B-field induction, making it a poor probe to check for the presence of E-field shielding.
2. The overall wiring shown in the photo's looks quite chaotic and not cleanly laid out or routed for best results, it is entirely possible that even if the stones had a shielding effect, the excess wiring all over would have allowed the detected spectrum to be picked up anyway.
3. The spectrum analyzer used is basically good for only the audio band. Period.
This is not going to allow pick-up of RF frequency emissions, which is one of the spectrum bands in question.
4. Your spectrum of picked up radiation does NOT look like a prodigious amount of radiation from a switching power supply, in fact, it looks suspiciously clean and missing all kinds of power line harmonics and other switching supply artifacts.
Having measured and dealt with noise and radiation from a variety of switching power supplies, your spectrum analysis results look much more like simple AC power line fundamental and a small handful of weak harmonics, or about what you might pick up from simply being near a line cord, or a simple linear power supply.
Thus, I suspect you are NOT measuring what you think that you are.
5. Your source of crystals is not exactly a golden repository of lab certified gems. They might not even be what they are labeled, or they might be of such a poor grade as to be equivalent to simple gravel in terms of the effects being sought.
It is hard to say what else may have been done poorly in terms of set-up, wiring, measurement, or materials quality, but this is way far off from any sort of definitive or even useful measurement.
Net result: more confusion than confirmation.
Jon Risch
"5. Your source of crystals is not exactly a golden repository of lab certified gems. They might not even be what they are labeled, or they might be of such a poor grade as to be equivalent to simple gravel in terms of the effects being sought."
Yep, gravel in your equipment is what gives voices a gravelly sound.
In light of your questions, I repeated the same experiment tonight, but also tested a piece of TI-Shield instead of the bag of crystals. The first plot is the emission from the power supply with no shield, the second is the emission with a piece of TI-Shield between the supply and the probe, and the third is the emission with the TI-Shield grounded with a clip-lead. Once again, the crystals had no noticeable effect, and the plots looked the same as previously posted.
It is clear that the TI-Shield makes a noticeable reduction even in its ungrounded state. Once the shield is grounded, the signal is reduced to almost the level of the background. This control result shows that the system is indeed measuring the shielding effect of whatever is placed between the supply and the probe. It also shows that for the frequencies displayed in the plots, the crystals have no effect, but a known EMI shielding material such as TI-Shield is quite effective.
Based on these results, if you want to shield something from AC electrical fields (frequencies of 50/60Hz plus harmonics) inside your equipment, you are much better off using TI-Shield than using crystals.
SUPPLY EMISSION NO SHIELD:
EMISSION WITH UNGROUNDED TI-SHIELD:
EMISSION WITH GROUNDED TI-SHIELD:
....what you are measuring is primarily magnetic in nature, not E-field so much.
Just as an FYI, a good E-field probe would be an open dipole, that is, two short wires at 180 degrees to each other coming out of a shielded cable at right angles. Thus, the overall appearance would be that of a "T" with the two top portions of the "T" separate and not connected. One side of the top of the "T would be connected to the shield/ground, the other to the center probe. This would ideally be operated into a very high impedance, avoiding any low impedance loading as much as possible.
I suspect that the TrueRTA may have a medium input impedance, rather than a very high one.
BTW, thank you for not taking my comment as an attack, it was just an observation of what you presented initially. Sometimes it is hard to tell just from a text message what the tone is, and it can be hard to convey such nuances.
Jon Risch
....what you are measuring is primarily magnetic in nature, not E-field so much.
How are you coming to that conclusion?
Look at the unshielded plot versus the ungrounded TI shield plot.
Then compare to the ungrounded TI shield plot versus the grounded TI shield plot.
The reduction in the latter is significantly greater than the former.
This tells us that the coupling between the charger and the probe is primarily capacitive in nature, not inductive. In other words, it's primarily E-field.
This makes perfect sense given that his probe is essentially a whip antenna, not a loop antenna.
se
To address the points:
1) The probe obviously picks up radiation when it is near to the power supply. When the power supply is removed, the radiation drops to the background level shown in my first plot. Moving the probe closer to and further from the supply increases and decreases the response. I repeated this experiment with my Tektronix 20Mhz oscilloscope with the oscilloscope probe and saw exactly the same results at a range of frequencies (zero change) - I posted the TrueRTA plots because they were clearer and showed the full spectrum in the audio band in one shot. The crude probe is also quite good at picking up the radiation from the overhead fluorescent lighting above my workbench, so much so that I had to turn them off to avoid interference while I made the measurements.2) Hmmm...the "excess wiring all around" kind of looks like the inside of a piece of audio equipment. I don't know of any gear that has only one wire in it. In any case, almost all of the wires in the picture were diconnected; The two wall warts went to identical battery chargers for my cordless screwdriver, and the other plugged in wire went to my bench receiver located under the bench. The crystals produced ZERO attenuation of the emission from the power supply in the frequency band tested; I'd have expected at least something even if there were other sources of radiation around, as the supply was by far the biggest contributor.
3) I didn't claim to be measuring RF or anything above the audio band - the plots are clearly labeled with the frequency range for all to see. I consider being able to see the range from 20 to 20,000Hz an improvement over the Greenlee meter which has been cited in numerous posts here as definitive proof of an effect. The Greenlee only measures the total emission between 50 and 500Hz, with no hint as to what the individual frequencies of the emission are.
4) Well perhaps the power supply for the cordless screwdriver isn't a switching supply; I just assumed it might be since it is small and many are these days. One thing is for sure, though, the emissions detected were coming from that supply because proximity to the supply clearly affected the amount of emission detected. When I did the same with just the power strip the probe needed to be resting on the opening for the hot in order to register anything significant. Since electric fields fall with the square of the distance from the source, the close-proximity power supply is clearly the dominant source of the emissions detected, especially since almost all of the other wires in the area were disconnected.
5) The source of crystals is just as reliable as the sources being used in all of the posts I see here. Do folks here get certificates of analysis from all the online vendors certifying the identity and composition of the crsytals they sell? In any case, even authenticated crystals, being a natural mineral product, will have a very large variation in composition worldwide; I don't know where I might get a certified reference standard rose quartz or amethyst - even if I could, it would cost a fortune.
Finally, I'd like to say that I have no bone to pick here. I would have loved for the experiment to show a HUGE effect, as I would have then had a new tweak for my system, but alas that was not to be.I appreciate your input, John. Thanks.
Edits: 04/05/11 04/05/11 04/05/11 04/05/11 04/05/11
Again, my experiment detected NO ATTENUATION at all from either Rose Quartz or Amethyst crystal chips.
se
No wonder the crystals weren't working, they were imported from the orient and will only work when oriented in the proper direction.
Steve, didn't you know you can't measure "magic," not if you don't have a magicometer. I actually have one built into my secret decoder wrist watch.
se
But, hey, I could have saved you the trouble. :-)
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