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Maybe discussed here before but, if so, I missed it so apologies to anyone irritated by repeat rounds on the same topic.There are members of the Melbourne Audio Club who swear by this device. For those not in the know it is supposed to improve the sound - how it is done is described in the patent link below. Here is how one guy (who swears it works) tried to explain it to me:
"It appears to be simply a de-gausser ie. remove stored magnetic fields, perhaps remove static charge as well. It appears to be simply a modulating direct magnetic field. [The rotation is to cover the whole CD without needing a very large magnetic platter].
"What I don't understand is why the magnetic field does not die slowly when power is removed. The magnets are charging the disc at all times and this is not a falling intensity oscillating magnetic field such as a de-gausser.
"Relaxation may well be a phenomena that affects a lot of chemical or charge situations but how that effects light reflections off a CD has not made it's reasoning known to me yet. I'm hoping that I can make sense of Bedini's patent explanation eventually. Fingers crossed.
"Some other definitions from Spectroscopy are:
"NMR spectroscopy would not be possible if it were not for relatively long "relaxation" times. Relax-ation is the process that tends to re-align the nuclear spins with the field and randomize their phases, an effect that leads to complete loss of the information represented in such a spin. In liquid state, relaxation times of the order of seconds are common and attributed to the weakness of nuclear interactions and a fast averaging effect associated with the rapid, tumbling motions of molecules in the liquid state.
"Relaxation time is the time scale over which useful signal from a
computation is lost."The above makes about as little sense as the patent description in the link below.
A couple of people have tried to demonstrate the Bedini device here but without success. One guy got very irate at my inquiry about any tests on a treated vs an untreated CD to discount the placebo affect.
To me it is all a load of horse manure.
John
Interesting times
Follow Ups:
how exactly does a plastic support a magnetic field ..??
There is a metallic layer on al CD's, either aluminum, or gold.See my post below for more info.
See:
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/tweaks/messages/26267.htmlI later was able to verify a portion of my theory, by using an infra-red temperatuire probe to show that the CD was indeed heating up a fraction of a degree due to exposure to a RS demag unit.
For the entire disc to heat up even a little, the interior local temperature of the metallized layer must have been much higher.
To test the heat theory - hy don't you just heat up the CD with a blow dryer and do a listening test?Also, I don't use a large demagentizer - just a Nakamichi tape dead demagger. Seems to do the job and yet because of its small size it is quite unlikely to heat up the CD as you are covering only a 1/3" x 1/10" surface area at a time, "painting" the CD with the device.
I think the fact that the the demagnetizer thingie works on CDR's as well means that it cannot exclusively be based on physical expansion and changes in the metal due to heat, as the reflective surface of a CDR is perfectly smooth and the "pits" are just darkened areas in a gel layer above it.
Another interesting comparison to do: demag a CD that has almost no silk screening and a CD that is packed with a 4-color full CD paint job. On my tests, the thicker the paint side, the more pronounced the demag-effect was. Now, just to make sure I wasn't dreaming, I have to go and heat these CDs up and see what happens.
Peter
It's the COATING on the CD that is holding the static charge. And yes, de-gaussing that will make improvement in the sound...and picture on DVDs, laserdiscs.
I think you got a point there - I've been using an old Nakamichi tape demagnetizer for almost 2 years now and I also feel that the more paint and stuff is on the label side of a CD, the more I hear an effect of the demagnetizer. I can hear it on almost all CDs, as a mulit-hour test with a friend about a year ago showed. Now, since then, I have transfered almost all my music to black CD-Rs which have almost no lable paint on the non-business side. At the same time I switched transports and for a while I thought the transport switch alone had reduced or even eliminated the effect of the demagnetizer. I almost stopped using it. However, just a few weeks ago I tried it again with a factory new CD that had a full 4-color print screen on the label side - the result was profound, even on the new transport.Why does it work? I have no clue, but that doesn't keep me from using the tweak.
Another thing you want to do with the demagnetizer is demag the tubes in your tube preamp if you have any. The effect of that has actually been measured by somebody in the bottlehead forum. Not sure how often you have to do this, but I tend to do it once a month just to make sure it's still good. First time I did it the result was quite amazing.
it is cheap. I have an old videotape eraser that I bought on sale at Rat shack that I use. Similar effect I suppose. It appears to smooth out the treble and in CD, that is a good thing in my mind. Why does it work? I have never heard a scientifically decent explanation.
I can't speak to the Bedini, but I can speak to a similiar technology - that of the Furutech RD-2. I use one and it is supposed to help reduce magnetism from the CD, as I nderstand it - all I know is that it significantly increases resolution on every disc that I use it on. I'm able to hear "further into the instruments", as well as hearing much more detail, with perhaps only a Very minor loss in harmonic structure, which is/ was probably distortion in the first place.I give it a 10. It's one of those things that once you hear, you want to treat all of your music with. Same as the Bedini, it only lasts 20-25 minutes.
I have both, but I can't keep track of what the companies are actually claiming and what others are claiming that these companies are claiming, etc..Both Bedini and Furutech definitely change the sound, often for the better, snake oil or not, but just as with any tweak, that doesn't mean the particular audiophile will find it to be an actual improvement or just different..
A spinning magnet in the vacinty of wire is a dynamo - therefore a CD that has become magnetic for whatever reason will generate a certain amount of current in the components it is spinning near. Reduce or eliminate the magnetic quality of the disk and you reduce the amount of spurious current generated - not exactly rocket science.
since when is a cd a spinning magnet?
Since they were given a metalic coating on which to etch the 1's and 0's
Yes, but itS aluminum. Ever see a magnat that attracts aluminum?
(yes i know there is also para- and dia-magnetism, but does that have any effect in a optical pickup system?)
Aluminium is insignificantly magnetic - that is not the same as non magnetic - in the rarified world of Hi-fi this is enough to create an effect - in reality it probably has an insignificant effect. CD demagnetizers are known gadgets though - like green pens and cryo treatment.
The truth of the matter is that polarizable nuclei are random in the normal state. It takes a high and focused magnetic field (in the Tesla range) to produce a net magnetic vector that is significant. Then a RF pulse must be generated to flip the nuclei 90 degrees or somewhere there abouts or there is no "relaxation" time. To detect that relaxation time there must be a resonant antenna at a frequency satisfying the Lamor equation for nuclear magnetic resonance depending on the spin of the particular nucleus. This frequency varies from element to element. Such an antenna will detect a very small signal from the spinning precessing nuclear moment. I highly doubt this can be measured on scientific instruments at audio frequencies or perceptible to the human ear. A spinning conductive medium such as a CD does not a nuclear magnetic resonant event make. Coherence of the laser and its ability to reads ones and zeros, sampling rate, quantization error, filters, quality of critical components, and the system the converted bit-stream are connected to have infinitely more bearing on the quality of sound. Please, lets stick to physics first and subjective opinions second without getting too crazy.
you need to use the intelligence chip in connection with the Bedini. But, here is the most important part! You have to use the intelligence chip first, then extract the CD from the player, degauss it in the Bedini and re-insert into the CD player. Unfortunately this will reduce the number of CD's you can treat with the IC but who said life in this hobby was fair. :-) :-)
It really is nothing more than a degausser as I have long suspected. Just the application is different from, say, erasing a tape. I have been using a hand held degausser for the past 15 years for similar effect.
The damn things actually works on LPs too. This leads me believe the mechanism has more to do with the plastics than any physical change in the metallized data layer. Perhaps there is a lessening of the polarization effects of the laser penetrating through the clear plastic. I suspect, in the case of LP's, the effect literally scrambles the polar molecules which will eventually slowly align themselves in a similar manner as the heat of the stylus momentarily melts the medium in the presence of the magnetic field of the cartridge. Certainly the manifestation of this is the lessening of the static charge.
Considering that the laser also emits a lot of heat and that most CD players use a magnetic chuck and have the presense of a motor very close by, conceivably the plastic may slowly reorient itself too. In my experience, the effect works for only one play! Pushing repeat negates and erases the effect.
Pure speculation on my part as to the causality, as I have no means of measuring these effects.As usual YMMV
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. When you chop up musical reality into nice little quantifiable bytes it does become the most infernal imbroglio to try and get it all back together again. Some say it can't be done. They maybe cynics. Some keep trying. They may be mad. Its a certifiable wonder and a miracle of the magisterium it comes out like music at all.
I would have to agree. The polar alignment of any metal material should have no effect on the ability of a laser to read the information on an optical disc. The NMR spectroscopy information paragraph was correct however and pertains to the reading of information in a volume by a RF resonant antenna or probe as they are called.I'm surprised they got a patent as this does look like snake oil. Or is it just a patent pending denial?
No, it is a real (granted) patent. The detailed text of the patent describes experiments on specific CD data that result in a measured change. For example, a track from the Beatles Abbey Road album got several dB louder after use of the "clarifier" and a picture # 3 from a Kodak Photo-CD ROM produced different PostScript data when the "before" and "after" image was converted to the well-known printer language.There were no reports of changes in the number of bugs found in the installation media for the Windows(tm) operating system. :-(
My advice would be to take your snake oil with a pinch of salt, or better still just... "enjoy the music".
BR,
Over the years, and perhaps even now, there have been people in the U.S. Patent Office who have believed in perpetual motion machines and other "free energy" scams, and have granted patents to some of the most useless devices known. Perhaps it is the same in Europe.
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