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We begin with a RAM modded OPPO player feeding my AV rig... it's a really nice, high bang for the buck, amazingly mulitfunctional player in the lightest, dinkiest case... when you see this thing you think you gotta be f*$king kidding me... don't ask me how they squoze that much performance into what (deceptively) looks like a double discount tin box... so my OPPO has been running in for a while, cycling through my favorite DVDs, killer performance, I'm seeing and hearing all manner of information that would have whizzed right past on an inferior (and probably vastly more expensive) rig... and I get a jones for a cheese snack and park the OPPO, walk over to the fridge, and one of the refrigerator magnets falls apart, dropping out a tiny neodymium magnet thats only a few millimeters across, I'd estimate about 4-5 millimeter... hmmmmm... eat some wine flavored cheese on a wasa cracker, walk back to the toob, carrying the little magnet with me... just for grins I place said magnet on top of the case right above the tiny transformer in the switch mode power supply.... hit *play* and go back to watching Brotherhood, excellent show BTW... annnnndddd.... whoaaaaa, at first it sounded brighter, then it sounded like I was hearing about 5 times deeper into the soundtrack, the music, environmental sounds, etc seemed to expand clearly free of the Sony cabinet, so much so that frequently I could not discern what was "really real" in my room, and what was recorded... it was like a massive increase in resolution... at the cost of more brightness though, based on our discussions here before, this leads me to beleive that the steel case must normally be acting as some form of inductive "information smearer", and magnetizing the steel reduced the capactity of the case to store and release further energy, sort of like the equivalent of putting a strong DC bias on the Audioquest cables, this also leads me to think that a carful tuned combination of resonant materials and magnetic materials could be made into small magnetic "gloms" that can be attaced to steel cased electronics for greatly improved performance...
Follow Ups:
Steel has hysteresis. See the link for an explanation of this.Placing a magnet on a steel part biases the magnetization of the part away from zero. This makes the magnetization versus magnetic forcing field response more linear. This will reduce the distortion the steel part adds to an audio circuit if the steel part is anywhere near currents that are correlated with the audio signal, including power supply currents.
The magnet itself may create trouble, though. The rare-earth magnets are excellent electrical conductors, and will support circulating currents. In my experiments, ceramic magnets gave more improvement than rare-earth.
If you have a part that you know you want to keep the magnet on, attach it with polyurethane construction adhesive. This will make a constrained-layer damping system out of it, as well as a means to bias the steel's magnetization.
You may want to try placing a big square-frame transformer where you got the good magnet response. The transformer core material will concentrate any leakage magnetic fields and keep them away from areas where they may be inducing distortion.
x
away from the transformer ? It may/may not take a while for the change to be observed, it may or may not be progressive over time.
how thick is the steel casing on this beasty ?
PWB Electronics in England has been offering Blue Magnadiscs (blue magnets) for attaching to steel cases of electronics (as well as other steel objects) for 20 years.Could it possibly be that the explanation for why the sound is improved with magnets, esp. blue ones, attached to the chassis is more "Beltian" than conventional physics? :-)
just kidding! of course PWB is on top of this tweak...if any readers have a cheaper mass produced cd player, try this out.
simply remove the metal cover and measure where the little plastic spindle that holds and spins the CD is, then place a small 1/2" round magnet on the cover directly over that spindle. then listen. it really increases the depth & width of the soundstage...smooooovs out the sound. Adding the Herbie's Grungebuster 2.2 is amazing now too.
i also added a larger magnet (though its less powerful i think) over the transfomer. tonight i'll remove it for the night and see what happens.
no magnets were added inside the case or chassis...these are literally just attached to the cover. So, if you're looking at the top of you cd player, these are plainly visible.
even if this is only a temp thing as David Aiken posted, its a load of fun for a guy like me who doesn't own a nice cdp.
nt
nt
...try 2 flat plate or bar magnets (get from home depot)separated by 2 pieces of magnetic steel (2 sockets for your tool box will do) and straddle your power cords abouts 18 inches from the iec (thanks alan maher) and be prepared for something wonderful. Don't use on KK palladiums it works poorly here. But the changes I got on other vanilla pcs were: more extension, stronger better soundstage and timbre. Very cheap mod indeed.Where again did you guys put magnets, was it on top of transports?
I discovered something similar a couple of years ago using the flat, rubbery fridge magnets which have magnetic material mixed through a polymer of some kind, the ones with calendars or business card info or the like printed on them. I demonstrated if a few times to friends who were quite impressed.I found it worked short term only. I think that the magnetic material in the fridge magnet saturated over time and they lost their effect when that occurred. Remove them for a while, replace them on a component case, and there the effect was again. Play stuff for a few days, remove them, and notice no effect on removal but wait a few days and repeat, and there it was back again.
I gave up on it for that reason. It's a great parlour game and seems guaranteed to wow people whenever I do it again in public but the effect simply didn't last.
Makes me wonder, however, about some of the 'brick' ideas which contained a large amount of magnetic/magnetisable material that were intended to be placed above transformers.
Ask Al Sekela about the use of magnets on steel to control "eddy currents" or somesuch. I'm way over my head on the theory, but he told me how to use them on my steel boxed outlet strip (and other uses I cannot mention) and they worked very well indeed! Not dramatic, mind you.So maybe that's what's happening with tonemaniac's discovery.
Guys who have done this, where would you place it on a typical CDP? And on an amp if you do that????
this is crazy.after reading this i hopped up, went my fridge, grabbed 2 magnets and 5 minutes later the Sony scd-595 is imaging *insane style*.
freakin' me out...i just looked over my shoulder to see if someone was there since my back is to the stage. listening to the KSAN FM radio show w/Bob Marley. Probably Bob's best live recording avail legally for downloaded. '73 San Francisco i believe.
this is nuts, thanks guys.
i stuck the smaller one over the spindle thing, got it 1st try sounds like. the larger is over the trannie.
my speaks have totally disconnected from the sound, this only happens with my turntable set-up which costs 10x more than this cd changer.
WTF?
Will this work on amps? the trannies are huge.
You can experiment with these all over the place. Try some of the right size and place them on your IC's. You will need to listen to both poles to pick the best one. You can tack them in place with a drop of nail polish (ask you wife first).
Also find a ring magnet version (flat) and centre it on the transprt disk clamp. A 1/2 to 5/8's OD is usually big enough. There is already a very small one in the clamp so the big one will attach it self in one position or another. Takes a little patience to centre it perfectly but well worth the trouble. This much bigger magnet creats a "super' clamp which not only nolds the disk tighter to the spindle/platform but also forces the disk to seat itself better so it is perfectly centred on the disk turntable.
Meanwhile inside your electronics these things are additive in thier effect so buy a bunch. Have fun. Regards Moray James.
moray james
It sounds as if you were hallucinating!
It's the mold in the cheese.
... didn't I put that in?... well there you go... I go... carried away on a tide of enthusiasm again!
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