The Audiophoolery Thread.

[Beobloke]

Shame about the interconnect cable - that's much too thin.

Your quantums will be all of a dither trying to battle their way down that!

[deliverance]

Originally Posted by Beobloke

Shame about the interconnect cable - that's much too thin.

Your quantums will be all of a dither trying to battle their way down that!

Might be the time to ask Tom for his advice on this .

[lightning]

Serious question.
ls there any actual science in replacing the mains plug socket with a super posh one. Customers of course report a significant improvement in sound quality. But what about the cable from the consumer unit and meters?

The super posh plug sockets are just over £1,000 for a pair. Company claims they are the "best sounding sockets we have developed to date".

[wave solder]

It is one for the audiophools, if it is expensive then it has to sound better....

[Radio Wrangler]

Originally Posted by lightning

Serious question.
ls there any actual science in replacing the mains plug socket with a super posh one. Customers of course report a significant improvement in sound quality. But what about the cable from the consumer unit and meters?

Why do you assume that sonic effects end at your property boundary?

You may need to move to an area with a golden-ears approved sub-station, or maybe to a farm with your own personal pole-top transformer. Though keeping getting them changed until you get one sympathetic to your taste in music might make you unpopular.

But then there are HV lines, switchyards and generating stations....

So many, many choices.

Better to generate your own? Diesel for bass, petrol for midrange and solar for the supertweeters?

Where do you stop

There may be a market for some magazine to publish maps of good audio districts in the UK.

David

[knobtwiddler]

An audiophool tweak (has it been mentioned in this thread? Must have...) is to have your own ground pole in the garden, for the purpose of grounding the stereo only. You don't want your stereo sharing earth with the hoi polloi of the electronics world such as your toaster, do you?

The trouble with the dedicated earth spike is that its continuity needs to be maintained. The pole can corrode and lose continuity. I have known folk with such poles! One of them was a retired fellow who used to run a machining outfit. He told me he had tinnitus and you needed to raise your voice when addressing him. But he swore the pole made an audible difference! I once gave him a pair of identical preamps, but with different BJTs. He came back to me with a detailed essay on sonic differences.

[Craig Sawyers]

The problem with an earth spike is that what do you ground to what? At the meter tails neutral is connected to ground using multiple protective grounding. If you then add an earth spike, you now have two parallel ground paths. What do you connect to the spike?

The plethora of myths and reality is in an excellent paper by Bill Whitlock (of Jensen transformers), worth reading even though it is 120V/60Hz centric.

https://jhbrandt.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/An_Overview_...SystemGrounding_and_Interfacing.pdf

[knobtwiddler]

I can't recall ever reading a paper by Whitlock that wasn't authoritative and compelling. A bonafide AES fellow. The trouble is that the average audiophool will find it easier to put hand-in-wallet than digest such a paper. Deane Jensen was a tough act to follow, but Whitlock was a worthy person to step into his shoes (quite unusual, as firms with exceptional founders invariably take a nosedive when they leave).

I firmly believe that the technical concepts in this class are best taught using analogies
and intuition rather than complex mathematics. In my opinion, the audio business,
especially the audiophile portion, is simply awash in bullshit and bad advice!
Therefore, the remedial part of my task is to debunk myths perpetuated as “tradition”
among practitioners and as unintentional but often self-serving misinformation from
manufacturers. You’ll find I loathe the lies, half-truths, and distortions of
marketing ... particularly when they’re used to exploit ignorance or
desperation.

Love you, Bill!

[Radio Wrangler]

I believe there is an audiophool product which amounts to a wooden box (carefully chosen type of wood, of course) containing rocks or garden soil with a dinky little ground rod in it. The idea is that this goes in your listening room close to your equipment as a local ground. I've not heard any more of this for some time, so I assume that everyone who wants one must have had their wishes fulfilled by now.

The sad bit is that they seem completely unaware that they're missing something.

David

That Bill Whitlock quotation is superb.

[Radio Wrangler]

I'm wondering if there is a market opportunity for a specialist firm to offer ultra-deep borehole drilling, like that one in Siberia, but deeper, so that an audio installation can have a good earth connection to the planet's iron core.

You'd need insurance against inadvertent vulcanism, of course, else the neighbours could get stroppy. But for ultimate sound quality, you have to take some risks.

The bottom end would have to be tungsten in order to not melt, but above that, just think of the length of audiophile cable to be sold.

David

[McMurdo]

on a serious note, a wire coming inside from an earth spike is classed in the regulations as an extraneous conductor and so must be connected to the house mains earth. Just in case anyone's tempted to try it.

[Craig Sawyers]

In fairness, the earth rod connections I've seen are not direct, but are routed via a high voltage capacitor. So there is no DC conflict between the neutral/ground bond and a secondary ground rod.

A problem remains however. The wire that connects the ground rod to the capacitor/audio gear has inductance. Suppose we connect the ground spike with some chunky 3mm diameter wire, and it is 5 metres from the audio system. That is around 1uH. Now lets assume that we are interested in dealing with RF, and lets pick 10MHz as a for instance. That wire would have an (complex) impedance of 63 ohms at that frequency.

Of course who can say what the typical self-installed audio earth rod resistance to ground. In wet clay it can be 10 ohms. In sandy soil it can be 100 ohms plus.

Those who install these things professionally either use mesh mats, or auger drill, install a rod (or several auger and parallel connect) and then concrete the rods in with special material.

And these installers have the kit to verify the resistance to ground of a rod.

Craig

[Craig Sawyers]

Double post. Second one deleted

Craig

[Craig Sawyers]

David mentions the dirt in a box things.

They are made by Entreq (seriously). They say:

"Entreq use different layers of metals mixed with minerals to create a para-, dia- and ferro-magnetic galvanic point that acts like a concentrated piece of Earth"

https://www.futureshop.co.uk/entreq-olympus-hero-multi-cell-ground-box

Craig

[Craig Sawyers]

This was back in 2008, but someone took the lids off to demonstrate what is inside the dirt in a box device:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/entreq-9-000-for-a-wood-box-of-dirt.828707/

And https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/entreq-tellus-grounding.11995/page-81

Which shows a box with black gritty stuff, which when poured out shows some copper wire connected to the terminal post, and floating pieces of aluminium plate and a copper sheet.

Who buys this nonsense?

Craig

[Craig Sawyers]

Looks like the black granular stuff is magnetite https://www.lkabminerals.com/news/magnetite-synonyms/

It might not be an accident that LKAB is Swedish, as is Entreq.

25kg of magnetite granules is £129 https://www.inoxia.co.uk/products/chemicals/inorganic-compounds/magnetite-powder

Random bits of metal £10.

Wooden box, £50 tops. So less than £200 each to build these and sell for £10k plus.

I'll shut up now and hide under the chair.

Craig

[Radio Wrangler]

Foo for fools.

The problem with silly beliefs is that they can be countered by other silly beliefs. If someone spreads the evidence-free rumour that those earth boxes attracted lightning strikes, for example. There is no reproducible and objective science supporting the claims of their operation, therefore there need be none in demolishing them. Live by the sword and all that.

Believing in scientific method weeds out an awful lot of crap and randomness whether well intended or not.

David

[CambridgeWorks]

#3817
David, how about a specific "biorhythm" audiophool app that will predict the best date and time for a particular audiophool to listen to their equipment for the best experience?
Could be a good little earner I imagine.
Two different participants would each have differing results (opinions), so making it even more believable that one was better.
Rob

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by lightning

Serious question.
ls there any actual science in replacing the mains plug socket with a super posh one. Customers of course report a significant improvement in sound quality. But what about the cable from the consumer unit and meters?

The super posh plug sockets are just over £1,000 for a pair. Company claims they are the "best sounding sockets we have developed to date".

Ideally, they should be made of better conductive material and feature tighter springs. This will surely help the likes of room heaters, washing machines, 3kW PA amplifiers, etc. to not burn up the socket over time, but really doesn't do anything for normal audio equipment.

[Craig Sawyers]

Originally Posted by CambridgeWorks

#3817
David, how about a specific "biorhythm" audiophool app that will predict the best date and time for a particular audiophool to listen to their equipment for the best experience?
Could be a good little earner I imagine.
Two different participants would each have differing results (opinions), so making it even more believable that one was better.
Rob

Maybe we could market a long code digital noise generator. Only when the generated code matches a pre-programmed number and (say) rings a bell, it is time to listen to the audio system.

It is really easy to design these things so that if you clock at (say) 1MHz, the repeat length is measured in years. So there ought to be a "close, but no dice" light too.

I suspect it is possible to design one of these so that the repeat length takes it to the heat death of the universe. So you never ever get to listen to your system.

Craig