The Audiophoolery Thread.

[Radio Wrangler]

Much better! That one contains the right amount of phoolishness AND targets the audio world's gullible.

I wonder how many people on receiving the Swedish wooden box immediately rip it open with a crowbar mistaking the product for a packing crate and assuming the product must be inside?

Maybe the best fun would be looking for all the back-covering legalese words telling people that it must not be used as a safety earth connection.

David

[Craig Sawyers]

These boxes used to contain some loose rectangular plates of metal (aluminium and copper) and were filled with magnetite granules. Since this is cheap https://www.inoxia.co.uk/products/chemicals/inorganic-compounds/magnetite-powder The whole thing is entirely profit.

Simple once someone had ripped the lid off, there are quite a few who have knocked up DIY versions.

Their latest foo is to put titanium in the box too (they say).

Thinking about what is in the box, reminds me of "carrot in the box", unmissable comedy genius of the late great Sean Lock and John Richardson.

Craig

[lightning]

lt sounds quite ethereal
Who on earth writes this stuff?

[Radio Wrangler]

Originally Posted by lightning

Who on earth writes this stuff?

Someone not very well grounded in electromagnetic field theory.

David

[lightning]

The pollutants (in the wiring) "flow around in their search for peaceful ground"

[Craig Sawyers]

Paramagnetic materials - such as Aluminium (told you there were aluminium plates in there),

Diamagnetic materials like Copper (told you there was copper plates in there) and wood. Like the box itself.

Ferromagnetic, like magnetite granules (told you they were in there)

So apart from the floating copper and aluminium plates, the cheap as chips magnetite and a wooden box, it is simply a method raking in money from the gullible.

Craig

[Craig Sawyers]

Originally Posted by lightning

The pollutants (in the wiring) "flow around in their search for peaceful ground"

Of course that is how it works. How could you possibly be cynical?

Craig

[Radio Wrangler]

Those pollutants, in the words of the great Monty Python must be 'Sh***ed out after a long squawk' considering all the effort they must have expended in ruining someone's sound, so they would be looking for somewhere calm and dark to recuperate for a while.

If a boxful of earth was good enough for Count Dracula, why would they need more? I think all the fancy metals are just marketing embellishment.

David

[ajgriff]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Someone not very well grounded in electromagnetic field theory.

David

Someone wanting to make a fast buck out of ignorant phools with more money than sense?

Alan

[lightning]

Sounds like it can take time for the impurities to find the box. But once found, further impurities will know where it is.

l assume if the system is turned off, the process will start again, so probably better to leave the system turned on.

[Craig Sawyers]

Since current only flows in a closed circuit, connecting an isolated box containing anything at all can do absolutely nothing at all.

In fact if you were to be able to put some charge into it (because of its isolated capacitance) it would come back out again as part of the ac cycle.

What is the capacitance? Well an isolated conducting sphere has capacitance 4 x pi x epsilon0 x R where R is the diameter.

So if R = 0.3m (so about a foot) the capacitance is (drum roll) 33pF, or j48k at 100kHz.

In fact Nikola Tesla tried to develop a communications technology at Wardenclyffe in NY, where he planned to use the the Earth as an isolated capacitor (about 700uF) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower . His funders pulled the plug when Marconi used radio for communication, and Wardenclyffe was destroyed.

Craig

[Beobloke]

Whilst I'm no fan of the site, Amir of Audio Science Review website ran some measurements on one of these grounding boxes, and found that it acted as a pretty effective antenna to pick up RF.

[Craig Sawyers]

While reading that interesting thread on Audio Science Review, I found an interview with Entreq's head shaman, shaking his bones, looking a chicken entrails and talking nonsense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8uGTOfmQjo

At one point you get a glimpse of one of the massive sacks on top of a speaker, occupying most of the top.

Craig

[AnalogueMan]

I just spotted this highly desirable new product. According to the suppliers standard RCCBs have a negative effect on sound quality so you need one of these. They're only 500 Euros a pop so if you'll excuse me I'm off to retrofit my entire house

[Trevor]

What a load of rubbish As an experienced audio engineer and qualified electrical engineer I would say this is so wrong
Also mains dis boards are encouraged to use all the same brand circuit breakers etc within the enclosure .I cannot believe this If they knew what the poor mains supply goes through before being brought back to being Dc supply
Trev

[Radio Wrangler]

If they have a purely negative effect on sound, why change to a type-F RCCB, designed to not trigger on pure DC currents, so they won't work on all that negativity!

David

[RichardGM]

Have they built this from scratch or messed up an off-the-shelf RCCB? Either way, besides its utter irrelevance to audio quality, would you trust it to do its basic job?

[Craig Sawyers]

Do a search for "audio grade rccb". HiFi Tuning are not the only outfit in this game, and not the most expensive either.

Craig

[samjmann]

On the subject of grounding, an old Tv engineer told me this about one customer in the 1960's.

He arrived at the customers sitting room, and noticed on every mains outlet in the room, there was a mains plug with a single green cable coming from it. This then went into a jam-jar full of tap water!

He tentatively asked the customer "why are you doing this and what does it achieve?" The customer retorted "well I would have thought it was obvious, and you especially should know. It's to safely ground each socket!"

No wonder the Hi-Fi world is full of snake-oil products! SJM.

[Craig Sawyers]

Anyone for speaker cables? Price of a new car anyone?

Craig