The Experts Empirical Knowledge Part 1

[yabaVR]

Hi there,
I'm new to the forum, but have been working in the hifi-business for nearly 30years now. I think it might be useful for all of us if mature hifi-experts share their knowledge here on certain clues or problems. So I'd like to start.

To me as a person, I've worked for a hifi-shop for some decades and I'm just now starting my own business. Many of the guys here where I live working in the hifi-business have found that nowadays it's getting more and more difficult to make a system "sing". Some even break off selling the CDPs, AMPs etc. and now explicitly specializing on tuning-equipment, because they found out that 70% or even more of the acoustical outcome of a hifi-system comes from tuning the system.  And so do I, to some degree.
Not to say that the other components are not significant important, else I would not have bought a D200 and the other stuff.

Now it's getting quiet odd for the most of you.
I think less than 10% of you have ever thougt about electromagnetic fields (electrical smog) affecting your audiosystem AND affecting You as you're listening to your music.
I investigated this phenomena over the last 6years and to me it's one of the most significant influences that harm us and the performance of our audiosytems.
Just take into account on how much the use of wifi-mobile-satellite etc. stuff has increased the last 10-20years all throwing this digital pulsed EMF into the air. Yeah, we don't see it, smell it, feel it (well, some unfortunated do)...but everyone of us can hear it.

You don't believe me? Take a chance and try the following. All of it I experienced myself. I have to say that with my tuning stuff I can alter these EMF to some degree in the customers room (no intended advertising here) and so these rooms are cleaner and maybe more sensitive to the leverage of smaller EMF. That to say these improvements might not ALL be apparent to you in your listeningroom because of it being intensively polluted with EMF. Sorry the long forerun. Now...

• get your cellphone, tablet or else, place it just next to you and listen to your music. Then take it as far away as you can (mostly some 3-5 meters are enough), listen again. The EMF affects your body and listening skills
  

• are you already into the heavy tuning and got allowed (he,he) to install a seperate powerline from your system to the fusebox of your home/flat? Well that improves the system quiet a bit. For sure you are aware of the right phase of the powerplug for your system. Here in Germany we only have 2pins on the powerplug, so we can turn the plug 180° to find out the right phase of the powerline for the component. Don't know how you can handle it. For the inexperienced: there is a huge drop in SQ when your component ist not plugged the right way to the phase of the powerline. Just turn the plug and listen.
   
  

• knowing the above, what about all the other electrical components in the room e.g. lamps, aircondition, watches, coffeemachine, etc. pluged into the poweroutlets of your listening room? Did you know that all  these need to be phased right? You can hear it when it's done wrong. For best prove just pull them all so every component not needed for listening is off the powerline. Do you hear the difference? If you can, you can plug them in one by one and turn the plug (if possible) on each round. You can hear the right direction. It might be a small difference, but it sums up.
  

• switching-power-supplies are no good. Try the one that came with your cellphone. Get your cellphone charged in your audiosystems powerstrip. No good, either way you plug it. Plug it a good 3-5 meters away into an other poweroutlet. Can you still hear the decline in SQ? I bet.
  

• and it's getting more odd if you read on. You can hear the right powerphase of e.g. a lamp even if it's not powered on. Try it. It's because you have one hot wire (the electrical phase) on the powerline. Case 1: The power on the hot wire goes all the way from the poweroutlet to the switch of the lamp and is cut there by the switch. That's the right way.
  Case 2: The power on the hot wire goes all the way from poweroutlet, passes the switch, goes further through the whole lamp, gets back to the switch and is only then cut off by the switch. That's the wrong way. There is voltage all the way through the cable, through the lamp back to the switch and that is causing a much bigger EMF than in Case 1.
  

• if you are lucky and the electrician for your house was a good one, you can pull all the fuses in the fusebox except the ones you need for your listening system, housealarm, fridge or else necessarily being powered on. Hear the difference. Well it all depends on the installation and quality of your powerline, but it can make a BIG difference.
  

When you're lucky you can get rid of all the hiss and fizzle in your system and also booming sometimes when you lower the EMFs. But being unlucky you are living near a powerfull cellphone-antenna or something else polluting the powerline like a mal, had a unskilled electrician or...? Then you have to get into the tuning-equipment. And to say it clearly, shielding and filtering is, in most scenarios, not the useful way to go. Most times you are loosing the transparency/dynamic of your system when you do so.

With my listeninghabits I'm on the crystalclear-transparent-side of music I want my rig to perform. And if the system is compiled this way it is common to me that you are running into problems, especially in heavily EMF polluted areas like capital cities etc. Every transparent, say "open", audiosystem gets easily out of balance when dealing with heavy EMFs.

I like the hiss and fizzle in an audiosystem because it's a proof to me that the system has got a high resolution/transparency that is just "out of (time)phase" and wants to be fixed.
This "out of (time)phase" is mostly due to resonances of some EMF with parts of your system or roommodes (nodes/antinodes) or even with parts of the listening-system of your body (yeah, there is electricity in you). Your body gets stressed and therefor you don't hear as precise anymore as when you are unstressed by EMF.

So it might not be the tweeter of your speakers or the sometimes "digital sounding" Devialets that gets you off.

More to say, but the written's to long anyway.

gui

[f1eng]

I have been a hifi enthusiast for over 45 years. For the first 25 or so I often experimented with tweaks like these.
After all this experience I came to the conclusion that probably 90% of the effort in getting good sound is the speakers, where they are positioned in the room, the room acoustics (bare modernist rooms sound horrid) and where the listening position is.
The electronics are the other 10%.
Unless one uses a record player, that is, and that, being a seismic vibration transducer, is enormously influenced by design and environment so the 90%/10% split does not apply to systems where LPs are a major source.

I came to the conclusion that all the other stuff, including what you list here (though I have not experimented with my mobile phone position) have the same effect on the listening pleasure as your mood, so gave up on them 20 years ago.

I have a dedicated listening room and the only audiophilia thing I did was to install an independent power supply for the equipment. Whether this makes any difference or not depends on my mood.

I have compared a linear power supply with standard one on my Metric Halo LIO-8 and hear no difference, but one well known recording engineer, Barry Diament, says his definitely has better bass with the switched mode power supply.
All Devialet products have switched a mode power supply, of course. 

So we have two experienced enthusiasts with almost opposite experience and opinions

Shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose!

[yabaVR]

@f1eng

You said you stopped with tweaks like this a good 20years ago. So we can probably consent that there was a lot of "electromagnetic waves increment" since then.

As I said, if you are living in a situation with a great bunch of EMF then you will most likely not recognise the rather small EM-Field of your smartphone i.e..
But nevertheless you can try my suggestions all together at one time to increase the positive effects. It's of no cost.

You mentioned the recording engineer, Barry Diament, having better bass with the switched mode power supply. Ehm, why not. I would not contradict his experience though there is ever so much more changing than only the bass if you change your powersupply.

My intent is not to convince everybody in this forum. I want to help people who have the feeling that something is wrong with their system, others "never change a winning team".
Before buying extra stuff it's easy to do some of the tweaking I suggested.

There is one more point I missed in my first post...and that is the varying ability of each of us to hear differences in our system at all (including the experience to hear them).
Get me right. I don't want to offend anybody, but we are all not alike. We all have different abilities.

For me, I have a lack of sensitivity with my nose for fragrances but my wife is like a sniffer dog. I myself have to dig my nose right into the soup to get the smell (well, not really but you get the point).

So to say we will never know what your personal experience with tweaking is. But I think it's worth trying a suggested tweak that you possibly in other ways never had a clue of.

gui

[Confused]

I can recall systems I had in the past, turn the volume up without playing anything and you would get mains hum, hiss and all sorts of audible rubbish.  With the Devialet, turn the gain up and you get silence.

How much difference can EMF actually be making?  Although it may very well be having an effect on humans for all I know.

And how can you wire a lamp out of phase?  Or are you referring to inverter type dimmer switches?  (Which can be very noisy). Edit - I do take the point about switching neutrals, this is actually very dangerous, but when a light is switched off you have almost infinite resistance in the circuit either way, so surely no EMF here?

[Cylob]

With the Devialet, turn the gain up and you get silence.

Right! I was getting a buzzing paranoia after reading all this.
You've eased my mind again. Cheers!

[baddog]

I am on the same side of the fence as @f1eng. I won't bother re posting his comments you can see it above. To each their own as they say. I used to love to tweak/tune with the best of them, within budget of course. Now I like to keep it as minimal as possible without trading of sound quality.

[Rodney Gold]

All my "tweakery" is room and low bass related...where it actually makes a difference

[DelaneyB]

I prefer not to be sitting listening to my system wearing a tin foil hat.....

[yabaVR]

How much difference can EMF actually be making?  Although it may very well be having an effect on humans for all I know.

And how can you wire a lamp out of phase?  Or are you referring to inverter type dimmer switches?  (Which can be very noisy). Edit - I do take the point about switching neutrals, this is actually very dangerous, but when a light is switched off you have almost infinite resistance in the circuit either way, so surely no EMF here?

Actually you can measure the amount of EMF from power on a line with the right equipment ( it's not with your walmart meter). No powerconsumer has to be connected. Think of a fully loaded capacitor. It has a potential field around it. Or think of a balloon rubbed on your hair. This kind of potential field.

I've done this measuring myself. The measuring system has a probe that can measure all 3 dimensions (x,y,z). The unit you measure at is Volt/meter (V/m). After you measured a whole cycle you can even say where the EMF comes from because of 3dimensional measuring. It doesn't matter if it's the powerline in your walls, a lamp or something else, it's just the field. For example you can say what strength the field is that a lighttransformer on the ceiling 1st floor is inducing through your floor into the 2nd floor. Very convincing when you see the result on the screen.

And the field differs as I said. One time there is voltage on the whole lamp the other time only on the line up to the switch of the lamp. Depending on which line the powerphase is taking on the  cabel of the lamp. The difference is huge in Voltage/meter on the measuring, i.e. 10 V/m (phase right) up to 90 V/m (phase wrong) or even more...and as expected near 0 V/m if you pull the plug.

To make it short. Best proof to hear is to pull all unnecessary powerconsumer in your listening room...it does not matter if they are powered on, but for sure the EMF is even stronger, when they're powered on.


gui

(think I was right with the 10% )

[yabaVR]

I prefer not to be sitting listening to my system wearing a tin foil hat.....

Was this comment on me? Hope not. I only mentioned basic physics and my experience affecting the body and the audio system.

You are not seeing any EMF and hence it doesn't exist and has no effects? Really?

Funny thing is, the AQ AES Coffee Cable in your system wears a "tin foil hat" in form of a "7 layer noise-dissipation system". Why  would they do that? They tell you. For shielding from EMFs. Ok, they call them RFI.
Why do cabelmakers change cabledesign anyway? Is it just about Resistance, Induction and Skin Effects?

@all
I wonder that some people (no forum members )  feeling educated still believe physics is that simple. Advantage is it makes their world less complicated as well closed minded.
Peace

gui