With a myriad number of tweaks already in under evaluation – and still growing, isn’t it strange that the most often ignored component in the hi-fi experiential chain is the listener?
By: Ringo Bones
Surely, this is yet another topic that won’t become a perennial bone of contention in the annual meeting of the Audio Engineering Society anytime soon. But do we – in the enthusiast’s side of the hi-fi community – find it just a bit strange that we, the listener, is the only major component in the hi-fi experiential listening chain that is not subjected to extensive tweaking. After all, our audio / stereo systems will not be listening to themselves anytime soon, right?
During the past few weeks, I’m beginning to wonder whether those “out-there” kind of tweaks – also referred to as advanced tweaks - are really nothing more than health and wellness tweaks, though not all of them, aimed specifically at us – the hi-fi listener / system owner. These “exotic” health and wellness tips are often referred to as alternative medicine by the Madison Avenue marketing men and they too are often dismissed by staunch objectivists as too “New Age”. Like those advanced tweaks that inextricably works to some degree in improving the sound quality of one’s audio gear. But what are they?
Drinking Polarized Water – a hi-fi tweak often attributed to Peter W. Belt. Polarized water in hi-fi tweak parlance is a drinkable water produced by placing a bottle or glass of water contained in a non-magnetic container to the north pole of a moderately-strong magnet - like loudspeaker and guitar pickup magnets - for 2 to 5 minutes. The listener drinks it in order to notice a marked improvement in sound quality of one’s audio gear. I think it works by relieving the stress of the listener. Allowing him or her to be musically more perceptive. As preliminary research by Professor Eshel Ben Jacob, a physicist from Tel Aviv University, have shown that stressfully purified water can make anyone who drinks it stressful. Maybe I’ll try drinking water purified by gamma radiation via cobalt-60, which is probably the most stressful water purification method that I know of – and has access to - in order to find out if this has a detrimental effect to the sound quality of my audio gear.
The Dreaded Pattern 5 Acupuncture Treatment – this is probably the most extensive and painful of all acupuncture treatments that’s offered to us – i.e. those of us without any lineage to mainland China’s great emperors whatsoever. But this particular acupuncture treatment has the greatest potential to restore the body’s energy and balance, although each one of the 47 or so needles that the acupuncturist had stuck into me felt like a 440-volt electric shock. The treatment did made me feel tired and sore, but after several minutes relaxing while listening to my audio rig, I’ve noticed that I’m hearing details that I never knew my systems lowly price tag had any right to produce.
A Vigorous Workout – it does work so well, especially after sever minutes when your body has assimilated all those endorphins produced during the exercise regimen. This not only makes you feel good, but it makes you feel as if you are listening to a much more expensive audio gear as you relax while listening to your favorite tunes. Better consult your doctor or GP first to find out if your body is up to it though.
A Several Days Fast From Your Audio Gear – this one is a perfect cure to those obsessive-compulsive tweakers. Try “vacationing” or “fasting” away from your audio gear for three days or more by hiking or fishing or doing any outdoor activity on your favorite spot as far from your audio gear as possible. You’ll be surprised how this one improves the sound of your audio gear and reduces your tendency to be an overly compulsive hi-fi tweak.
Of all these hi-fi / health and wellness tweaks that I tried, probably the most transcendent is the Pattern 5 Acupuncture treatment. It is transcendent in a way that it kind of makes you feel more contented of your possessions and the people around you. I wonder if the members of Grateful Dead have tried the Pattern 5 Acupuncture treatment? Anyway, all of them will not only improve the sound quality of your audio gear to some degree, but it also gives you – the listener – a much needed tweak to be better at all the other things that you do.
Showing posts with label Hi-Fi Tweaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hi-Fi Tweaks. Show all posts
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Saturday, December 12, 2009
What Audiophiles Don’t Know About Polarized Water
Even though the mechanism behind how it improves the sound quality of audio gear is still open to debate, is the audiophile world at large ignoring at their on peril by ignoring polarized water as an audio tweak?
By: Ringo Bones
As a really “out there” audio tweak often attributed to Peter W. Belt, the viability of polarized water as a viable way to improve the sound quality of your audio gear did manage to generate a significant cult following in the audiophile community. Even though serious discussion of the “science” behind how it works won’t be a perennial topic in the annual meetings of the Audio Engineering Society anytime soon. But are audiophiles – even the scientific community – ignoring at their own peril on what we can learn about the phenomena behind now polarized water works as a hi-fi tweak?
The polarized water referred to by hi-fi enthusiasts is a north-polarized water that is produced as a result of exposing a bottle or glass of water – usually around 250 to 500 ml – to the north magnetic pole of a magnet (the one marked “N”) for around 2 to 5 minutes. The stronger the magnet, the better. Most recommend drinking the water to make your audio gear sound better. But if we do it this way, does it mean that polarized water is a tweak for the listener, as opposed to the audio component being listened to?
The science behind how polarized water works – and it does work to some degree – has yet to be determined. But there have been recent studies conducted on water that woefully revealed that there is still a ton of stuff that the layman and the scientific community doesn’t know about water – let alone polarized water. Professor Eshel Ben Jacob, a physicist from Tel Aviv University, whose research on water memory after it is exposed to electromagnetic radiation when he noted that the bacteria in the water manifested the memory properties of water that is being exposed to such electromagnetic radiation.
Prof. Jacob recently uncovered during the course of his research that water is capable of carrying complex information despite of its “apparently” simple molecular structure. The preliminary findings of the professor’s research suggest not only a scientifically verifiable explanation behind the phenomena of homeopathy, but also on a new paradigm of water purification.
Something that is less stressful after Prof. Jacob had found out that stressful water purification can cause unnecessary stress in humans and other organic systems. Does this suggest that Prof. Eshel Ben Jacob’s findings suggest that water is capable of carrying information / properties that humans – maybe some who are perceptive enough – can perceive even though our most sophisticated mass spectrometers cannot?
Back in 1994, I was fortunate enough to hike into a remote watershed in my neck of the woods – a 12-hour “ordeal” from the nearest roadside – and managed to witness something that water supposedly can’t do. Bamboo harvesters accidentally left some bamboo in the pool that formed at the base of a pristine spring often used by them as a convenient “watering hole”. Bamboo cuttings aren’t supposed to sprout into a new plant right? But here, an obviously machete-cut section of bamboo managed to sprout roots and stems after being immersed for more than a week in the pristine pool of a remote mountainside spring – another thing water doesn’t supposed to do. Though I kept away from that place because where I came from, if there’s a near-inexhaustible supply of really clean and free drinking water, there are bound to be well-armed insurgents. But I still remember the inextricably invigorating properties of the water from that particular spring.
Another proof that the human senses are more sensitive than the most advanced mass spectrometer was shown in an episode of Mythbusters. On this particular episode, the Mythbusters team tries to prove that through using charcoal filters used to purify water a cheap low-end vodka can be used to taste like top shelf or high-end vodka. The charcoal filter made the cheap vodka taste much closer to top shelf vodka via charcoal filtration. Inextricably though, the mass spectrometer – which was used during the episode to analyze the various grades of vodka - can’t tell the difference between the cheap vodka, the charcoal-filtered cheap vodka and the high-end / top shelf vodka. The mass spectrometer only show water-diluted ethyl alcohol while a professional vodka tester and even novice bar hoppers can tell – make that taste and smell - the difference between cheap vodka and high-end vodka. So the lesson here is trust your senses, they are better than a 20,000 US dollar Fast Fourier Transform signal analyzer or a 50,000 US dollar nanogram-level mass spectrometer.
As Professor Eshel Ben Jacob pointed out the science behind a newly-discovered mechanism still under investigation that stressful purification of water does make most humans who consume them stressed out. Maybe exposing stressfully purified water to the North Pole of the magnet for 2 to 5 minutes de-stresses it. Making one drinking the water more musically receptive thus enabling polarized water to work as a hi-fi tweak in improving the sound of your audio system.
By: Ringo Bones
As a really “out there” audio tweak often attributed to Peter W. Belt, the viability of polarized water as a viable way to improve the sound quality of your audio gear did manage to generate a significant cult following in the audiophile community. Even though serious discussion of the “science” behind how it works won’t be a perennial topic in the annual meetings of the Audio Engineering Society anytime soon. But are audiophiles – even the scientific community – ignoring at their own peril on what we can learn about the phenomena behind now polarized water works as a hi-fi tweak?
The polarized water referred to by hi-fi enthusiasts is a north-polarized water that is produced as a result of exposing a bottle or glass of water – usually around 250 to 500 ml – to the north magnetic pole of a magnet (the one marked “N”) for around 2 to 5 minutes. The stronger the magnet, the better. Most recommend drinking the water to make your audio gear sound better. But if we do it this way, does it mean that polarized water is a tweak for the listener, as opposed to the audio component being listened to?
The science behind how polarized water works – and it does work to some degree – has yet to be determined. But there have been recent studies conducted on water that woefully revealed that there is still a ton of stuff that the layman and the scientific community doesn’t know about water – let alone polarized water. Professor Eshel Ben Jacob, a physicist from Tel Aviv University, whose research on water memory after it is exposed to electromagnetic radiation when he noted that the bacteria in the water manifested the memory properties of water that is being exposed to such electromagnetic radiation.
Prof. Jacob recently uncovered during the course of his research that water is capable of carrying complex information despite of its “apparently” simple molecular structure. The preliminary findings of the professor’s research suggest not only a scientifically verifiable explanation behind the phenomena of homeopathy, but also on a new paradigm of water purification.
Something that is less stressful after Prof. Jacob had found out that stressful water purification can cause unnecessary stress in humans and other organic systems. Does this suggest that Prof. Eshel Ben Jacob’s findings suggest that water is capable of carrying information / properties that humans – maybe some who are perceptive enough – can perceive even though our most sophisticated mass spectrometers cannot?
Back in 1994, I was fortunate enough to hike into a remote watershed in my neck of the woods – a 12-hour “ordeal” from the nearest roadside – and managed to witness something that water supposedly can’t do. Bamboo harvesters accidentally left some bamboo in the pool that formed at the base of a pristine spring often used by them as a convenient “watering hole”. Bamboo cuttings aren’t supposed to sprout into a new plant right? But here, an obviously machete-cut section of bamboo managed to sprout roots and stems after being immersed for more than a week in the pristine pool of a remote mountainside spring – another thing water doesn’t supposed to do. Though I kept away from that place because where I came from, if there’s a near-inexhaustible supply of really clean and free drinking water, there are bound to be well-armed insurgents. But I still remember the inextricably invigorating properties of the water from that particular spring.
Another proof that the human senses are more sensitive than the most advanced mass spectrometer was shown in an episode of Mythbusters. On this particular episode, the Mythbusters team tries to prove that through using charcoal filters used to purify water a cheap low-end vodka can be used to taste like top shelf or high-end vodka. The charcoal filter made the cheap vodka taste much closer to top shelf vodka via charcoal filtration. Inextricably though, the mass spectrometer – which was used during the episode to analyze the various grades of vodka - can’t tell the difference between the cheap vodka, the charcoal-filtered cheap vodka and the high-end / top shelf vodka. The mass spectrometer only show water-diluted ethyl alcohol while a professional vodka tester and even novice bar hoppers can tell – make that taste and smell - the difference between cheap vodka and high-end vodka. So the lesson here is trust your senses, they are better than a 20,000 US dollar Fast Fourier Transform signal analyzer or a 50,000 US dollar nanogram-level mass spectrometer.
As Professor Eshel Ben Jacob pointed out the science behind a newly-discovered mechanism still under investigation that stressful purification of water does make most humans who consume them stressed out. Maybe exposing stressfully purified water to the North Pole of the magnet for 2 to 5 minutes de-stresses it. Making one drinking the water more musically receptive thus enabling polarized water to work as a hi-fi tweak in improving the sound of your audio system.
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