Ok so when you Google him there is nothing but nonsense explanations (My OPINION ... shared by most, but Jan there could be 50 million of us wrong!
) nasty blogs by folks who have never tried his products and lots of good reviews from folks who have.So it is interesting in an amusing kind of way. Of course if I ever get a free chunk of magic crystal, I just might see if it has any effect on the sound field or my perception of it. I will be quite surprised if it does do anything, then it would be time for some measurements. (Using real world equipment as I have yet to meet any aliens to borrow gear from!)
OK, so let's recap. Claims to be a physicist, but no real publications that I can find. Nor patents. Gives a gobbledy-gook explanation of how his devices work. No data. No specifications. No theory of operation. No controlled listening tests. Positive reviews by audio "writers" with histories of promoting nonsense. Stunningly high prices.
Sound familiar? I wouldn't be surprised if he drives a Bentley and takes less-rich designers out to expensive lunches.
Sound familiar? I wouldn't be surprised if he drives a Bentley and takes less-rich designers out to expensive lunches.
Based on the first paragraph I suggest you put a collection of rocks in your listening space and see if the wife can hear a difference. You never know!
The second paragraph I think is unwarranted as obviously your testing of Mr Bybees devices was incomplete!
(You could not find any difference between them and a resistor and my OPINION is that in a thorough test you should have been able to find some difference!)
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That's his claim. Perhaps it was from Dieter und Helga's Meisten Ausgezeichnete Schule der Wissenschaft.
You're free to try. There must be a pony in there somewhere, eh?
These things work, I'll prove it.
I am a professional musician and run into this sort of thing, albeit in a different manner, all the time.
These products have a price that greatly encourages folks to sit down, shut up and listen. When they do they start hearing all manner of things that have always been there but had gone unnoticed. Why? Because really listening is a lot of work.
Genuine musicians pull great music out of thin air by listening to themselves, the other players and the environment. When musicians get tired the real music happens less and less.
I am a professional musician and run into this sort of thing, albeit in a different manner, all the time.
These products have a price that greatly encourages folks to sit down, shut up and listen. When they do they start hearing all manner of things that have always been there but had gone unnoticed. Why? Because really listening is a lot of work.
Genuine musicians pull great music out of thin air by listening to themselves, the other players and the environment. When musicians get tired the real music happens less and less.
The second paragraph I think is unwarranted as obviously your testing of Mr Bybees devices was incomplete!
But he did find an important difference - the PRICE.
Jan & SY
At first I objected to dismissing reviews on what seemed to be very unusual audio claims. As I think every so often something that seems silly slaps you up the side of the head when it turns out to have a real basis.
So let us look at the actual device claims rather than the reviews.
John tells us there is an oscillator inside the box. That actually makes sense!
The classic equation is PV=NRT is based on research done in the 1600's! It holds fairly well for several decades of range. However air is a non-ideal gas (Non-Boyleic just for Waveborne! )
This is actually used by at least two companies (Bose and I believe Sennheiser) that make systems where ultra-sonic transducers are used to create a very limited sound field where the inter-modulation distortion (IMD) is used to produce in-band audio messages.
This requires the air to be non-linear to get the difference frequencies. Of course if the air were perfectly linear there would be no distortion and no IMD to produce the desired effect. The losses of such a system are large and the in-band signal is probably 30 to 40 db lower than the level of the carrier signals.
Now ultrasonic energy is rapidly absorbed by the air itself so the range of such systems is limited.
Now for a brief moment let us look back at magnetic tape recording. At first the magnetic field representing the desired signal was directly imprinted on wire and later magnetic tape. This worked but had a fair amount of distortion.
A great breakthrough in improving the quality was the addition of a bias signal to the record head. This effectively linearized the recording by adding a high frequency signal that kind of averaged the desired signal over a greater range of the magnetic imprint. When reproduced through a limited bandwidth amplifier this effective modulation resulted in an improved reproduction capability.
Now since air is mildly non-linear what happens if we introduce ultra-sonic energy in the path between the source and receiver? I suspect it will have the same effect as did bias on magnetic recording media!
Of course with air being mildly non-linear such an ultra-sonic bias signal can be low level say 40 db below the music level. Also as the air will absorb the ultra-sonic energy in a short distance you may wish to use several of the ultra-sonic sound sources. Of course the sources need not be in sync at all as the IMD produced by multiple devices will be down by at least 80 db not including the air losses.
So it may indeed be possible to reduce distortion in the air path by a small amount! This also correlates to what is claimed by the manufacturer for his magic boxes.
So the reviewers may actually be hearing something real!
Now about two year battery life and magic crystals.... maybe the jury is still out!
Now on the other hand more than once while tuning a system (this basically involves using a computer based system to measure what is going on and other software to control the equalization etc.) I and the other folks involved will be making changes to the control screen and listening to the changes even when it turns out the control screen was not actually working! Now this does get caught sometimes in a few seconds (the person adjusting hears the "Change" others do not) or the next day when the system changes are reviewed one by one by everyone involved!
ES
At first I objected to dismissing reviews on what seemed to be very unusual audio claims. As I think every so often something that seems silly slaps you up the side of the head when it turns out to have a real basis.
So let us look at the actual device claims rather than the reviews.
John tells us there is an oscillator inside the box. That actually makes sense!
The classic equation is PV=NRT is based on research done in the 1600's! It holds fairly well for several decades of range. However air is a non-ideal gas (Non-Boyleic just for Waveborne!
) This is actually used by at least two companies (Bose and I believe Sennheiser) that make systems where ultra-sonic transducers are used to create a very limited sound field where the inter-modulation distortion (IMD) is used to produce in-band audio messages.
This requires the air to be non-linear to get the difference frequencies. Of course if the air were perfectly linear there would be no distortion and no IMD to produce the desired effect. The losses of such a system are large and the in-band signal is probably 30 to 40 db lower than the level of the carrier signals.
Now ultrasonic energy is rapidly absorbed by the air itself so the range of such systems is limited.
Now for a brief moment let us look back at magnetic tape recording. At first the magnetic field representing the desired signal was directly imprinted on wire and later magnetic tape. This worked but had a fair amount of distortion.
A great breakthrough in improving the quality was the addition of a bias signal to the record head. This effectively linearized the recording by adding a high frequency signal that kind of averaged the desired signal over a greater range of the magnetic imprint. When reproduced through a limited bandwidth amplifier this effective modulation resulted in an improved reproduction capability.
Now since air is mildly non-linear what happens if we introduce ultra-sonic energy in the path between the source and receiver? I suspect it will have the same effect as did bias on magnetic recording media!
Of course with air being mildly non-linear such an ultra-sonic bias signal can be low level say 40 db below the music level. Also as the air will absorb the ultra-sonic energy in a short distance you may wish to use several of the ultra-sonic sound sources. Of course the sources need not be in sync at all as the IMD produced by multiple devices will be down by at least 80 db not including the air losses.
So it may indeed be possible to reduce distortion in the air path by a small amount! This also correlates to what is claimed by the manufacturer for his magic boxes.
So the reviewers may actually be hearing something real!
Now about two year battery life and magic crystals.... maybe the jury is still out!
Now on the other hand more than once while tuning a system (this basically involves using a computer based system to measure what is going on and other software to control the equalization etc.) I and the other folks involved will be making changes to the control screen and listening to the changes even when it turns out the control screen was not actually working! Now this does get caught sometimes in a few seconds (the person adjusting hears the "Change" others do not) or the next day when the system changes are reviewed one by one by everyone involved!
ES
Neither AFAIK, I got samples for a guy trying to do a start up. The Hall effect is huge compared to this. The sound projector used 100's of Watts of ultrasonic power and I still question the safety of it.
Two years on a battery, not possible. Dismissal of this remains easy for me.
Check this stuff out...
LRAD 1000X™ and LRAD 1000Xi™ systems broadcast verbal challenges with instructions clearly over long distances and have the capability of following up with warning tones of 153 dB (at one meter) to influence behavior or determine intent. *Highly intelligible speech transmissions over 3000 meters; max range of 1250 meters over 88 dB of background noise
I love military weasel words.
I would have thought that mild non-linearity mean that no bias signal is needed, but if you want one it has to be big to have any effect.simon7000 said:
In the blurb he talks about having to get the air molecules moving, then they move more freely. What does he think temperature is?
Let me float an idea. If I see some writing which purports to be about physics, then I can hazard a guess as to whether it is real or spoof or nonsense even if I know little or nothing about the alleged physics being described. How? I am a physicist, so I know how they usually think and write. Not 100% certain, but better than the judgement of someone who is not a physicist. I bet Stuart (SY) can perform a similar feat for something which claims to be chemistry; not my field so I would be less reliable there. Note that I said 'real', which is not quite the same as 'true'. Only experiments can tell us what is true in physics, by selecting from various 'real' explanations. Real physics can be wrong, for a while. Non-scientists can sometimes find it hard to distinguish between 'real but wrong' and 'not even wrong'.
As I said, I believe the explanations put forward are not even wrong; this makes me wonder whether the author is actually a physicist. Actually, I have not seen anything on his website which makes this claim but I think one of the reviewers said this.
Scott, Scott, Scott,
The commercial website for ultra-sonic to audio is here Audio Spotlight - Add sound and preserve the quiet.
They don't use hundreds of watts! They get 80 dba!
As to LRAD the devices have actually been purchased and used right here in Pittsburgh! During the G8 Summit they rolled out all the security!
The LRAD was used against a group of protestors who planned to march a few miles from the low rent (some students) but mostly respectable (read real estate prices increasing here) neighborhood into the city center where the conference was being held.
Well the conference planners expected hundreds of protestors, so they set up barricades, trucks, and police officers all padded out with large plastic shields. The dozen slacker protestors were humorously over matched. Still they turned on the LRAD. Well the protestors covered their ears and move sideways and continued down an alley too narrow for the LRAD truck. They quit when the police reformed their line.
The biggest skirmish was when the out of town security decided that the college students were too close to Phipps Botanical Conservatory (Located just off the edge of Carnegie-Mellon's campus and three blocks from the University of Pittsburgh's campus and main dorm) and tried to push them back beyond the entrance to the University of Pittsburgh's campus. They arrested lots of kids while on the college campus!
Final score, all the college kids let off, one protestor from out of town arrested for randomly smashing windows (As soon as he got out he managed to get arrested again the next day!) and a few lawsuits from the LRAD protest spectators who claim hearing damage.
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Ed, are you referring to these?
Sennheiser AudioBeam - Directional Loudspeaker
These are mighty impressive in action.
I believe the Sennheiser ones are discontinued and I was actually looking for alternatives these days (for a museum installation).
The bias just needs to sweep the desired signal above and below the non-linear region to get a bit of an average when the signal is in that range. It must be low pass filtered to get the average and that can either be more air or our hearing mechanism.
Now experimentation is required to verify if that effect is really there.
My point is that when multiple reviewers observe something no matter how silly it seems there may actually be something to it.
Now a real DIY'er might want to try injecting say 60 Khz into their power amplifier at a low level (and monitor it to be sure it doesn't overheat) to see if it does provide some linearity improvements. Or maybe just setting up an ultra-sonic source in the listening path to see if it has an effect. Of course there may be a bit of magic in selecting a bias frequency etc.
Now if you aren't curious enough to play with it someone else just might be. A few milliwatts can't hurt.
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