That statement is IMO profound. After I built the first prototype, the question occurred to me. Is it better or just different? The most interesting experiments were demonstrations to people who had little or no interest in or knowledge of music or recordings. Such people actually exist. The answer to this question is one I've thought about for over 30 years. My conclusions are tentative. They are given in part in my responses to JC in postings earlier in this thread when he said I'd taught him something. They relate to what I call the psychoacoustic impact of sound. I've had to do a lot of thinking and experimentation related to how hearing works. And my conclusions are in some important respects quite different from what the textbooks say. It isn't that the known facts are necessarily wrong, as with my observations and conclusions about acoustics, they are not in sufficiently large and accurate enough context to understand what they mean. Incorrect conclusions and inferences drawn from intuition not based on facts has lead this industry to a technological dead end. Much better and certainly very different results are possible but not the way the problem is being approached today. There is a point at which making a wheel rounder will not make it turn any faster and you cannot turn a horse drawn cart into a Porsche no matter how round the wheels get or how many horses you tether to pull it. There are points of diminishing returns and points of no returns in the current technology because it is conceptually flawed.
Soundminded said:
You don't think there is enough technical innovation out there? I think there is a lot of technical innovation out there. Audio is also a business and people are going to buy what they like and what sounds good to them, even if it doesn't measure so great. Measurements alone can't tell how good a piece a gear will sound in your system.
Soundminded said:
Flawed? How is current technology conceptually flawed? Does this have something to do with your new idea? Sorry, I missed any discussion about that.
It's all kind of pointless anyway, when you have most of the recording industry that can't see past the MP3, and won't put out a 24bit/192kHz format for music. Instead they are reviving the LP.
I've heard some awesome stuff on Bluray and it's sad that the industry is too inept to put out a high definition format.
Yet in the very beginning you said a relatively primitive (by todays standards) Yamaha DSP box could be set up to make a very basic implementation of your ideas, so much so you considered an infringement suit. So why didn't anyone take the ball and run with it? There is easily 1000X the computing power cheaply available now.
Haha, that is the question of every creator. With practice gained by listening to lots of different audio examples, quick conclusions can be drawn about any change, after that is learning to eliminate placebo effects.
Yup, next door, down the street, at a mate's bbq....the most honest impromptu reviews are from anywhere but at an audionerds gathering.
Maybe I glossed over what you said previously....care to repeat your impressions and conclusions please. ?.
Modern live PA, large and small is seriously good nowadays. Any ideas on what is being done wrong and how to cure it ?.
The modern Porsche horse powered cart works for the world at present, and so does the typical economical modern home audio system - what's a better audio concept that is possible ?.
Eric.
Haven't you heard, the world needs Jetsons' vehicles and home listening environments with all-side plasma sound walls.
YouTube - The Jetsons intro
YouTube - The Jetsons intro
That is right, but look at what people buy, presubly because they 'like the sound'. Extremely high feedback amps from Halcro sell for 4 figure prices. Zero feedback, SE high distortion tube amps ditto. Customers buy class D like hot sausages. Think about any technology you can and there's people buying it because they feel it sounds great.
To me, that can only mean that indeed, we have reached a technological dead end in the sense that we are turning around in circles but not going anywhere. It clearly shows that amp technology isn't going to bring us the next step forward, not at all. Or what else do you think that explains this diversity of 'great products?
jan didden
The Public Gets What The Public Wants....
Pity we are digressing from the MC tangent - interesting stuff and thanks to all contributors.
95% people buy because they like the price, 4% are prepared to spend a little more, and 1% buy for perceived subjective reasons.
For 95% we have achieved perfection - advance is to make that last 5% market affordable to the unwashed masses....and then ban MP3 and multiband compressed FM.
Eric.
Pity we are digressing from the MC tangent - interesting stuff and thanks to all contributors.
95% people buy because they like the price, 4% are prepared to spend a little more, and 1% buy for perceived subjective reasons.
For 95% we have achieved perfection - advance is to make that last 5% market affordable to the unwashed masses....and then ban MP3 and multiband compressed FM.
Eric.
Sure, but that also means that success in the market place apparently has no connection to sound quality.
jan didden
SY,
Agreed, if we really cared about the issue a good picture showing the type of damage would clear things up.
We could continue to argue about it without firm data, go to various websites to misquote all sorts of irrelevant things and grumble on forever, but there are those on this thread who are much better at it.
So let us agree to not play records wet! Makes the issue moot.
ES
Is this limited to sound quality or quality in general? So if there is a lesson here are you going to apply it to your publishing venture?
Would you sell more copies if you had naked models holding the DIY projects?
Is the final audio reproduction science or art? Again I raise the question Picasso or Rembrandt? Can they both be artists?
I am busy for the next three years because a few folks liked they way I re-tuned their sound system. I started with instruments and finished by ear. (It took five of us a week to do, big place!) Are they mistaken? Or does the dramatically reduced number of complaints provide statistically accurate evidence of an improvement?
Jewelers still abound, but Faberge Imperial eggs are still unmatched.
There are lots of adequate sound systems, lots fewer really good ones. Is the quest for "better" a grail quest? AM radio was once the killer ap! Today it is almost a museum relic.
Personally even if it is a grail quest, there is a lot of fun to be had traveling the path.
ES
Um, you really need to read the whole patent in order to understand where this "external" energy is supposedly coming from:
An investigation of particle physics is required to see what furnishes the energy to the external circuit. Since neither a battery nor a generator furnishes energy to the external circuit, but only furnishes energy to form the source dipole, a better understanding of the electric power principle is required to fully understand how this new motor functions. A typical battery uses its stored chemical energy to form the source dipole. A generator utilizes its input shaft energy to rotate, forming an internal magnetic field in which the positive charges are forced to move in one direction and the negative charges in the reverse direction, thereby forming the source dipole. In other words, the energy input into the generator does nothing except form the source dipole. None of the input energy goes to the external circuit. If increased current is drawn into the external load, there also is increased spent electron flow being rammed back through the source dipole, destroying it faster. Therefore, dipole-restoring-energy has to be inputed faster. The chemical energy of the battery also is expended only to separate its internal charges and form its source dipole. Again, if increased current and power is drawn into the external load, there is increased spent electron flow being rammed back through the source dipole, destroying it faster. This results in a depletion of the battery's stored energy faster, by forcing it to have to keep restoring the dipole faster.
Once the generator or battery source dipole is formed (the dipole is attached also to the external circuit), it is well known in particle physics that the dipole (as is any charge) is a broken symmetry in the vacuum energy flux. By definition, this means that the source dipole extracts and orders part of that energy received from its vacuum interaction, and pours that energy out as the energy flowing through all space surrounding the external conductors in the attached circuit. Most of this enormous energy flow surging through space surrounding the external circuit does not strike the circuit at all, and does not get intercepted or utilized. Neither is it diverged into the circuit to power the electrons, but passes on out into space and is just "wasted". Only a small "sheath" of the energy flow along the surface of the conductors strikes the surface charges in those conductors and is thereby diverged into the circuit to power the electrons. Standard texts show the huge available but wasted energy flow component, but only calculate the small portion of the energy flow that strikes the circuit, is caught by it, and is utilized to power it.
In a typical circuit, the huge available but "wasted" component of the energy flow is about 10.sup.13 times as large as is the small component intercepted by the surface charges and diverged into the circuit to power it. Hence, around every circuit and circuit element such as a coil, there exists a huge non-intercepted, non-diverged energy flow that is far greater than the small energy flow being diverted and used by the circuit or element.
Thus there exists an enormous untapped energy flow immediately surrounding every EMF power circuit, from which available excess energy can be intercepted and collected by the circuit, if respective non-linear actions are initiated that sharply affect and increase the reaction cross section of the circuit (i.e., its ability to intercept this available but usually wasted energy flow).
The method in which the motor of the present invention alters the reaction cross section of the coils in the circuit, is by a novel use, which momentarily changes the reaction cross section of the coil in which it is invoked. Thus, by this new motor using only a small amount of current in the form of a triggering pulse, it is able to evoke and control the immediate change of the coil's reaction cross section to this normally wasted energy flow component. As a result, the motor captures and directs some of this usually wasted environmental energy, collecting the available excess energy in the coil and then releasing it for use in the motor. By timing and switching, the innovative gate design in this new motor directs the available excess energy so that it overcomes and reverses the return EMF of the rotor-stator pole combination during what would normally be the back EMF and demonstrates the creation of the second back EMF of the system. Now instead of an "equal retardation" force being produced in the back EMF region, a forward EMF is produced that is additive to the rotor/flywheel energy and not subtractive. In short, it further accelerates the rotor/flywheel.
This results in a non-conservative magnetic field along the rotor's path. The line integral of the field around that path (i.e., the net work on the rotor/flywheel to increase its energy and angular momentum) is not zero but a significant amount. Hence, the creation of an asymmetrical back EMF impulse magnetic motor: 1) takes its available excess energy from a known external source, the huge usually non-intercepted portion of the energy flow around the coil; 2) further increases the source dipolarity by this back EMF energy; and 3) produces available excess energy flow directly from the source dipole's increased broken symmetry in its fierce energy exchange with the local vacuum.
No laws of physics or thermodynamics are violated in the method and device of the present invention, and conservation of energy rigorously applies at all times. Nonetheless, by operating as an open dissipative system not in thermodynamic equilibrium with the active vacuum, the system can permissibly receive available excess energy from a known environmental source and output more energy to a load than must be input by the operator alone.
se
The only question I have in mind is what audiophiles will say about the sound quality of your system. Since you wrote here some time ago that you purchase electronics for your sound system based only on how it measure, I really wonder. When you care only about how your amplifiers measure, not about how they sound, it may indicate about your entire system.
So, you may see flaws in some existing concept, but I have no clue what you hear, what your listening is tuned to.
To me it means that there are various types of customers. There are those we could say belong to the mass, and there are audiophiles. Even among audiophiles, there is a wide range of different tastes and preferences.
There may be no breakthrough in amplifiers technology, yet there is an enormous range of sound quality between different amplifiers, even between amplifiers sharing the same basic topology.
So, may be it's sound quality we should seek, not any technological novelty.
Not surprising.
Soundminded said "To obtain a patent, an idea has to be novel, that is not readily apparent to those "skilled in the art," likely to work, and it cannot violate any known laws of physics."
In one of Bedini's earlier patents, for his "Clarifier" CD treatment device, he claims that spinning a CD in a static magnetic field not only compresses the data on the disc (i.e. in the same fashion that ZIP compresses data), but also rearranges the data on the disc.
How does one manage to pull that off without violating known laws of physics?
Bedini even "proves" this is what happens in his patent.
First he takes a Kodak PhotoCD and copies a file off it onto his computer's hard drive.
Then he gives the PhotoCD a spin in his "Clarifier" and copies the same file to his computer's hard drive in a different directory than the first one.
Does he then do a comparison of those two files?
Nope.
Instead, he converts the image files into PostScript files, and then examines those files in a text editor.
He notes that there are fewer lines of text in the PostScript file made from the image taken off the "Clarified" disc.
Thus he concludes that his "Clarifier" has compressed the data on the disc.
Then he uses a compare feature in the text editor to show the differences between the two files. And what do you know, there are differences.
Thus he concludes that his "Clarifier" has rearranged the data on the disc.
I tried the same thing. Only I didn't use his "Clarifier."
I simply took an image file and saved it out as a PostScript file into two different directories.
The two files had different file sizes and when I ran the old DOS file compare utility on them, it spit out quite a few differences between the two files.
There's just something about the PostScript algorithm that doesn't produce the exact same file when applied to the same image.
I'm told by a friend of mine that Bedini went through several patent attorneys before he could find one willing to file this particular patent of his.
Anyway, it just goes to show that any nut job can obtain a patent based on the most outrageous claims and that the US Patent Office is little more than a rubber stamp these days.
se
Beautifully put, Ed.
For me the quest of better sound is only for increased enjoyment listening to reproduced music.
Steve, Steve, Steve,
Actually doing an experiment violates the most important rule of this thread, basing a statement on an easily repeatable and provable demonstration.
However I don't think any serious action will have to be taken as I can offer a counter example of spinning a disc does actually cause a re-arrangement of the data!
Many years back I did a museum exhibit where the video display was sourced by a laser video disc. The exhibit would be started each morning and run about 16 hours every day seven days a week. After about five months the discs would shatter! Most likely due to built up stresses from the unequal energy distribution from the inside to the outside during spinning!
So it is possible to spin a disc and get data redistribution!
ES
- Status
- Not open for further replies.