Funniest snake oil theories

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#10,964
janos said:
Demagnetizing your cable ends resets the connection as if you have disconnected and reconnected the cables and the connection has to settle again. Of course, only if one believes in such nonsense as cable connection break-in.
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My understanding is that chemistry is on the side of periodic disconnection and reconnection to stop connections from degrading. You appear to believe the opposite.

The getter is supposed to collect the gases, however, as they are ionized (especially with 400-700V field pulling on them in case of power tubes) they are trapped between the cathode and the anode, and don't have a chance to reach the getter when the getter is active (=when the tube is hot). Demagnetization allows the gas to escape from the plate structure, and be absorbed by the getter, cleaning up the vacuum, hence, less blue glow and longer tube life.
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There are people who have/had very good commercial reasons to ensure the longest life for valves (e.g. in transmitters). I am not aware of regular demagnetisation being one of their techniques. However, at least this time you have picked a substance (nickel) which is rather more magnetic than vinyl! By the way, most of the gas spends most of its time not ionised.

I suspect that the motor driving the turntable might have somewhat stronger magnetic fields than anything from the LP itself. Should we demagnetise the motor too? Platter?

scott wurcer said:
Remember magnetic pickup by the coil requires motion and the RIAA curve is giving an ~20dB boost at 13Hz. So what's the non-uniformity of the LP field who knows? Take the 50nT and from textbook formulas the magnet has 300 gauss at 2" so that's ~ -230dB give or take.
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I was just about to say that someone needs to be boring and do a ballpark estimate of the size of the effect. Of course, the danger now is that someone will interpret your result as being evidence that some people with their excellent hearing and excellent systems can hear things at the -230dB level.
 
#10,965
janos said:
Have not measured radiated magnetic fields - I do not have any sensitive gear to do that. However, we can expect that high output cartridges have higher radiated fields (due to high turns), while LOMC carts have much lower radiated fields (just a few turns of coils).
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I am not sure whether you (and he) are talking about the magnetic field from the coils or the field from the magnets in the cartridge. Be aware that field from coils depends on turns and current, so assumptions based on turns alone may be misleading.

Vinyl is clearly subject to static charging, hence, to electromagnetic phenomena. As the cartridge passes over the grooves, its radiated signal modulated magnetic field could build up a weak static charge in the grooves.
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Now you sound like someone who has learned some words but not yet what they mean. Passing a magnet over a non-conductor is not a good way to achieve an electrostatic charge.

16. The effect is best heard by trained listeners in systems with fine discrimination.
 
#10,966
DF96 said:
I am not sure whether you (and he) are talking about the magnetic field from the coils or the field from the magnets in the cartridge. Be aware that field from coils depends on turns and current, so assumptions based on turns alone may be misleading.
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There seems to be a misunderstanding about what can be measured, far less than nT is possible. There are even DIY setups for measuring the magnetic portion of the Schumann resonances which are in the low picoTesla region. Though it can involve 300,000 turns around a core. Aren't hobbies fun?

https://www.bnl.gov/magnets/staff/gupta/scmag-course/uspas03/AJ03/AJ_FieldMeasurementOverview.pdf
 
#10,967
DF96 said:
Of course, the danger now is that someone will interpret your result as being evidence that some people with their excellent hearing and excellent systems can hear things at the -230dB level.
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Oh I hear the wires vibrating at 50hz in the walls of my house all the time. Of course the loudness of it has diminished somewhat eversince I had those padded walls installed.

Of course nobody else can, I think they're plotting against me to steal my secrets.

An incandescent light globe is deafening. Whenever I turn one on I spend several hours shaking back and forth. That is how they control your mind you know.

But its far more preferable with incandescent globes than with the persistent high pitched screaching/screaming that I hear from LED and CFL globes.

If you haven't detected sarcasm at this point I suggest degauzzing your monitor, of course any sane person still uses CRT monitors.
 

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#10,968
bambadoo said:
A couple of links earlier providing a blogg which states "why objectivists are wrong" lead me to his products and webstore.

Mad Scientist Audio - Home of Black Discus, Blackpods and other high end audio enhancers

Just pick and choose snakeoil products.

One example here
Magic Tubes
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Oooh, thanks for that link. This is good:
Magic Tubes are small glass tubes, about 4-5cm long and 6mm diameter. They contain a mysterious mixture of black and white powder. (The powder is sealed in the glass as it degrades on contact with air.) The reason for the "Magic" moniker is down to the effect they have on audio system components. Click for more details..
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The magic powder degrades on contact with air so it needs to be sealed. So we use glass...and you better not even think about opening it b/c like in quantum theory, the moment you open it, it will change and therefore you won't be able to determine what it is.

Note the two periods at the end is quoted directly from the website. Bad grammar is often another snake oil indicator.
 
#10,974
It's great when they put the word 'magic' right in the name of the product.

Okay, I'm not sure if this counts as snake oil, but somewhere on this board there's a thread where a guy insisted that he could hear an improvement in an audio file he ripped with a Blue-Ray player versus one he ripped with a standard CD player.... even though numerous checksums showed the two files to be identical.
 
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