Here is a person that has tried the VPI brick with his equipment and found it gives an improvement. Also he explains why. He does not make the brick and the brick is no longer being made, so no conflict of interest here.
https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/the-vpi-brick/
https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/the-vpi-brick/
Yes, I agree.
However, if we want to compare equipment or determine does some effect really exist, single person’s subjective listening impressions are not good enough. We are champions of deceiving ourselves.
Oh? How? The vast majority of the magnetic flux flows in the core, so unless you get the added material to somehow participate in the core area I don't see how you can increase the inductance appreciably. Sure, you'll probably change the stray fields a little bit, but they are pretty small in a well-designed transformer.
The next question becomes: How does increasing the inductance of a power transformer change the sound quality? My guess: It doesn't.
OK, so how about output transformers? Let's say you put the brick atop a typical 300B output transformer with a primary inductance of 10 H. Somehow by magic (or by interaction with whatever stray fields) the inductance changes by 0.1% to 10.01 H. Will that change the characteristics of the amp? Probably. Maybe even measurably. Would you be able to notice the difference in an A/B test? Probably not.
All the babble about mechanical resonance control is pure snake oil in my view. Maybe with one exception: I could see a case where a very microphonic tube would benefit from added weight on top of the panel the tube is mounted to. I do not see a use case in a solid state amp. If your solid state amp design is microphonic you should probably go back to the drawing board. Of course, none of this prevents manufacturers of $100k amps from claiming that their milled from a solid block of unobtanium chassis is special and has patented/proprietary/ultra-special resonance control. Recall that the only requirements for a patent are that the invention is novel, non-obvious, and reproducible by anyone skilled in the art. There is no requirement that the invention has to work or do anything useful.
Tom
Sorry Tom, but you show no measurement of non significant acoustic effect, I think that it is not fair to the OP who simply asked other members. It has always ben a conundrum, those with exceptional hearing ability are not technically oriented while those with engineering background (like me) are not blessed as much in hearing ability. When one with exceptional hearing works hand in hand with an engineer we then have stuff of legend such as CTC Blowtorch, DH200 and Threshold.
The only thing that was "brought up" is a lung-full bunch of Bullcrap.
And to the others here, it's reasonable to conclude that this is just more of that damned Snake Oil seeping into someone's brain and causing it to leak onto a keyboard.
"They run way the hell too hot just idling"
Clearly a typo but the phrase is very clear anyway ... unless you are trying to spread sh*t around and grasp at straws.
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I usually wear this to improve my listening experience. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...thtinfoilhat.jpg/1280px-Manwithtinfoilhat.jpg
My problem is with the claim about "exceptional hearing ability" 🙄
Specially when stretched to nonsense levels.
That it is OFTEN coupled to nil/zero Technical prowess does NOT make it more believable, quite the contrary.
Lack of logic/reasoning skills, even less.
Some people have perfect pitch, I do not. These people can hear things that I cannot. Do you have perfect pitch JMFahey?
As an example of that is an ability to reliably differentiate between amps with ~ -70dB H2 but different H3 content of -84dB and -88dB due to difference in emitter resistors. Something I perceive as no difference.
Brilliant! That blocks all that environment EM noise.
Have you tried with large transformer on top? 😀
Better tigthen up those loose screws...transformer or listener...one of em propably has loose screws
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It's the mechanical acoustical dampening from the weight of an additional transformer.
There's no electricity involved in that and you can use anything heavy, of course different materials will give you different tone.
The same applies to cables and plugs.
There's no electricity involved in that and you can use anything heavy, of course different materials will give you different tone.
The same applies to cables and plugs.
Sure, that doesn't contradict the situation, you're adding weight to the whole device chassis or rack.
No, the variety of materials you can add can bring a lots of possibilities for tone. You bring sparky highs or thicker bottom end, depending what you put.
The same applies to power transformers, they're not equally made. Copper grades, dielectric and cores all have tone characteristics.
The same applies to power transformers, they're not equally made. Copper grades, dielectric and cores all have tone characteristics.