Funniest snake oil theories

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I'm guilty of wiring my speakers with silver plated copper wire, Teflon insulated, because silver oxide is a better conductor than copper oxide.

Silver does not really oxidize on its own which is why it is one of the noble metals.

It does however react readily with sulphur and the brownish black tarnish we see is silver sulfide which is an insulator.
 
The deal with power conditioners is that most mains transformers, diode bridges and power elco's in audio equipment are almost fully transparant to any HF signal due to parasitc inter winding capacitance in the transformer, transformer core sautration due to DC elements in the mains. Non linearities and parasitic capacitance in the rectifiers and voltage regulators together with limted bandwith of the reservoir capacitors and HF ringing of this whole resonance system of capacitance and stray inductance of the witing/pcb layout. So maybe you can imagine a good calculated mains filter that is designed upon the equipment it has to feed (this excludes most of the shelf solutions) can indeed make a difference

Now if all these elements a power supply consist of where theoretically ideal components then you are absolutely right, any mains grunge does not have a change to come through but unfortunatly in the real world these componesnts are rarely perfect.
I have never heard of issues with dirty AC in audio equipment. More than that, I work in a field that uses audio frequency equipment such as oscillators and digital data transmission, with very tight tolerances. Their power supplies are either switchmode or linear, and they're fed directly from the AC line. None of them had any issues with dirty AC and I live in a country where the quality of the signal is pretty low.
 
Silver does not really oxidize on its own which is why it is one of the noble metals.

It does however react readily with sulphur and the brownish black tarnish we see is silver sulfide which is an insulator.

Not to be too much of a pain, but silver is definitely *not* a noble metal. It readily forms a conformal oxide layer that passivates the surface. Its neighbors to the left are far, far more noble, although a jump down a row tend to be far far more so. (I do this stuff for work, I'm being pedantic)
 
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8 wraps around a ferrite ring with the hot wire, which has a 0.01uF cap in front of that ferrite ring, shunting to ground. The ground also has the same ferrite treatment,........................................
Putting a single conductor (1 wrap or 8) thru a ferrite ring is asking for saturation! Both the Hot & Ground conductors should go thru the same ring (as a pair).

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I too have made speaker cable using 14AWG silver plated copper wire, Teflon insulated as a Star-Quad cable. But only because the price was right for the bulk cable, which I found as an abandoned end of roll at work.
 
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Fair enough and no harm intended! I do a lot of electrochemistry, so if it's not platinum group metals, it's too reactive. Even there it's mostly platinum and platinum/iridium that we need. There's definitely a hierarchy to corrosion resistance, especially with halogens.
 
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Putting a single conductor (1 wrap or 8) thru a ferrite ring is asking for saturation! Both the Hot & Ground conductors should go thru the same ring (as a pair).

Bought mine for $10 Canadian, 16 gauge, for 10 metres on the auction site. Cheap enough even for cheapskate like me.


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I too have made speaker cable using 14AWG silver plated copper wire, Teflon insulated as a Star-Quad cable. But only because the price was right for the bulk cable, which I found as an abandoned end of roll at work.

I am by no means an electrician, this was drawn up for me by the owner of an electronics parts store.
Hasn't let any smoke out, at least.
 
Fair enough and no harm intended! I do a lot of electrochemistry, so if it's not platinum group metals, it's too reactive. Even there it's mostly platinum and platinum/iridium that we need. There's definitely a hierarchy to corrosion resistance, especially with halogens.

Definitely agree that there is a hierarchy within that group of metals.

I assume that the 'noble metal' category is a traditional one from before we habitually burned coal and put a lot of sulphur into the atmosphere.
Without the presence of sulphur silver does appear to be more corrosion resistant than it is.
 
Flat around

Just bought a Pro-Ject Carbon Debut DC, a big ticket for me, at least, and the salesman suggested some remarkably expensive leveling devices.
I figured a maple butcher block I had gathering dust a few years, and 3 height adjustable speaker spikes would level things fine, in spite of his warnings that it won't take the weight.
I'll find out tomorrow.
In any case, it was about 5 minutes work, with a drill and Allen key. And begins at $250 less than "the minimum I should spend".
Not to worry, it's upside down.
 

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Schumann Resonances

I've been seeing a few Schumann Resonance boxes for sale.
No real claims given with these items, what are they supposed to do?
If the are baseless, could they be fixed with Quantum Slipstream?
If not, could we as a community reinforce one of its harmonics, 33.8, by speeding our turntables up to 33.8 rpm? And what colour strobe would be most effective?
 
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