I was being flippant, but the story is true.
Yes, according to some of my experiments, indeed I would expect labels/printing to affect/effect the resultant sound.
To date I have not bothered to perform vigourous tests to determine the magnitude or type of affect/effect, but I am perfectly comfortable with this postulation.
Differing metalisation layers can cause different sounds.
Field effects can do interesting things.....even influence the flavour of wines for instance.
Eric.
Yes, according to some of my experiments, indeed I would expect labels/printing to affect/effect the resultant sound.
To date I have not bothered to perform vigourous tests to determine the magnitude or type of affect/effect, but I am perfectly comfortable with this postulation.
Differing metalisation layers can cause different sounds.
Field effects can do interesting things.....even influence the flavour of wines for instance.
Eric.
How do you guys actually evaluate the obtained results? Is it only "by memory" or by A/B blind tests?
I'm just curious about the fact that the acoustic memory is short. Very short, fractions of a second.
Personally i think it is extremely important to to blind tests for evaluating improvements/changes in sound quality unless we talk VERY significant changes. Otherwise one's brain can very well play you a trick, and the resulting conclusion will be more of a religious character than a fact?
I have never tried tweaking a CD because I simply just don't believe in it. Still, the best tweak I have found so far is half a bottle of good red wine, and it even helps with a lot of other things, too...
I'm just curious about the fact that the acoustic memory is short. Very short, fractions of a second.
Personally i think it is extremely important to to blind tests for evaluating improvements/changes in sound quality unless we talk VERY significant changes. Otherwise one's brain can very well play you a trick, and the resulting conclusion will be more of a religious character than a fact?
I have never tried tweaking a CD because I simply just don't believe in it. Still, the best tweak I have found so far is half a bottle of good red wine, and it even helps with a lot of other things, too...
soren said:
I can only say this for my own experience; in particular with the Bedini Clarifier.
If the cd is ok from the beginning, there is no difference in sound quality whether it is treated with the Bedini or not.
But once in a awhile a well known cd (to me) suddently sound harsh, coarse and make me cringe my eyebrows then it is time to treat the cd and it will return to its normal sounding behavour. I know this because there is no other tweaks or changes to the system.
The nice cd turn bad example seems to me especially when I use the cd in my car for a while. Sometimes when a cd is listen to a lot will have the same effect too. Other examples are cds brought over by friends. So if you evaulate a normal(well) cd then you can say Bedini is not doing anything.
Regards,
Chris
Hi,
Through my enjoyment of the music. When I relax and 'get into it', that's when I can appreciate changes most easily, because it's natural, and most importantly, unforced. I might pop a treated CD in, listen, sometimes slightly dissapointed at first, as the change is rarely startling, then the most extended bass I've heard (for a given disc) can come from nowhere, and I know I've done well!!
I think of any aspect of sound, my memory of bass is about the most reliable, or it could just be one thing that is consistently helped by many types of upgrades and tweaks.
Sometimes I tweak and I'm not sure if there is or isn't a change, in these cases I don't really care. I only worry about it when I've spent big money - usually there is a bigger difference here, but often the sound is worse overall: like going to more revealing speakers, or a worse but more costly cd player, prior to modding of course...
I agree with what chris ma says regarding 'problem discs'. These *can* be the most obviously improved, but that largely will rely on the problem being addressed by the treatment. An example: a disc has lots of 'mould release agent' on it - it gets thoroughly scrubbed with the treatment, washed/rinsed, then treated with anti-static spray - disc goes in - harshness reduced, bass becomes lots deeper, detail is increased. I'm serious too, so I'll accept no pyshco-babble about why changes might not be real...
To finish: I am a young man, I can still hear to 15khz or more, and I am very sensitive to harshness in music. I know my discs well.
-Simon
Russ Andrews is the man!
Through my enjoyment of the music. When I relax and 'get into it', that's when I can appreciate changes most easily, because it's natural, and most importantly, unforced. I might pop a treated CD in, listen, sometimes slightly dissapointed at first, as the change is rarely startling, then the most extended bass I've heard (for a given disc) can come from nowhere, and I know I've done well!!
I think of any aspect of sound, my memory of bass is about the most reliable, or it could just be one thing that is consistently helped by many types of upgrades and tweaks.
Sometimes I tweak and I'm not sure if there is or isn't a change, in these cases I don't really care. I only worry about it when I've spent big money - usually there is a bigger difference here, but often the sound is worse overall: like going to more revealing speakers, or a worse but more costly cd player, prior to modding of course...
I agree with what chris ma says regarding 'problem discs'. These *can* be the most obviously improved, but that largely will rely on the problem being addressed by the treatment. An example: a disc has lots of 'mould release agent' on it - it gets thoroughly scrubbed with the treatment, washed/rinsed, then treated with anti-static spray - disc goes in - harshness reduced, bass becomes lots deeper, detail is increased. I'm serious too, so I'll accept no pyshco-babble about why changes might not be real...
To finish: I am a young man, I can still hear to 15khz or more, and I am very sensitive to harshness in music. I know my discs well.
-Simon
Russ Andrews is the man!
Do Not Ridicule The Unknown....
Hi Simon and Elso,
I have no idea of the mechanism, but a check of Bedini Clarifier reviews and the above comments of Chris Ma inspired me to try my TV crt demagnetiser on a couple of discs - exactly as pictured as above.
I am doing some speaker and general system mods and improvements, so as yet the results are not clear cut - a number of variables to sift through.
I demagnetised a couple of commercial release cds and I reckon I heard a drop in tops harshness.
I then tried demagnetising a blank disc before burning to it, and the result seems the same lessening of highs/tops harshness.
Over the next few days I will do some more viguorous A/B testing and see what I reckon.
It is rare for me to make dismissive jokes or remarks about other listeners findings or opinions until I have checked for myself - putting photos of myself in the freezer excepted.
As I see it, if someone is willing to go out on a limb and make such comment (Chris has no fiscal interest in the BC I expect),
then it is worth to investigate these comments or claims.
I have no ready explanation for the demagnetising effect as yet, but then I don't have proper explanation yet for the range of power and signal leads (and wine coasters) that I am developing.
These have passed double-blind (triple-blind actually) testing with flying colours, in multiple systems including recording, live, club/disco, domestic standard and seriously high-end playback, so it should only be a matter of time before these are the next object of curiosity and demand by the audio cognisenti.
Apart from mastering stuff-ups (overall eq stuff-up), a recent recording using my leads is the best that I have heard, and perhaps a portent of the future.
Eric.
Hi Simon and Elso,
I have no idea of the mechanism, but a check of Bedini Clarifier reviews and the above comments of Chris Ma inspired me to try my TV crt demagnetiser on a couple of discs - exactly as pictured as above.
I am doing some speaker and general system mods and improvements, so as yet the results are not clear cut - a number of variables to sift through.
I demagnetised a couple of commercial release cds and I reckon I heard a drop in tops harshness.
I then tried demagnetising a blank disc before burning to it, and the result seems the same lessening of highs/tops harshness.
Over the next few days I will do some more viguorous A/B testing and see what I reckon.
It is rare for me to make dismissive jokes or remarks about other listeners findings or opinions until I have checked for myself - putting photos of myself in the freezer excepted.
As I see it, if someone is willing to go out on a limb and make such comment (Chris has no fiscal interest in the BC I expect),
then it is worth to investigate these comments or claims.
I have no ready explanation for the demagnetising effect as yet, but then I don't have proper explanation yet for the range of power and signal leads (and wine coasters) that I am developing.
These have passed double-blind (triple-blind actually) testing with flying colours, in multiple systems including recording, live, club/disco, domestic standard and seriously high-end playback, so it should only be a matter of time before these are the next object of curiosity and demand by the audio cognisenti.
Apart from mastering stuff-ups (overall eq stuff-up), a recent recording using my leads is the best that I have heard, and perhaps a portent of the future.
Eric.
Hi,
eric, i also made some tests (long time ago) with demagn., had some effect, but to stop discussion like: cant work, because cd is non magnetic: there are static electric fields in most plastic, like cd, and a moving/modulated mag field interacts( from theory) , so we have some way to affect these static elec. fields, think this is the reason for magnetic effect on cd...
alf
eric, i also made some tests (long time ago) with demagn., had some effect, but to stop discussion like: cant work, because cd is non magnetic: there are static electric fields in most plastic, like cd, and a moving/modulated mag field interacts( from theory) , so we have some way to affect these static elec. fields, think this is the reason for magnetic effect on cd...
alf
Woah, woah, woah...
Easy tiger, I never meant to stop the discussion, I just wanted to know what, if anything might happen, sonically and/or technically.
I'll generally try anything to see if it has a sonic effect, but I like to know some basic or elaborate theory too - it's interesting.
I am pleased there may be another way to tweak my discs (that was really the whole point of my starting this thread after all!).
Thanks for looking into it Eric, sorry I didn't know whether to take you seriously in that post
So what does a wand cost then? You think it's something I could maybe Ebay into my possesion...? Do you reckon its' effect is wholly or in part similar to the Bedini Clarifier then?
Cheers,
-Simon
Technically, nothing happens.
I've had the Bedini demonstrated to me and couldn't hear any difference. Several people were convinced that they were hearing differences even when the control discs were replaced by... themselves, rather than the treated discs. I'll try it again with some recordings of Gas Music from Jupiter.
SimontY said:
Thanks for looking into it Eric, sorry I didn't know whether to take you seriously in that post
So what does a wand cost then? You think it's something I could maybe Ebay into my possesion...? Do you reckon its' effect is wholly or in part similar to the Bedini Clarifier then?
Cheers,
-Simon
The TV crt degaussing wand that I have is Australian made, and retails for around AUS$80.00.
These put out a very strong magnetic field, probably rather stronger than the Bedini machine.
I am sure that British and US television repairers would use a close equivalent.
Even if it does not work on discs, it would be useful for demagnetising just about anything else.
Eric.
BEER FUNGUS!
From those Nutty guys at Slashdot.com:
http://science.slashdot.org/science...3/09/11/2336258.shtml?tid=134&tid=141&tid=188
Beer-Coated CDs are Optical Biocomputers
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday September 12, @03:14AM
from the fancy-liquor-spills dept.
commodoresloat writes "A DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's some of his research, and some media samples which include mp3s of the distorted music." Yes, the term biocomputer is used in the loosest sense.
From those Nutty guys at Slashdot.com:
http://science.slashdot.org/science...3/09/11/2336258.shtml?tid=134&tid=141&tid=188
Beer-Coated CDs are Optical Biocomputers
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday September 12, @03:14AM
from the fancy-liquor-spills dept.
commodoresloat writes "A DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an 'optical biocomputer' when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways. Here's some of his research, and some media samples which include mp3s of the distorted music." Yes, the term biocomputer is used in the loosest sense.
re cd enhancement
I am merely a lowly digital engineer, and not really expert in the whole audiophile thing, but I can't for the life of me see how most of this stuff could in any way, shape, or form enhance the sound coming out of your system.
Some additional return power from the laser might help with insure there are no flipped bits when reading, but don't CD's work on an edge detect methodology which uses the difference distance between the land and the pit? In that case, any additional laser energy reflected from anywhere else would be a bad thing.
Magnetism and static aren't going to affect a light diffraction methodology either.
Perhaps the black pen theory works by absorbing some small amount of energy that gets reflected back off of the clear edge. It would be an incredibly small amount though - I would be surprised if it made a difference. The problem with color markers though is that they sometimes contain substances that degrade the CD materials. We are not allowed to use them for labeling on data CD's for archiving for this very reason. Ditto for some of the adhesives in certain CD labeling systems.
Calming the vibration might help, but adding stuff is decidely hit or miss. You would need the CD equivalent of the tire balancing system to get it right. And how do you remove warpage?
My understanding was that the audio encoding format had error correction algorithms that could handle up to 4000 bad bits at a time. At what point does it lose track instead? If we understand the mode of occurence of the sound alteration then it should be easy to figure out which of these methods have any shot at providing a real improvement. I know data CD's have more error correction to insure error free readback, but I don't know what kind of error audio CD's can pass to the system.
As far as systems claiming results, what you really need is to measure the Block and Bit Error rates to see if there is an observable difference. That is the accepted methodology for proving digital capture performance. I suspect that anyone selling a system that can't or won't show this (it isn't that difficult to do), can't actually show an improvement in performance.
I am merely a lowly digital engineer, and not really expert in the whole audiophile thing, but I can't for the life of me see how most of this stuff could in any way, shape, or form enhance the sound coming out of your system.
Some additional return power from the laser might help with insure there are no flipped bits when reading, but don't CD's work on an edge detect methodology which uses the difference distance between the land and the pit? In that case, any additional laser energy reflected from anywhere else would be a bad thing.
Magnetism and static aren't going to affect a light diffraction methodology either.
Perhaps the black pen theory works by absorbing some small amount of energy that gets reflected back off of the clear edge. It would be an incredibly small amount though - I would be surprised if it made a difference. The problem with color markers though is that they sometimes contain substances that degrade the CD materials. We are not allowed to use them for labeling on data CD's for archiving for this very reason. Ditto for some of the adhesives in certain CD labeling systems.
Calming the vibration might help, but adding stuff is decidely hit or miss. You would need the CD equivalent of the tire balancing system to get it right. And how do you remove warpage?
My understanding was that the audio encoding format had error correction algorithms that could handle up to 4000 bad bits at a time. At what point does it lose track instead? If we understand the mode of occurence of the sound alteration then it should be easy to figure out which of these methods have any shot at providing a real improvement. I know data CD's have more error correction to insure error free readback, but I don't know what kind of error audio CD's can pass to the system.
As far as systems claiming results, what you really need is to measure the Block and Bit Error rates to see if there is an observable difference. That is the accepted methodology for proving digital capture performance. I suspect that anyone selling a system that can't or won't show this (it isn't that difficult to do), can't actually show an improvement in performance.
It doesn't. There's no controlled listening tests that show any evidence of this at all. There's no effect on the analog output signal. And measurements of block and bit error rates don't show anything, either.
Belief in such tripe is a good way of filtering- people who advocate these "treatments" are simply untrustworthy.
There are a number of silly audiophile ideas that keep floating to the surface. Trying to respond to them in a serious way will just eventually leave you banging your head on the wall. If some asks if they should dip their capacitors in maple surup in order to add smoothness to the highs, I'm inclined to suggest they give it try while I slip out the door.
Bedini is probably a demag unit.
A friend uses a Bedini and loves it. Truth is as posted before the difference depends on how often the disc has been played before "treatment" as the effect remains for some time.
He also claims that CDR treated after burning have a large difference in their sound, bigger diff then any normal cd he reckons. I am not sure if he has ever treated blank CDRs.
Anyway, the diiferences I have heard from his Bedini on my rig are the same as the ones I hear using my old tape head demagnitiser waved over discs before playing. Just an aluminium rod I think with a 220 V AC coil wound around it.
I have also read on AA that bulk tape eraser "guns" work very well.
I beleive in the Bedini, just not in its price.....
For a similar but less in magnitude effect as a Bedini:
Move a cd around and over a big magnet. That blown subwoofer driver you have in the corner there will do just fine.
I am not kidding! Costs nothing to try!
G
A friend uses a Bedini and loves it. Truth is as posted before the difference depends on how often the disc has been played before "treatment" as the effect remains for some time.
He also claims that CDR treated after burning have a large difference in their sound, bigger diff then any normal cd he reckons. I am not sure if he has ever treated blank CDRs.
Anyway, the diiferences I have heard from his Bedini on my rig are the same as the ones I hear using my old tape head demagnitiser waved over discs before playing. Just an aluminium rod I think with a 220 V AC coil wound around it.
I have also read on AA that bulk tape eraser "guns" work very well.
I beleive in the Bedini, just not in its price.....
For a similar but less in magnitude effect as a Bedini:
Move a cd around and over a big magnet. That blown subwoofer driver you have in the corner there will do just fine.
I am not kidding! Costs nothing to try!
G
In my experience copied discs sounds better than original.
Use low speed to burn like 2x or 4x.
Also black CDRs sounds better than others.
Better yet; use a program like Exact Audio Copy to extract audio data from original disc. Burn on black CDR.
The difference is quite noticable.
Regarding demagnetization, I would say that no material is completely without magnetic properties, its just very low...
Use low speed to burn like 2x or 4x.
Also black CDRs sounds better than others.
Better yet; use a program like Exact Audio Copy to extract audio data from original disc. Burn on black CDR.
The difference is quite noticable.
Regarding demagnetization, I would say that no material is completely without magnetic properties, its just very low...
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