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Hi Stephan,

That is super-cool – thank you for explaining this principle. I have a sneaking suspicion that powdered tourmaline is the main ‚ingredient‘ in several commercial products that are marketed to make audio sound more ‚relaxed‘.

Best wishes,

Harry

 

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Thank you, now I understand!

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This is very interesting – do you have any plans of investigating possible solutions?

[badgerline]

Hello all,

Thank you for your insights. @Solid Core, I’ll order some powdered tourmaline and try it out.

The notion of the reverse piezoelectric effect is indeed interesting. @Matthias, I tried again the agate on power cables last night and did not find it deleterious this time. I think it was just a shock before, because the sound was very different. And it is different, but it’s hard to know whether it is better. I note that you mentioned the electrical field – it might be helpful to bear in mind that the energy flow is always within the field (i.e., through space, with ‚flux‘ especially strong around active components) rather then within wires and the spatial location of this flux becomes much less based around the wires or PCB traces when we get to the MHz range. I wish I understood this area more, but I think that this is broadly accurate.

In any case, I am an experimenter who trusts his ears. I agree with the descriptions of less stress and a blacker background from the agate. Rose quartz also has a similar effect, but it is less calming. Some might prefer it. I have only larger lumps of tourmaline, but not powder. I think I could hear an effect, but it is very very subtle compared to the agate, whether beads around the ethernet cable or chunks on the wireless receiver or streamer.

I’m not sure I understand the construction of the copper tube plugged or soldered onto the “leading pin” in the middle, then filled with tourmaline. Where does the wire (signal) connect in this arrangement, please?

Thanks and best wishes,

Harry

 

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Hello Matthias,

I am very glad that the forum is open minded – thank you for your detailed response. Some of the American forums have made me cautious: there are lots of quite angry people on them. I like it here so far and am impressed by the positivity of the posts 🙂

Your use of powder inside connectors is very interesting. My own interpretation of these effects is along the lines of ’noise‘ being absorbed or otherwise redirected, so your ideas here make sense to me and I will try them.

I’ve attached a couple of photos that illustrate very effective (i.e., audible) use of the agate. You will see one end of my throttle cable. The other end is where all of the ferrites are. In one photo, there are beads wrapped around the cable. In other other, it is a large (120g) piece of agate. It’s all banded agate – I haven’t tried any other kind. Like you, I find that ferrites have a bigger effect.

The best effects of the agate have been on the ethernet side of things, but they also change the sound when used on power cables – this latter application was odd to me and I didn’t like it. In contrast, I love the effect on the wireless client and also on top of my streamer (at the rear). Moving the large piece of agate even a couple of mm on the little wireless client changes the sound: there is a ’sweet spot‘ where the effect is optimal.

I have used grounding boxes and the effect here is broadly similar to the good ones, only much stronger and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper.

Best wishes,

Harry

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Hmm, it’s funny that you mention tourmaline. I was not going to raise this, but I a few months ago I accidentally discovered some effects of using agate, which is another piezo-electric material. I have some large paperweights made from the mineral and used them to keep cables in position – I have noticed some sonic differences (sometimes beneficial, sometimes deleterious, depending on the cable in question). Although I recognise that this might be stretching credulity for some, I am unable to dismiss my own ears. I am not talking about subtle effects: they can be much greater than, say, changing an interconnect for a different model.

So, I would be interested to hear more about your impressions of the tourmaline, please. With apologies to anyone who finds this ‚hard to swallow‘.

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