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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: RE: You can find plenty of stuff on Ebay posted by stator_99@yahoo.com on January 4, 2009 at 17:11:09:
There is a paper on the pyroelectric effect (ion emission induced by heat) of pieces of tourmaline having different impurities. One gerneral conclusion is that the more iron there was in the stone, the fewer ions it emitted. Since black tourmaline has the highest iron content, its pyroelectric strength is the lowest. This is consistent with my hearing a smaller effect with the black tourmaline than with the colored translucent crystals.
However it isn't clear that the major effect is pyroelectric. Tourmaline is also piezoelectric (converts electomagnetic fields to vibrations). Inmate Unclestu52 has done more research on crystals than anyone else on these boards, and he thinks that the crystals should be small and allowed to vibrate in order to be most effective. The idea here is that the physical inertia of larger crystals will prevent stray electromagnetic fields from being converted into vibrations.
This gets into the general theory behind what the crystals do. It seems that the crystals that are strongly piezoelectric have the greatest effect on audio. The effect is generally to enhance the soundstage and imaging and to allow clearer perception of small details. It seems that the crystals absorb stray emf that can interfere with the audio signal. How ion emission fits in with this is an interesting question. I sprayed my amplifier with a tourmaline hair dryer and got good results, but to get the same effect with less hassle, I now have a small negative ion emitter aimed at my power amplifier's chassis. It really works and its effect is similar to what I get with crystals. My theory of why it does, is that it induces a charge on the amplifier chassis which acts as a farraday cage and repells stray emf.
This business with crystals is quite interesting, and the effects are quite pronounced. One caveat though: your system needs to be pretty highly resolving for these effects to be noticeable. For my second system, I have a good mid-fi rig with Arcam electronics and Sonus Faber Concertino speakers. On this set-up, crystals don't seem to make any difference. I also can barely hear differences in power cords or cables on this system.
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Follow Ups
- RE: You can find plenty of stuff on Ebay - Paul_A 22:09:35 01/04/09 (0)
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