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In Reply to: RE: Using Rochelle salt to absorb EMI from your homes AC line to supercharge your audio system performance posted by cdc on November 14, 2023 at 22:57:25
No question that this low-cost tweak moves the sound of digital recordings closer to live music - more analog, open, clearly defined and relaxed. Plenty of sparkle and air! Easy to overdo the amount and be disappointed at first but persevering with smaller amounts paid off. In my case less than a quarter of a flat teaspoon.
Many thanks for sharing your excellent tweak, cdc - they don't come along like this often.
Follow Ups:
N/T
CDC,Did 20 AC outlets after settling on roughly 0.100 - less is more as you advise.
Recorded music now emerges as lightly and naturally from silence as live music and whips across the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the sound-stage with P/R/T ease and precision. Music sounds both more interesting/ exciting and easy on the ears/ brain.
As with any major audiophile improvement, attention then snaps to the next flaw. In the case of my modest headphone setup, it's the even larger distance revealed of tone between recorded and live music. Did I just reveal or create it with this great tweak? I don't know but it will be a long time before I consider reversing it.
Thank you again.
DG
Edits: 12/30/23
Appreciate the feedback, useful and interesting to read users experiences.
Well, you can tune the tonality of the setup so it sounds more natural to you. But yes as you lower the noise floor more of the recording and nuances of what is in the recording becomes available to your gear to reproduce. Then it comes down to how your gear audibly reproduces this information.
If you want a warmer or fuller body in the presentation add a small amount stepped at 0.1 grams to ground wire wrap. You may be able to just do this on one or two light switches or outlets. Just install the wall plate and not screw it in, then listen. Tune, replace plate and listen. When you get it where you prefer it sonically screw the plate into outlet. Kind of crazy how well and easy it is to tune a system's tonal balance is with this tweak.
CDC
Completed your flaw-free tweak today after learning for my headphone system:
1. AC OUTLETS - The optimum amounts of Rochelle salt placed in proximity to Line (affecting tone) and to Ground (affecting sound-stage and P/R/T) need to be different. Relatively little or 0.1oz next to Line/ double that or 0.2oz approx. next to Ground.
2. LIGHT SWITCHES - 0.2oz of Rochelle salt improves sound-stage & P/R/T at the bottom near Ground but none near the sides near Line/ power as it degrades tone there for some reason.
Again many thanks for an outstanding tweak fully justifying all the experimentation spent on its implementation,
DG
OK... just to clarify. You're placing 3 grams (or .1 oz.) next to the hot lead and 6 grams (or .2 oz.) at the bottom of the plate near ground? That's quite a departure from the original 1 gram hot/.5 gram neutral formula originally discussed. I was under the impression most were lowering the amount of salt for the desired effect starting from the original 1G/.5G formula. That said, if you've done quite the opposite and gotten good results, I'm in no position to dispute your findings. Just a question now of which way I want to take the experiment. Or leave well enough alone.
OK forget about weight and eyeball it for your testing.
Insert sufficient salt in a little vertical bag to just cover the extreme bottom and then double it. That's the amount I roll up and affix at the bottom under 'Ground'. Make seven of those. Then make seven with the single salt amount so it's thin and scarce at the vertical bottom and roll it ready to be affixed for 'Line'. Start by treating each range/ refrigerator/ dishwasher/ disposal outlet. Those circuits are amongst the heaviest EMF contaminators of home electricity. Then just do the ground on each outlet/s for your music system. And see if you like what you hear. Or you can start with your music system outlets but the sound quality improvement is far less encouraging and pronounced.
The beauty of starting with too much salt is you then know exactly where you are and what 'going over-the-top' sounds like. The danger of just copying the above is that it may be insufficient and you'll quit disheartened before discovering the benefit of a remarkable tweak.
Hope this helps. Best of luck!
Dry Ginger
Right now I'm evaluating the effect of 35 receptacle/single switch plates treated with the original "formula". (1g/.5g) If I become curios or better yet, ambitious, I'll give your approach a shot. For now I just want to sit down and listen to music.
Dryginger2
I am a little confused.
You use more than twice the amount CDC advised? 0,1 oz = 2,83 gram.
And further, as I understand, the amount on the ground should be about half (0,5g) of the amount on the + side (1,0g), you do the opposite?
This is a powerfull tweak, thank you CDC.
mojul
Actually you'll find as I did that you'd have a hard time cramming much more R salt behind a standard wall plate than the originally mentioned 1 gram/.5 gram formula. This unless one wanted to encase the entire plate in R salt. When I experimented, I reduced the amount from that point down to .7 gram/.3 gram on a handful of receptacle and switch plates.
N/T
Mojul,
To be candid, I bought CDC's recommended Chinese measuring device from Amazon and found that it never gave me the same answer twice. So I guestimated from its indications that ~0.1g was a thin amount at the end of a bag and an even thinner amount spread along the side of a bag was ~0.05g. Not satisfying to read but buy one of those devices and you may start to understand the problem...
I use bracketing (i.e. going over the top) to discover what's too much and then reduce from there. Having applied Rochelle salts to Ground (@ bottom) and Line (@side)to hear the effect on room outlets, I stripped out the sides to determine the sound contribution from Ground and by deduction Line. I then added the salts to Ground (@bottom) of room light switches.
It was clear to my ears that ~ 0.1g works without deleterious effect on Ground but ~0.05g is the max before sound degradation with Line. I then carefully applied the tweak to waste disposal/ refrigerator/ range outlets. And the result launched the tweak to a completely new level, probably because each has its own circuit and they generate much more EMF. I cannot emphasize sufficiently the disproportionate sound quality improvement from investing the extra time and trouble.
Have ended up by using Rochelle salts near the ground of every single outlet but only adding them to the side of Line with outlets of disposal/ refrigerator/ range and the AC conditioner for my music system.
No way to avoid testing levels for yourself as systems, taste, ears vary - to say nothing of measuring machines. Your time will be well spent as CDC has unquestionably given us the most valuable tweak particularly when applied to every single active circuit whether in use or not.
Dry Ginger
I found the project to be interesting, educational and inexpensive. If one takes the time to tune while applying the tweak at enough junctions in the home, the performance gains are outstanding. There are a lot of high performing tweaks I employ, but for the money spent this tweak yields the highest performance.
I am glad you are enjoying the benefits of the tweak.
Here's another Line application if you have a conditioner isolating Line as the W-3900 'Hi-End Noise Filter' does with its single circuit to the 'Reset' button. Attaching a small bag of Rochelle salts against the casing nearby significantly boosts musical depth dimension and volume without bloat. Put too much and noise raises its ugly head.
There are several other uses or applications for Rochelle salt to lower noise. You would have to experiment with the amount to use. I would start with "less is better". Inside components by LED lights and by fuses. If placed into a small zip lock baggy just place the bag by different sections within components and listen for changes. Once you find a positive placement, fine tune placement and amount to be used. Obviously going inside components be safe and is at your own risk of shock! I am not responsible for anything you do!
A very small amount of Rochelle salts opposite the transformer of a linear power supply (and nowhere close to its circuit board) has proved beneficial.
Apologies. After applying even tiny amounts of R.salts to three LPS's, it proved SQ degrading.
There is a lot of trial and error or experimenting required. By LED lights work well, fuses, SMPS cable at where the wire exits the unit are a few places to try.
My improvement from applying Rochelle salts to outlets/ light switches/ and Internet proved to be limited and distorted by RFI from four overhead LEDs and two twin sets of fluorescent lights sometimes used nearby while listening. That invoked a 'congestion' ceiling of fatigue limiting listening enjoyment and messed with proportions of line and earth treatment.
Neutralizing that RFI with Rochelle salts has ushered in a new world of open, free sound that changes everything including those line/ ground proportions.
So, if anybody out there has congested/ fatiguing sound, treating the RFI of LED's/ fluorescents with Rochelle salts as CDC advises, is likely the key to the listening prison which just became so much more clearly defined.
Has anyone tried Carbon Fiber? Carbon fiber is known for absorbing EMI. I would Iwould think a faceplate made of CF would also work.
There is a lot of trial and error or experimenting required. By LED lights work well, fuses, SMPS cable at where the wire exits the unit are a few places to try.
N/T
Three for the initial testing but will now be adding another twelve.
Makes sense. The more junctions across the AC wiring that is treated the more resolving your system gets. Just be sure to critically listen after each junction install to make sure system is tonally balanced and you did not over dampen. You will know if you over dampened if there is a loss of resolution.
Will be interesting to know your thoughts after you treat all the junctions in your dwelling. In my experience treating 3 junctions is like upgrading a glass fuse with a high end audiophile fuse. Treating entire dwelling transforms a system.
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