Do you pay attention to electrostatic discharge (ESD)?

[Speedskater]

With or without a wrist strap, you should get rid of that junk.

Twenty years ago, Bill Whitlock's AE paper recommended:
'routing cables so that they "cling' to large ground-plane areas, such as equipment racks or steel-reinforced concrete floors.'

 

[DonH50]

I just got blasted for presented an engineering point of view in another thread. I'll just say all I have learned about ESD in the past 30+ years says that using plastic bubble wrap is going to make the problem worse if it does anything at all. But I cannot say if it will improve the sound or not.

 

[fas42]

I have a nice collection of antistatic plastic here, to use in various situations to see if there's an audible impact if it's used as a separation layer. "Pure" plastic is a nightmare if not carefully managed ...

 

[mcduman]

can i use the anti static bag that my computer board came in to wrap around the cables?

 

[jeromelang]

There was this Malaysian guy recounting his bad experience, not so long ago, in an audio forum, of using the so-called MIRACLE ACOUSTICS POWER CUBE which he brought it from some hifi retailer in Penang. According to him, when this box thingy was placed in his system, it changed the tonality of his system. Sound became harsh, sound staging less focussed, and overall music became DEAD, not live & airy as before. Naturally, he felt it was a BIG waste of 3000 Malaysian Ringgit. And he was further incensed when he opened up the box and discovered what's inside.

So it was just a piece of colourful plastic sheet inside and nothing else!

Anyone who paid RM3000 for this should right feel cheated and upset.


But, don't you think it is interesting that when this Malaysian guy put this box in his room with the plastic sheet inside it, and not connected any audio components in his system, he can perceive sonic differences that he described?

Regardless whether he liked or not liked the results, the fact is he did hear a change.

So that plastic sheet thingy inside the box must have done something....

 

[fas42]

can i use the anti static bag that my computer board came in to wrap around the cables?

That's exactly the sort of stuff I use - nothing will explode if you experiment, ; it will either do something, nothing or make things worse. The sensible approach in my book is try very low or zero cost materials, and play with them in what seems reasonable ways - and see if it makes an audible difference.

 

[jeromelang]

Heard of Peter Belt?

A tiny 2mm x 20mm strip of the PWB Rainbow Electret foil made by Peter Belt is said to be able to produce a "jaw-dropping" sonic change.

User comment:

As odd as it sounds, I also recently got a sample, but I heard very audible benefits - especially on CDs with very dense orchestration, such as the Brahms String Sextets, Raphael Ensemble, on Hyperion, the Mahler Symphony 4, Inbal & Frankfurt Symphony, on Denon, and the Beethoven Symphony 2, Norrington & London Classical Players, on EMI, as well as many others. The inner detail opened up, the slightly bright CD sound softened a bit, overall clarity improved.

I actually was unwilling to believe my ears and called in a friend who is a skeptic of most audiophile BS & who demands scientific explanations for phenomena. He heard the same things I did, quickly credited Druid magic and dancing quarks for what he was hearing and then got a real world idea. There is a plastics store called Tap Plastics which sells a similar laminated silver foil product with slightly different foil pattern than the Peter Belt. It cost about $1.50 for a couple of large sheets of this stuff, enough to use on 1000s of CDs. We both applied 1mm strips of it in the same manner as the Belt foil, and guess what? ***We got the same results!!!***

Gardiner

Heres an explanation what this foil does.
It's an electret material - which during its manufacturing a permanent charge is added.
(The electrostatic charge is said to last several years)

Electrets, like magnets, are dipoles. Another similarity is the radiant fields: They produce an electrostatic field (as opposed to a magnetic field) around their perimeter. When a magnet and an electret are near one another, a rather unusual phenomenon occurs: while stationary, neither has any effect on one another. However, when an electret is moved with respect to a magnetic pole, a force is felt which acts perpendicular to the magnetic field, pushing the electret along a path 90 degrees to the expected direction of 'push' as would be felt with another magnet.

In another words this electret foil material will react with magnetic fields around its proximity (such as those projected by audio equipments and cables) and in turn, exerts its own force onto those surrounding magnetic fields leading to sonic differences from those equipment and cablings that projected the magnetic fields in the first place.

 

[mcduman]

frank,

i used antistatic plastic bags to cover one of the speaker cables to see if there is a difference; and the stage totally collapsed to the other side to the point that i thought i mistakenly disconnected something. now i was doing this for esd prevention yet these things have a huge impact on the sound as well.

 

[fas42]

Very interesting, mcduman! This replicates the sort of experience I've had in dealing with static issues - doing things which nominally should do nothing, or have a minimal impact on the sound turn out to highly effective in changing the subjective experience. This is the time to experiment, experiment, experiment - what I find if I pursue this thoroughly, along with other refinements, is achieving speakers that seemingly vanish from the scene - very addictive listening!

 

[Speedskater]

If you really want to wrap your cables, go to a electrical supply store and get some big flexible metal conduit. Add a jumper to a chassis or a wall outlet box.

 

[mcondo]

Static has yin and yang.

Sometimes it can be utilised for curing your audio system.


I wrote about this in 2009

Funny thing happened on the way to sonic heaven

These days, in any room, in any system, if I can perceive imaging to be skewed towards the left, I'll wash the CD disc under tap water and then dab it dry with tissue paper and play the disc and it will usually cure the problem - snapping centre fill imaging right back to centre.

If I want a stronger remedy - the clear transparent cd jewel case still remains the best solution.
(The act of plugging a cd disc up from the jewel case - plastic rubbing against plastic - creates a very potent form of static, of which I've come to categorise as yin)

Sometimes, if I'm naughty, I bring a couple of CDs (that I've wiped with a dry cloth earlier) into a Hifi shop and ask them to play those discs. They never fail to make the system's imaging to become skewed towards the left.

Why always left?

I have no idea.

But it works everytime.

If your source is a cd you may have static built up on the cd. Happens to me on well played CD's. I just use a CD cleaner spray and the SQ returns.

 

[mcduman]

If you really want to wrap your cables, go to a electrical supply store and get some big flexible metal conduit. Add a jumper to a chassis or a wall outlet box.

Kevin,

i manufactured a 1-prong power cable (without live and neutral) and will experiment with it to see if it channels the static build-up to ground. I got this idea after seeing that the system sounds phenomenal after (unfortunately very rare) black-outs

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Kevin,

i manufactured a 1-prong power cable (without live and neutral) and will experiment with it to see if it channels the static build-up to ground. I got this idea after seeing that the system sounds phenomenal after (unfortunately very rare) black-outs

Great idea! No power, no static. Talk about black, silent backgrounds!

Hey, flip the breaker to your system = automatic blackout = better sound whenever you want. Now, I have found that it takes at least 100 hours of power blackout to get the sound to really be top notch, kinda like break in.

 

[Speedskater]

Kevin,
i manufactured a 1-prong power cable (without live and neutral) and will experiment with it to see if it channels the static build-up to ground. I got this idea after seeing that the system sounds phenomenal after (unfortunately very rare) black-outs

I have a commercial unit. I use it when changing cards in desk-top computers.

 

[fas42]

I got this idea after seeing that the system sounds phenomenal after (unfortunately very rare) black-outs

My first good system, decades ago, was very prone to buildup but I had no idea what what was going on at the time - my approach was power down everything, for some minutes only, no longer was necessary; and power up again. Restored the quality every time - but it has taken ages to get a decent handle on controlling all of this, without using silly ways like cycling power.

 

[mcduman]

Great idea! No power, no static. Talk about black, silent backgrounds!

Hey, flip the breaker to your system = automatic blackout = better sound whenever you want. Now, I have found that it takes at least 100 hours of power blackout to get the sound to really be top notch, kinda like break in.

the breaker cuts the ground as well, so i am trying the one-eyed raven

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

the breaker cuts the ground as well, so i am trying the one-eyed raven

In my electrical panel, the breaker cuts only the hot, not the neutral or ground. I have never seen a breaker or breaker box that cuts anything other than that.

 

[Speedskater]

In my electrical panel, the breaker cuts only the hot, not the neutral or ground. I have never seen a breaker or breaker box that cuts anything other than that.

Neither have I, but I think that a GFCI may open both the Hot and Neutral. Under no conditions should the Safety Ground/Protective Earth open!

 

[Robh3606]

Only from the standpoint of possible equipment damage in the winter. I will ground myself out to my rack before I go near any front panels.

Rob

 

[jeromelang]

If your source is a cd you may have static built up on the cd. Happens to me on well played CD's. I just use a CD cleaner spray and the SQ returns.

That, (fabric material rubbing against plastic) in itself imbues the cd disc with a particularly potent type of static - to the yang side.
And the infected disc stays that way (sound that way) over very extended period of time.
If you happen not to like the resultant sound, then that disc is fcuked.
When that infected disc is played through a system, it can cause imaging to shift.
Long after the infected disc has been played, the imaging shift problem remains in the system, even when playing other sources.
A lot of audiophile's system it seems are affected with this issue.
Not knowing the cause of it, they would often resort to changing components, cablings, room orientation, room acoustics, etc, to try to solve the problem.
I've since encountered many systems that has this issue.
The most recent case - at a forum acquaintance's place in Hong Kong.
The solution is - applying yin type of static to balance the system.
And it's just tap water and 3 pieces of tissue paper....