I was motivated to pen the following note to Srajan after the review of Less EMF shielding he published from Steve Marsh. Enjoy!
Hi Srajan
Thanks for publishing the review of the Less EMF shielding by Steve Marsh on your site recently. I was especially interested in this review for two reasons, firstly because I’m fascinated by the influence of radiated electromagnetic fields on both the sound quality of my system, and on our general health and well being, and secondly because I am also an owner of Tron equipment and therefore fascinated by Steve’s findings.
As I’m sure you’d expect from anyone with a vested interest (Alert! Alert!), I’m motivated to respond to your published opinion on the amp’s design and implicit criticism of the design process, but in fact…. I agree with you. At least, with due consideration to the difficulty in sourcing and shielding a mains transformer for a kilovolt power rail, in general terms I’d like to reduce all radiated fields, in everything, everywhere.
In fact, I’d like you to go further on behalf of Six moons and all your readers and reviewers, if you can support it. In fact… whilst I’m continually mystified at the lack of publicity surrounding the wonderful pre and power amps GT designs for Tron, I’m even more surprised we haven’t started a movement already towards identifying, testing and proving the issue I describe below.
Let me explain.
I was really keen to read Steve’s article on the shielding because of my headache. I’m in an office, surrounded by laptops, desktops, IP phones, second monitors, printers, Blackberrys and iPhones, and bathed in fluorescent light. At home, I have a microwave, DECT phone, the iPhones my wife and I use, the various computers and two Wifi routers, more fluorescents in the form of energy saving bulbs, and THEN tucked away in the corner of my listening room is a very shiny Tron power amp with 300Bs from Emission Labs – how apt! And I get a headache. Although not from the Tron, which is of course utterly brilliant (yes, I would say that).
Do you remember the days before broadband, with our slow and clunky modems whose wail of negotiation is so iconic it has been sampled and captured in pop songs? How about the periodic buzz the Blackberry or iPhone agitates into my Avantgardes? Where do these things go when they’ve been removed to a ‘safe’ distance I wonder, if not into some low level mush despite being far enough away to avoid direct irritation?
I recall the shudder of fear when the letter dropped on my doormat announcing the construction of another mobile phone mast less than 50m from my house, and the sense of relief when my local council rejected the application after howls of protest from the community, not least the family whose house was directly next to it and whose young children’s room it would have beamed directly into. “Perfectly safe”, of course, although the UK government guidelines ‘recommend’ siting mobile phone masts away from schools and nurseries on the balance of probabilities….
I know that, when we use the microwave in the kitchen to defrost or warm something, Wifi stops working unless you’re right next to the router. I know to keep the phones and ‘berries outside the listening room or be driven mad by the buzzing.
In the many pages of your esteemed site there are reviews for power cables and conditioners, from LessLoss for example, which to the sceptic ought to make no difference whatsoever to sound quality, and yet plainly have an audible impact. Your reviewers talk about blacker backgrounds, more depth, detail, and a more ‘relaxed’ sound. What are they doing, if not reducing the impact of radiation and RFI, its ingress into our (otherwise well shielded) audio equipment through some means, its’ obvious effect on how the overall system sounds? Not only that, but products such as the Blackbody on sight of which no end of sceptics would spit out their tea and splutter ‘rubbish!’. And yet, you’re witness to the effect yourself. How is it that a ‘perfectly shielded’ product can nevertheless be improved so substantially by the addition of a funky power cord or being bathed in the rays from a mysterious crystal box?
Our hobby has a long history of – how shall I put it - disproving science, or offering evidence that isn’t proven by science, or perhaps more correctly, providing the basis for fierce argument between subjectivists and sceptics? Namely the use of power cables, audiophile interconnects and speaker cables, equipment supports (“impossible that one solidly designed support can possibly make equipment sound different than another”), power conditioners, Blackbodies and Schumann generators, various 300B tubes whose electrical parameters are almost identical and yet are lush, clinical, detailed, and so on. We are a massive collective of committed hobbyists who, for the most part, are eager to look for any solutions to ‘making our systems sound better’ and willing to experiment and invest regardless of the pseudo-science behind the product. In fact, I’d go so far as to say: if it works, it works and science is still playing catch-up. We’re right there trying and assessing and investing.
Here’s my point.
Srajan, you have a fantastic website. It’s full of really useful information on products, techniques, thoughts, music and everything Audiophile. I love the combination of photographs, text, and (from you I can see) fairly forthright opinion. Clearly there’s a massive global community enjoying what you’ve put together and motivated to listen to what you have to say.
So I’d like you and 6mooons to be a focal point here, drawing the internet Audiophile community towards a common goal, which is: proving the environmental impact of our modern life on our musical enjoyment. By inference, proving the influence of RFI, electromagnetism or whatever on our general health and wellbeing.
Just plugging in a power cable and describing how much better a system sounds is useful, but not what I’m after here. I was really looking for the nitty gritty on the elements of sound that are described as “space”, “depth”, “silence”, “relaxed” and so on, adjectives frequently used to describe the improvement wrought by power cables and conditioners and the like, combined with some physical evidence (great that Steve used a gauss meter to provide empirical evidence to match his findings). Whilst hum reduction is clearly important and necessary with the incompatibility described by Steve in his review, it’s not what I was hoping for; I want to know more about what’s happening in the invisible ether from those other devices that somehow contrive to make a fantastic system sound bland; so much so that we grow used to and accept the sound quality and are amazed when we discover it can be improved through a tweak like a cable or a crystalline Blackbody.
6moons is in a position to start to document the audible impact of methods for reducing electromagnetic interference, collating it and providing reference material just like the reviews you publish. I wish I knew exactly how we could do this, but I have the shape of an idea and I’d love to share it with you.
For starters, there’s reduction by exclusion. We could remove anything nonessential that is known to radiate from our listening environments, and ideally from anywhere nearby as well. We could turn off anything and everything that isn’t absolutely essential to our existence in the home such as central heating (just go cold for a few hours!), ovens and cookers and phones and computers and routers and berries and iPhone and Wifi and Bluetooth. Turn everything off at the distribution board that isn’t part of your hifi, unplug all nonessential wall wart transformers charging your toothbrushes and shavers and Nintendos, physically remove equipment that isn’t an absolutely essential part of the hifi… and sit, and listen.
Is it better? How is it better? Are we getting the effect we’d otherwise get from an expensive Firewall or Blackbody (apologies to your sponsors, but in truth I think they’d see this as entirely positive marketing)? And so on.
Maybe we could do this all together, as readers of 6moons – you pick a “Sixth Moon Day” on, say, Saturday 25th February 2012to give plenty of forewarning, or earlier if you prefer, and invite everyone to do this, and contribute a series of scores as empirical evidence, and written notes as subjective evidence, demonstrating that these things matter. They should absolutely matter! What’s more, they should matter in the subtle and difficult way that a Lessloss power cable corrects and is immeasurable, with an impact to elements of reproduction that are described as relaxation, blackness, depth, detail and so on. We don’t know why it works (well, LessLoss will say they *do* know why, but it’s clearly open to debate even amongst audiophiles exactly how and why it might work) and yet, when it does what it does, it generally lifts the whole system by removing something you didn’t know was there and was impeding your enjoyment, and maybe shortening your lifespan. Measuring hum is easy in the sense that you can clearly hear the hum, move equipment about to reduce it, shield it, and of course a millivolt photo stage above a kilovolt power amp is fairly obvious clue!
In truth, I’m not sure how to make this work, but that’s my Straw Man for input. I’m happy to debate both the merits and the method with you.
Next, I’d suggest your reviewers seek products for review that are specifically aimed at reducing the impact of radiating equipment, much like Steve did for the 211 Tron amp, but more focused on the areas I’ve described that concern me: high frequency digital radiation, microwaves, RFI and so on; high voltage electric fields form a part of this too. If I were able to refer to a review of, say, RFI-shielding wallpaper and curtains, I might invest in those instead of a Lessloss DFC power cable (don’t tell your sponsors!). You can get shielded underpants too, who knows I might just try that for a laugh, but I’m not sure the effect on sound quality will be pronounced :)... But, I’d like my 'bits' to last a fair while yet. Back on topic: maybe, in seeking review products, you could target 6moons at that sort of audiophile product as part of this overall initiative?
Anyway…
Conveniences such as a Wifi connection so I can use my iPad to remote control my music whilst Skyping friends in another country are a part of modern life and I’m unwilling to give them up, especially if I’m curled up in the listening room enjoying some 300B magic. But… what if the sound is being compromised through the simple act of allowing this and other *deliberately* radiating equipment into my home? I might change my mind. I might do something about it, and enjoy better music.
Not only that, but the wider issue exists: everyone knows the debate between those worried about the effects on their health and that of their children of mobile phones and other equipment, and Big Business repeatedly lobbies governments to tell us we’re absolutely fine, it’ll all be OK, and no amount of cancers and skin conditions and headaches is anything but coincidental. But if a few hundred audiophiles conduct an experiment that clearly shows a relationship between radiation and the reproduction of sound, maybe some positive publicity might change that opinion?
Best Wishes
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