Anybody with cd/lp demagnatizer?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by jenkovix, May 25, 2016.

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  1. Mikeybc

    Mikeybc Listener

    Location:
    Northern Ontario.
    I was thinking that same thing. My question is at what distance from the surface of a record are these magnetic readings detectable from, and can the body of a cartridge be affected by them. I'm not a skeptic, I like to keep an open mind, I believe in a few things others may call voodoo on
     
  2. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident

  3. Lester Best

    Lester Best Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Bklyn NY
    Audiophile lore creates solutions to problems that don't exist & aren't audible.
     
  4. qwerty

    qwerty A resident of the SH_Forums.

    With respect, psychology is far from a pseudo science (which you would have gained more insight into had you progressed into postgrad study).
    My posts regarding research were in the context of electromechanical engineering issues, which can be measured with far more certainty than psycholgical phenomena. If it is possible to determine that from the hard sciences there are differences which can interfere with the process, the next (and more difficult research) would be to determine if such differences are able to be perceived. Ideally this would be conducting double-blind trials with expert listeners. Unfortunately this type of research is rarely conducted in the audio world, and we are usually left with subjective interpretations.
     
  5. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    You raise one difficulty 'expert listeners' that's a thread to hell in itself. Whilst you'd probably be able to establish a perceived difference, it's a totally different concept to better. We use language to describe our experience of music, I'm in the Wittgenstein camp and see us groping in the dark to quantify such concepts.
     
  6. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    You've indirectly expressed precisely why so many product reviewers and so many product makers have for well over two generations turned to psychology and psychiatry consultants to help shape advertising policy, advertising methods and marketing writing. Audiophile product reviewers - i.e., reviewers and their publications that concentrate primarily on products positioned a notch or two above the high volume, mass market audio products - are notoriously imprecise, even despite the inclusion in many published reviews of bench test results. The vast majority of audiophile product consumers do not understand how to read the graphs, charts and specifications with sufficient understanding to make the best use of the data when making judgments about a product's suitability for their needs and when making comparative purchasing decisions. The product makers and their social engineer-oriented marketers study Wittgentstein, Weber, and many others.

    Marketing Psychology over the past 12-15 years has become a recognized and respected discipline in the corporate marketing and advertising worlds. Concurrent with the rise of marketing psychology, audiophile product reviewers, almost without exception have increasingly for nearly thirty years been making use of a range of logical fallacies in almost every single product review in the form of emotional pleas based solely on fear of missing out, special pleading, arguments from authority, arguments from antiquity, and many, many others. The reviews are riddled with largely positive language that is so imprecise - literally purposely non-specific - that when someone actually makes a purchase of an allegedly terrific product and get it home, one of the first things they often say to themselves is, 'Now what is it again about this thing that I'm supposed to like most?" Rather than listening as objectively as possible, the person has already been forced into a predispostion to like the item.

    The other problem we face as audiophiles - and the main problem that marketing psychologists face - is product differentiation. Basically, I'm suggesting that once an audiophile consumer can afford to elevate a purchasing budget beyond entry-level products, there is so little to distinguish the audio quality from one product to another - they're all very good, and have been for longer than I care to remember - that purchasing decisions often come down to featues and/or functions that have nothing to do with audio quality. In such situations, the consumers who have read lots of reviews may be more confused than they'd be if they'd just ignored the reviews and instead auditioned whatever products are available locally to them. It's too bad that online retail has helped to gut brick & mortar retail. You can't audition anything online, so FedEx, UPS, DHL and all the other high volume freight companies are making carloads of money hauling the same items back & forth. The marketing psychologists then have to push that much harder.

    The effectiveness of marketing psychology is nowhere more evident than it is in threads started by audiophiles who made an online purchase based on specs or in some cases actually irrelevant data, published reviews and chatter on the forums rather than on personal auditions. Social engineering marketers, marketing psychologists, the product reviewers who buy into the language use and the associated imprecision of description, and the publications (print and Web) that offer all of it to audiophiles have very little to tell us. But they say it anyway because the effect is to drive global retail economics. They all work hard to elevate their ostensible position of authority into a position of trust. It's sad, really, but I can't write any more here because I heard that Planet of Sound on Queen St West in Toronto is clearing out a pair of B-stock Harbeth Compact 7ESR speakers and I neeeeeeed to get over there early. Or maybe not. But the email blast was really persuasive.
     
  7. qwerty

    qwerty A resident of the SH_Forums.

    Exactly. Psychology is no a pseudo-science. But in comparison to material sciences, it has so much more variation and error to control for, so it is harder - but not impossible - to establish what exactly is happening. That's why it requires so much more research - to explore every angle, and to learn how to control different aspects.
     
  8. segue

    segue Psychoacoustic Member

    Location:
    Hawai'i
    sunspot42 likes this.
  9. Marketing Psychology as a discipline has been widely practiced for a very long time. The BBC documentary "The Century of the Self" traces its evolution as used in politics & consumerism.

    The Century of the Self - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »
     
  10. Lester Best

    Lester Best Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Bklyn NY
    I have a CRT demagnetizer in Classified. Extremely powerful.
     
  11. vinylvin

    vinylvin Forum Resident

    Location:
    MA
    I did some testing on a piece of an LP, there is no Antimony Ox. in it. The peaks looked like
    it was in there but someone who knows how to read the peaks better than me says there
    is none in there. He said it's a strange formula, a mix of PVC & PE, which the peaks showed.


    Electrical properties[edit]
    Polyethylene is a good electrical insulator. It offers good tracking resistance, however, it becomes easily electrostatically charged (which can be reduced by additions of graphite, carbon black or antistatic agents).
     
    BuddhaBob and qwerty like this.
  12. Classicrock

    Classicrock Senior Member

    Location:
    South West, UK.
    He fails to justify or explain the design and how it might work. Many suspect that device is a near empty box. Remember RA have previously lost a court case over their cable claims. He has undermined the credibility of the original Kimber products he sold with this nonsense. Many have found his mains devices actually make systems sound worse.
     
  13. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    His electrical product pages no longer contain any deceptive BS about how (for example) simple fuses enhance audio quality. The fuse pages now just repeat safe installation advice and boast about the materials and manufacturing processes. As a matter of fact, his fuse pages no longer contain improvement claims for anything.

    The ASA cleared Andrews of deceptive claims charges with respect to his power cables, but although the limited independent testing showed a reduction in power line noise (something that can be demonstrated equally well in a high school lab), Andrews and his ilk have never done any sort of rational demonstration that any of this affects audio quality. They can't, because it doesn't. Much like Furutech claiming nanoTesla reductions that are orders of magnitude less significant than the microTesla background magnetic field that surrounds the entire planet (and that has no effect whatsoever on LPs, stylii or cartridges), it's a technical distinction that makes no difference whatsoever.

    Many people read Andrews' technical-ese, become faintly impressed, but never go to comparative sources to check the claims in order to find out if they're even relevant. I guess that just means that Andrews will have to focus on using top quality materials that are designed (in the case of power cables) with good strain relief, secure internal connections, moderate weight, and high quality conductors.

    Maybe, one of these days, one of the power cable clowns will design a robust cable that doesn't need a full 6" of rear clearance in order to connect it to the back of equipment without jamming into the wall or the back of a cabinet. The power cable clowns make garbage that is so heavy and stiff that I'm surprised there aren't more report of IEC C14 sockets being torn out the back of equipment because of the ridiculous weight of the so-called high-end power cables.
     
    Last edited: Oct 15, 2016
  14. BuddhaBob

    BuddhaBob Forum Resident

    Location:
    Erie, PA, USA
    I've played with this. In my opinion the demag is scavenging some electrons--removing the static charge--because it is plugged into a wall outlet/ground. It isn't effective enough to be useful in my environment. It isn't demagnetizing the record. It is, at best, removing some static charge. There are better ways to solve that problem.
     
    Last edited: Oct 15, 2016
  15. yohimeys

    yohimeys Member

    Location:
    Elkhart,IN.
    Ive tried all my life to pick up a record with a magnet. If anyone has such a device for any price, please contact me, i got thousands of dollars to spend on such a device. Wait a minuite i just thought of something...... damn that means ill have to spend the remaining time i have left on earth figuring out how to demagnitize my albums so i can A/B test them to see which way sounds better. Now ive depressed myself.
     
    alexanderino and Agitater like this.
  16. John

    John Senior Member

    Location:
    Northeast
    I bought a Benjamin bulk tape eraser after a friend demoed de-magging a CD for me. It was immediately obvious, noticeable drop in noise floor and removal of a white noise type quality to the upper midrange among other things. I bought it back in 1991 and have not been able to listen to a CD without it ever since. I bring it everywhere I go, listening to CDs in friends systems or to dealers when auditioning CD hardware. Everyone who has heard the demag has bought one, even a dealer who didn't believe that cables make a difference. Why does it work? Don't know, don't care.

    Now back to our regularly scheduled 'it don't make no difference' programming.
     
    Dave likes this.
  17. jea48

    jea48 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Midwest, USA
    John,

    This may be of some interest to you.

    Patent US5602817 - Apparatus and method for enhancing playback fidelity of compact disks »
     
    John likes this.
  18. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    Firstly I need to apologise for the long delay in reporting back on Jea48's fantastic commitment, in sending 3 CDs to the UK. Unfortunately I had two periods of illness, which delayed everything.

    Having listened, with friends, we concluded no difference, even though we were unsure on some tracks. I've promised to try and get a friend, who owns a much better system than mine to try the test.

    Jea48, sent me 3 Maxwell CD-R music discs, each one having a track repeated, Diana Krall, Chris Rea and Dire Straights, none of us was familiar with these tracks, which I think made the comparison more difficult.

    Having used EAC, in secure mode, to extract the same tracks it produced different CRCs, accurate rip, to my surprise. I've made one minutes samples of the Chris Rea CD and put them on MEGA I've also included the rip log.

    Given Jea48's efforts I'm hoping other will take the time to listen.

    This is the link:

    MEGA »


    I'm happy to put samples of the Diana Krall and Dire Straight if people are going to take the test

    I also need to report back on the static issue, as I've now revised my opinion, in that there is no difference with the Hejira album.

    I was having issues with my CDP recognising a disc was in the player, I'd not experienced this before. A friend who understands these things download a firmware update and also found some problem in my laptop, problem resolved.

    Burning to new CDs, resulted in no audible difference. It's interesting to note EAC could produce a perfect rip from both original Hejira burns
     
  19. Ephi82

    Ephi82 Still have two ears working

    Location:
    S FL
    How does reducing magnatism on vinyl and cds improve sound quality? I get it for tape machines, but this sounds like hocus pocus to me.
     
  20. Ephi82

    Ephi82 Still have two ears working

    Location:
    S FL
    Oh also, i am taking some of favorite and well known cds and putting them in a pure oxygen environment for 8 hours.

    I will report back on how much better they sound following.....
     
  21. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident

    In the end I'll leave it to the tech heads to explain the physics, I just know it does work since I've done the process and heard the results. Would I pay thousands of dollars for a device that does the trick? NO WAY. Would I and did I with a $20 device yes, and it worked.

    Here's Michael Fremer on the $$$ Furutech device: You Can’t Demagnetize Vinyl But You Can Demagnetize a Record: The Furutech (alpha) and the Stein Music DE3 Record Demagnetizers »
     
  22. Pastafarian

    Pastafarian Forum Resident

    Are you or the naysayers going to see if you can tell a difference between the demag tracks and the untreated version via this link:
    MEGA »
     
    Robert C likes this.
  23. Ephi82

    Ephi82 Still have two ears working

    Location:
    S FL
    Ive not seen anything in this thread that states, or demonstrates that 1) there is "x" amount of magnetism in a certain vinyl record, and because of that, 2) the magnetism leads to distortion/changes/hampers/influences a vinyl playback cartridge such that there is a DOCUMENTED reduction in sound quality. Show me the data, that is more than available through analysis of audio signal response, frequency and distortion.

    Does it have to be be more complex than that?

    You are entitled to believe what you think you have heard, but you've not made an argument that i find anywhere near credible. This has been a fun and somewhat unbelievable read i must say.
     
    Blank Frank, Agitater and Robert C like this.
  24. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    These type of threads divide very neatly into the inductivists that have tried the device or method in question and heard or didn't hear an audible difference vs. the scholastics who argue on a priori grounds that there is no need to test anything and that any test which reveals a positive finding doesn't show what it purports to show. Inductivists should ignore scholastics as scholastics ignore inductivists.

    BTW the then most famous US mathematician Simon Newcombe stated in the October 22, 1903, issue of The Independent, "May not our mechanicians . . . be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of the great class of problems with which man can never cope, and give up all attempts to grapple with it?
     
  25. Mel Harris

    Mel Harris Audiophile since 1970!

    Location:
    Petaluma, CA
    Are you able to elaborate on this? In my experience, Accurate Rip either finds the CRC in the database, or it does not. You seem to be suggesting that Accurate Rip found all the "different CRCs". Perhaps you mean the CRCs were be matched if a different pressing offset is applied (a typical situation when ripping burned CDs).

    What I first thought you meant was that magnetism (or the absence of it) was creating different CRC values that Accurate Rip was finding in its database.
     
    alexanderino likes this.
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