Anybody with cd/lp demagnatizer?

All doubters want is some objective proof. Hearing the difference "with their own ears" would not constitute objective proof. I understand that the process can be done cheaply with a tape head demagnetiser, but that still involves sourcing the device and performing the ritual. If that's all a waste of time then there's no point.

As to the cables: NwAvGuy: What We Hear »

 

What you write about the Furutech site I agree with 100%, that was kinda my point that asking for numbers really seems meaningless. It seems to me that there are many things we deal with on a day to day basis that has magnetism.

Question: Does vinyl carry any measurable amount of magnetism?
Answer: It seems it can and has been measured to do so.

Seems to me that is all that people are saying and what Tullman's daughter reported. From there we then get all the "solutions" to this supposed audio problem, and one is spending $3K on a super-hyped up flying saucer looking device that will reduce the magnetism to a level that will make your records sound better....Geez how many times have we all heard that!!

 

Why, we apparently have some and obviously it proves nothing. I read the article about cables and perception and whilst it's interesting it perpetuate the myth that the placebo effect doesn't improve your internal construct of the outside world. Recent research is showing that your acuity of the objective world is improved with regard to vision. You run into some obvious problems with the objective world when you begin to think about music. You are therefore on your own, all you can do is trust yourself.

When I chose my current amp it was in contest with the Exposure VII & VIII, very close call but I could only decide by listening. If you can't trust your senses how did you choose your system?

 

I have not tried this out for myself and will not pass "judgement" if I am too cheap or stubborn to spend $20 to find out myself. I have been "mocked" concerning the effectiveness of using PVA wood glue for record cleaning. I admit the idea seemed very strange to me before I tried it on a hopeless case album, but tried it and had good results. I was excited and wanted to share my findings with others, only to be ridiculed by some that didn't have the balls or initiative to try it themselves.

Will a $20 tape head demagnetizer make my albums sound better---I don't know because I haven't tried it. I do know that I certainly will not discount the possibility if I am too cheap or lazy to try it for myself.

 

We have none, only someone's word. No one has provided conclusive evidence.

When choosing a system it's important to keep subjectivity in check. For example, I wouldn't buy a CD player that was incapable of resolving 16 bits even if I liked the way it sounded. Its inability to perform a basic objective task would rule it out for me. Similarly, an amp should provide a flat frequency response across the audible spectrum and be compatible with one's speakers and input requirements. I'm a strong proponent of auditioning multiple pieces of gear, but the differences we think we hear between things like amps is generally exaggerated by expectation bias.

 

You would have been a 'horror', punter when I was demonstrating Hi FI, as our goal was to have the customer walk away, having spent less than they expected to.

 

OK, I've done it!

CDs, Static, Milty Zaperator, Walker Talisman, Anti Static Spray »

 

For CD & vinyl magnetic believers, bulk tape erasers & CRT demagnetizers will work just as well very inexpensively.

 

I enjoyed reading the article you linked to, thanks for that. Ultimately though it all comes off as a general argument that there's no differences in how gear and gear accessories sound and we should stop trying to convince ourselves otherwise. However that's just not true in my experience, even though it does take me longer than .2 seconds to switch out a cable, (I am not The Flash after all!).

Most often this argument is put towards the really pricey gear, and given the insane mark ups in audio equipment I agree that these products should undergo a healthy amount of scrutiny. When I needed to replace my cartridge after accidentally bending the cantilever I was shocked to discover that it would cost $900 in the U.S., the same price I'd paid for the turntable and cartridge together 6 years prior. Since the cart came from the UK I decided to search online and see if I could find a better deal. Much to my joy I found it for $475 in total including shipping to Los Angeles. This was my first big lesson in how audiophiles get ripped off by big mark ups.

I recently installed another cartridge, this one from Japan. It's U.S. Retail price is around 1/3 that of the UK made cart, both are moving coil. While they offer somewhat different sonics, they are both excellent and I can't fathom why one would cost three times what the other did, there's just not that much difference between the two to justify the spread, but that's the crazy world we dwell in. I mostly keep sane by purchasing used gear, including that Japanese MC cart which was just $205 shipped. Here on the Forum I can enjoy what I've bought without feeling guilty or foolish for having paid too much.

 

Tullman, I will not argue against what your daughter found, as you have stated that she knowledgeable in her field, works with experts in the field with state of the art technology. I trust the results she reported (ie, that she was able to measure a difference), but that does not mean we can conclude the hypothesis is supported.

Scientific method is about testing hypothesis and alternate hypothesis. It is about sharing data and details of analysis so that it is open to scrutiny and replication. The supporting of hypothesis through experimental rigor and the dis-confirmation of competing hypothesis through this process is how we develop confidence in how things work. What has occurred with the debate regarding demagnetizing CD/vinyl is commercial interests have proposed theories and solutions without any independent justification or research. They are not openly sharing their evidence. Saying that their vinyl demagnetizers work without providing supporting independent evidence reduces their claims to marketing hype. It may be true or it might not be, at this stage we just don't know (but many do not believe that their claims will stand up to scrutiny).

What I see from some contributors to this topic is the desire to gain an understanding of these claims so that these hypothesis can be supported or not supported. At this early stage there is no data available. I do not think it unreasonable that they ask about the methodology and values your daughter obtained so that they can be interpreted in an appropriate context. I'm sure that your daughter working in a scientific field would understand and respect that approach. I also respect that there may be factors which we are unaware of which may make a request for specifics difficult from your daughter difficult.

As stated, I take on face value that your daughter has made appropriate measurements and was able to detect a difference in "magnetism" (however that is defined by the equipment she used). A measured difference does not mean a significant difference. An at this stage we do not have sufficient evidence to determine what are significant levels/differences.

An analogy comes from my predecessor at work. She became quite ill, and eventually left because of it. She firmly believed that the cause of her illness was "radiation", after she found that cabelling passed below the flooring of her office. Experts were brought in who detected and made scientific measurements of the radiation in the room. They were able to make recommendations which would halve the amount of radiation emitted which were followed in refurbishments a year later. Although they measured radiation, sufficient data existed to be able to compare measured levels to established safe levels. They concluded that the annual radiation exposure from working full-time in the room was less than half the annual radiation exposure received from a domestic microwave. She worked part-time, and was convinced there was a difference. I worked in the same room full-time, and did not notice any ill-effects.

So until we have research establishing that vinyl/CDs can be magnetised/demagnetised and those levels affect reproduction, it is hard to draw definitive conclusions. That certain individuals claim to hear a difference is not proof, but the anecdotal evidence may give cause to fully explore the phenomena so definitive conclusions can be drawn.

 

Is this not where the paradox occurs, now you hear it, as it's a Placebo effect?

 

Back in the mid 80's I was working part time, whilst doing my degree, for a Linn, Naim dealer.

Our mid priced range of equipment was fairly large and the staff more often than not agreed on what was best in a particular price range. We never gave our opinion about the merits of a particular amp etc unless asked, we'd just play the music.
We'd find that generally customers would purchase particular products, however a good review in a HI FI magazine and you'd know sales would be skewed for a few months. Of course we did get it wrong sometimes and our faves didn't sell well, you can only lead to water!

 

Yes. And good research should be able to separate facts from placebo. But research needs to be based on sound hypothesis. And there is a lot of evidence, based on current knowledge, to suggest that magnetism would not affect vinyl/CD sound quality. In the same way that there is no knowledge to suggest that magnetic tape playback quality would be compromised by shining a red laser on the tape.

 

Just about every PVC formula I've seen has Antimony Oxide in it. I'm not real sure
about a Vinyl record formula, I'm guessing it's just a cheap formula. I could do an
IR scan to see if it has a Antimony peak.

Antimony trioxide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »

 

One difficulty is that Psychology is a pseudo science and I say this with a Psychology degree (in the dim and distant). The barriers to getting any data that might satisfy scientific rigor is just not going to happen in my lifetime, probably said this before but you're coming at this quandary from the wrong side.

 

Even IF impurities in vinyl can hold a magnetic charge, there is nothing about vinyl playback that involves reading magnetic charges. It is purely a physical process, effectuated by the stylus moving back and forth over vinyl grooves. The stylus moves the cantilever, which then moves either a magnet or coil close or farther away from a coil or magnet, creating electricity.

 

Interesting point. The antimony variant you're referencing is typically used as a flame retardant in certain PET and other plastics. However, antimony only exhibits diamagnetic properties and diamagnetism is a quantum mechanical effect that occurs in all materials, hence my comment earlier in the thread about Furutech's goofy 'data' in relation to its Demaga device and being able to derive similarly irrelevant results from a lump of cat food. When diamagnetism is the only contribution to the magnetism the material is called a diamagnet. Unlike a ferromagnet, a diamagnet is not a permanent magnet. Its magnetic permeability is less than μ0 - about the same permeability as a hard vacuum. Diamagnetism is a weak quantum effect, so far below the sensitivity of any stylus and cartridge ever conceived as to be essentially impossible to describe in common terms. It's irrelevant. A demagnetiser does not operate at a quantum mechanical level, and cannot induce or degrade or in any other way affect the quantum-level diamagnetism of a substance of any kind, nor can any demagnetiser change the diamagnetic property to paramagnetic.

 

Time to move this to "long and winding threads..." Here's some interesting information from the Audio Industry Historical Society site:

"The key to the LP was the vinyl compound. Prior to vinyl, records were formed out of a thermoset resin that was very stiff and brittle. It stayed flat and it had a pretty good surface hardness to allow several playings before the noise of the scratches became too loud. The vinyl compound contained about a dozen ingredients, 90% of which were either pvc or pva. The color came from carbon black, which was also a key. It provided lubrication for the needle to ride along the groove without leaving a mark, which would result in noise – swish, tick, pop, crackle, hiss, and roar. Those are bonafide quality terms used in the process, which I will comment on later.

The carbon black also allowed the operators and inspectors to just see the surface and not any defects or contamination below the surface, since below the surface issues wouldn’t affect the sound. And since carbon black was actually soot created from burning organic fuel in an oxygen starved atmosphere, it also was the primary cause of contamination. You know, debris that might be formed during the creation of the carbon black. Any debris could scratch a stamper during the molding (aka “pressing”), therefore ruining any further records pressed with that stamper.

The remaining ingredients in the record compound were waxes, stabilizers, and anti-oxidants. Every one had to be totally compatible with the main vinyl mixture in order for the surface of the record to be SAABA – Smooth As A Baby’s Ass – another bonafide quality term used in the process. The vinyl compound was very unstable at elevated temperatures, too. There is a small temperature/time window between getting the compound soft enough to mold accurately to the groove configuration, and when the compound begins to decompose. Besides causing some of those noise terms, the decomposing of pvc created hydrochloric acid in vapor form – which was murder on the equipment to say nothing of the damage to the coworkers respiratory systems. The smell of the press room was acrid and often brought tears to my eyes, unless the bigshots were coming for a visit. Then it smelled like wet paint." ...​

A bit of other neat history from the site that hints at the quality of the engineering that probably doesn't need rethinking of the product:

...Train cars of chemicals and vinyl pellets pulled up to what I was told were sixteen acres under one roof, although I haven’t verified that 700,000-square- ft estimate. People in the industry called us the Death Star.

Before the CBS record plant in Carrollton, GA was built four years before, Pittman, NJ and Terre Haute, IN were the two primary recorded music manufacturing sites for CBS. The Terre Haute plant produced its first records in December of 1957. Appropriately the first record pressed was “Christmas with Arthur Godfrey.” By 1979 the number of record presses in Terre Haute had increased from 20 to 186. Everything was done there, and it took 5000 people to do it. The Pitman plant began in 1960, employing 500 people. In 1978 Joe Kroll, our plant manager but at the time Pitman’s, estimated they produced 300,000 singles per day. The corporate plan moved everything to Georgia by 1983, so in 1983 5,000 people in Terre Haute lost their jobs. Pitman lost 500 jobs and ended up being shut down in 1986 for conversion to CD production. Carrollton ended up employing around 1400 people.

One reason the plant absorbed all the manufacturing was the implementation of production techniques and automation that allowed more to be produced with fewer people. Ideas flowed from the Stamford research teams to the Engineering teams at Milford, who invented production-line gadgets, to the in-house engineers that would shepard the changes into production. There was a little of everything; we had Engineers for plastics, chemicals, mechanical, injection molding, electronics, process, environment facility, and more.​

90% of the vinyl now used to press records comes from Thailiand..

 

So I only got to the end of page two, and I have to agree that there is absolutely something to all of this, what needs to be done by people with the time, knowledge and tools is to possibly identify different eras of vinyl formulations and how they differ. The seventies saw a gas crisis that sent record plants into recycling mode, some were making noisier than normal vinyl and some were maintaining better quality.
It is maybe possible that some vinyl formulations have the magnetism within and some don't depending on how the process and materials vary. I suppose if the carbon black (or whatever element is responsible) is prevalent in all black vinyl then there is going to be some degree of a magnetic charge in all -unless it gets discharged.
I know with static that all it takes to discharge is a soft wet cloth, This thread does make me wish I still had my old head demagnetizer wand, as I don't think the wet cloth thing would dissipate a magnetic field -or would it?

 

ubiknik is your avitar, you, taken as you try to understand how much fluff it takes to fill the human brain?

 

Vinyl LP records are not and inherently cannot be magnetic unless somebody deliberately laces the vinyl with a lot of ferromagnetic material. To the best of my knowledge it has never been done. Somebody show me or point me to even a one-off example of such an LP.

Anyway, you're crossing up a static electrical charge on the surface of an LP with magnetic fields, but static electricity and magnetism are two utterly different things with merely a couple of common characteristics. Static electricity is caused by an imbalance of positive and negative charges on a surface, often induced by rubbing a surface. Magnetism, on the other hand, is created by rotating electric charges that create a field.

The Earth's magnetoshpere is very powerful in that it helps the planet retain our envelope of air, repels most of the radiation from the Solar wind that bathes the planet every second, and is one of the fundamental aspects in the study of geophysics, gravity and so on. Static electricity, by comparison, is a transitory effect that acts completely differently and completely locally.

All items - all things - are magnetic: diamagnetic, paramagnetic or magnetic. The thing is that, except in ferrous materials and some exotic man-made alloys, magnetic properties in all other materials are quantum properties that are unimaginably tiny. Such unimaginably tiny properties are undetectable by and completely unaffected by the grossly coarse instruments mentioned in this thread (including common fluxometers, tape head demagnetizers, the Furutech Demaga, bulk tape erasers, and so on), all of which can only detect the field strengths of the Earth's magnetosphere or higher (i.e., at least 0.25 microtesla), or affect the general alignment of ferrous particles that are generating a magnetic field, or change the polarity of an induced magnetic field. Everything else, including the purported demagnetizing of vinyl LPs, is just imagination not fact.

The chemistry, physics and properties of these things are well understood now, and all of this sort of thing has been and is being clearly taught in junior high school and high school science classes. That makers of vinyl LP demagnetizers and other pseudo-scientific junk can still convince people to forget the basic science they learned in high school is remarkable and a kind of depressing tribute to the social engineering writing, guerilla marketing and marketing collateral produced by such product makers.

 

I posted after finishing page two, but read it all after that. One might think the human brain is either full of fluff and nothing but, or completely void of any filler depending on your point of view. Modern theory put forth by Hawking tends to favor the concept that free will is possibly an illusion and that within this universe the past, present and future are all existing and absolutely entwined.
Whether I demagnetize a record in the future is apparently already determined -I just don't know it.

 

I know music always sounds better with drugs

 

Ok, random question - but would a Han-D-mag have any adverse effect on tape?

I figured it would wipe out a recording at least to some extent… I tried it over a plastic reel and felt it rattle and hum as I got closer. But it seems to have had no audible effect. What gives? I always make a big effort to keep it away from any electronics or magnetic media as much as humanly possible.

And if it doesn't effect a tape, why on earth would we think it can effect a cd

 

I wasn't crossing them up,I knew they were different. I was just musing that as the conductive water in the cloth can draw a static charge away from something that maybe it could do some diminishing to a magnetically charged field.
You pretty much cleared that up for me. I know in nature magentizm in one form or another is created and also can change (the Earth's magnetic polls swap polarity, what every 500k years?), I'm really good at getting concepts within the scientific realm but live life rather myopically and tend to focus more on things I am more adept at like art, so I tend to let facts about scientific principles blur over time. My working knowledge of how to get the most out of oil based paint is really strong though...
I do appreciate the refresher on the utter grand scale of magnetizm, I must have a subconscious trigger to avoid too much absorption of too much scientific data, I used to work for a master electrician who builds everything from recording studios to speakers and data network systems, (he even wrote some software for some physician consortium that saved them at least a million dollars a year) who now teaches basic electronics and audio theory at Columbia University in Chicago. I know him as Andy and he will answer my questions, but that often results in him creating charts and long dialogues, then my brain starts to glaze over. He gave me a nice simple plan to make shunts that are fairly simple though.