Ummm… I associate with a bunch of hardcore audiophiles… and I’ve done many experiments in materials resonance for these audiophiles… and yes, metal resonances of amplifiers and other electronics STRONGLY colors the final audible result… so this goes against the grain of popular opinion, however it is most true… yes, I coated the amp box with strad varnish, not the speakers (used a different resonance shaping product there), and yes, coating an amp box can have startling effects on the final sound… then I went one better, or two better, I formulated a special varnish composed on micron fine industrial diamond powder and C37 lacquer into a paint, and painted a digital amplifier cabinet with the same… essentially this was “paint on diamond coating” of real diamond, about 50 carats of real diamond (don’t worry, industrial diamond isn’t priced like gemstone diamond)… result was downright stupifying… for the same reason that tweeters made of vapor deposited diamond membrane sound like nothing else money can buy…
No, unfortunately your understanding are in error, although many confusions are (deliberately ?) being promoted by a community filled with misinformation… and I don’t think this onslaught of misinformation is accidental… because it is part of marketing PR to justify mass consumption of amusical dogshit as “permium” engineering… not only CAN microresonances have a dramatic effect on amplified perception, they absolutely DO, and not only do they, but the quality of these resonances have a pronounced effect on your state of consciousness… in effect, you are being propagandized with a fucked up bill of goods by a mass marketing engine that is determined to get you to believe certain things about the state of electronic design in order to make certain purchasing choices look, feel, seem, be accepted as intelligent and reasonable… 
Once you wake up and realize how thoroughly your mind has been taken to the cleaners in order to seduce you into lifestyle decisions and tastes and “reasonable assumptions” about how to go about the business of being human… and how ruthlessly and brilliantly this has been accomplished, and how many billions of dollars have chaged hands by shaping perceptions and attitudes… then you will being to see life through very different lenses, and hear through very different ears…
And that leaves us where ?.. how do pheromones fit into all of this… well, pheromones are basically fine tuned cognitive enhancers that work in specific ways… some have noted that pheromones have a potent effect on hearing, the “how” of hearing, and that’s of critical importance… because how we navigate reality has a great deal to do with the “how” of perceiving reality… just as other pheromones have substantial effects on how one visually processes facial information, or figure/ground relationships… and just as those who have never directly experienced pheromones, what they are capable of, rest assured that there are other ways into the sensoria that are equally worthy, some bordering on the mystical… so many will insist that “sound can’t possibly do that” or whatever…“sex can’t possibly be like that”… but, it can, it does… and once it does, once you cross the line, it is nearly impossible to go back to your original shape.
As I started reading your first reply to martyk, I came to see where layering paint on the metal cabinets of electronic compnonets could make a difference. I had not even thought about the resonance effect on electronic equipment, but it makes sense.
You have an electrical signal vibrating at up to 30,000 times per second travelling through transistors, capacitors and diodes, each having a gate, or other distance to jump between conductors. On top of that there are one or more transformers, which change voltage and current values by the generation of magentic fields
I can see where resonance on an electronic component could cause the transformers to generate a distorted initial signal, which could become further distorted passing through transistor gates, and conductors in capacitors and diodes.
I can see how painting the surface with diamond dust could dull the resonances passing through the metal, allowing for a cleaner signal path.
I have to wonder why high end audio manufactors, such as Wadia, Krell Bryston, McIntosh, PS Audio, etc. have not researched into this.
Out of curiousity, have you tried placing isolation dampeners under the amplifiers as well?
There are many points to consider… one is that many manufacturers are locked into narrow engineering thinking… Dan D’Agostino of Krell was ADAMANT that methods and approaces wouldn’t work then came to see that they did… I have met more adamant “I am an engineer there I know more than you” folks in design than I’d care to mention… OTOH, Japanese and European audiophiles take a different tack… I have multiple isolation and floation tools at my disposal, like german magnetic levitation devices, american low friction ball bearing devices… my audio rack sits on four super hard silicon nitride balls which sit on four carbon fiber foot pods made by Grand Prix Audio… I have extensively used Kuichi’s treatements from Harmonix Corporation, I lust after a Gaku-OH amplifier, wiring by Kondo is to die for, I use pure carbon fiber interconnects in my office system because I can hear metal wire, one set of my speakers has pure beryllium tweeters, my television is extensively modded with Harmonix vibratory tool, I have Tchang resonators up by my ceiliing, they’re made of pure silver and they sit on maple blocks I had soaked in liquid nitrogen, my room is tuned with giant ACS Helmholtz resonant absorbers and ACS quadratic residue diffusers, I have installed complex acoustic configurations in other’s spaces, including a 9 gram pure platinum Tchang resonator that now list for 2,500 US dollars, my office speakers are precisely weighted with aluminum cylinders filled with tungsten particles, all of my vacuum tubes are custom treated with a double series of cryogenic cooling at -320 F, I have more than 5000 dollar cables, I have russian wires made of alloys of gold and silver, the receptacles in my wall are Oyaide hyper pure alloy, also cryogenically treated with carbon fiber faceplates, I sling solder like a mofo, so to answer your question, yeah we do some experiments…
Ah, forgot to mention, I fasten the toroids down with aerospace grade titanium nuts screwed down on silicon bronze bolts… don’t get started on capacitors…
Point is, take home point… there are things nobody thinks twice about because they are fixated on a widely held public assumption that a general knowledge or a common understanding is close to the master level grasp, and this is a deeply deceptive bit of pandering, where psychological and social markers of coolness are attached to the objects, ideas, fantasies, and whatnot that might be numbingly mediocre in comparison to the real goods… because nobody is spending a fortune on a marketing campaing to help you appreciate what the real deal is, the money is suckering you into imagining you know what quality is all about then selling you a lot of that…
OK Tacitus, you’re about 10 levels higher into audio than I ever got, but I can definately appreciate the time and effort you put into your system.
At my peak I was running a Lexicon DC1 pushing into a couple of bridged Perreaux 2155B power amps running a set of Acoustat 2+2’s, another Perreaux amp poweing a set of Audio One loudspeakers (If memory serves me), a B&K amp powering my center channel speaker, which I think was a PSB, finally a mid end Velodyne Subwoofer to supplement the Acoutstats and for home theatre effects. All cabling between components was .999 silver, can’t remember the manufacturer though. And my speaker wiring was also high end, but cannot remember that brand either.
Did I mention the bird landed on the ground in front of me today? Yup and I still couldn’t decern what type of bird it was. Pretty sure some type of eagle. It was like I had a mental connection with him.
Well, then in this case I must bow to your obvious experience and deep pockets.
What I remember of my studies on memory tell me that after about 5 minutes memory of audio/visual stimuli are reduced to the bare skeletal signature of the event. This is further complicated by the psychological matter of the event. Upon making the change, the listener subjects themself to increased focus in an attempt to perceive the differences they have made. Therefore, the only proper way to test the difference in the equipment is with the original unmodified version to compare to.
It is my unfortunate experience that most of the audiophiles I have met do not seem to evaluate their findings according to any scientific experimental procedure. Which is very unfortunate as the equipment necessary to perform the proper side by side testing is significantly cheaper than most of the equipment they would be testing.
Since audio is such a subjective thing, it extremely easy to build any sort of scam around it, which is why I try to remain wary. I feel fairly privileged that I was able to build a decent system without much investment. As an engineer and a man of science, I can only accept what I see and hear.
In closing, all I know is that I don’t know anything.
martyk,
It’s been my experience that audiophiles test equipment with their ears rather than any sort of equipment, and when it comes right down to it, the only thing that really matters is how it sounds to the buyer.
I have seen specs on equipment that should have sounded incredible, but didn’t. And, I have heard equipment that didn’t fare well on paper, but sounded more accurate than equipment costing 4 times as much - NAD is a great example of such equipment, albeit theirs is high mid end equipment, costing in the upper low end range.
I think the question that needs to be addressed is “When you were born, where will you go?” Once the answer to that is reached, then you’ll know your ready to describe in as precise detail as possible, what you all are not thinking about, as well as the dichotomy of the posit that asks if it is possible to think about what you’re not thinking about without thinking about it.
When all else fails, count to forty-goose, bark like a foot, and sing the alphabet in the key of 7. Clarity will be reached or you’ll be so fucked up that you won’t give a damn.
-D4
Mmmm… you know about the corvidae, the raven family ? The animal connection is a fundamental point… I think this was one of the basic things known to native americans… and also a zone of disconnect between consumer culture and what was well known to them… to live in and among animals on their terms as much as on yours is greatly unlike the suburbanized, homogenized, plasticized way of life we seem to be so proud of, in many ways so defensive of… Yeah, you can have mental connections with animals and those connections will freak you out when you sense how connected they can be, or you see some moment of breathtaking animal intelligence, or you sense these psychic “pulses” of relation with them… I feel like those same psychic pulses, or animal energies are present in deep erotics and that’s one of the factors that distinguishes deep erotics from Plastik Sechs… so here is an interesting salient thing, we talk about some kinds of sex as “animalistic”, i.e. in the manner of, yet there are other levels that are “animal-mind”, and sometimes both animalistic and animal-mind… I think this actively aware animal mind is somewhat what Erickson, Grinder, Carlos Casteneda, the Sufis, etc were contemplating when they spoke of accessing the Second Attention… as if the contemporary Plastik Brain is over dominated by the frontal lobes, perhaps to the point where the prefrontal cortex is being used for functions it was not designed, bevause we have long traditions of discrediting the Second Attention, that core part of ourselves has become gelationous, flabby, weak, unfocused… and more, what we may be feeling in very dilute, transient ways with the use of Pheromones, is a brief window into the Second Attention part of ourselves…
bump. see post on sheldrake and morphic/morphogenetic fields
Are you still using the Nova Pro PQ? I use mine pretty much daily. Do you have any favorite routines you can share?