Ah, oleagenous reptilian excretions!! How I love to hear about them.......
I have heard of Bybees, and their cousings, the Shun Mook pucks.
I do know people who swear by them. I also know people, specifically trainined in engineering, who grow apoplectic at their mention.
Let me relay somewhich shown me a few days ago.
A very clever man, a scientist by training who spent many years as a mastering engineer in London, played me his modded CD player in his home. Incredible, outstanding system it was, too.
He removed the metal top of the CD player. It sounded somehow better, 'open', dare I say it??
Put it back, took it off, put it back, there was definitely a difference.
I'm pretty sure you cannot measure this on a CRO, or with any kind of analyser. But I heard a difference, not that my ears are that wonderful. It was more lifelike with the top OFF.
On this basis I feel that the proximity of ferrous materials to sensitive audio circuitry could be problematic. Call it resonance, hysteresis, whatever you prefer, but I suspect that the Bybee discs might be working in this area. It is important to keep an open mind, because fact is always stranger than fiction. I recall that Tesla was doing experiments in Colorado Springs in 1900 which showed the natural electromagnetic resonance of the planet to be around 8Hz. Everyone said he was mad. Now this is accepted science. Witches were burned at the stake in medieval England, and even in the 1600s in Salem....... we can now surmise that some of these people were merely mentally ill, and there are now long medical descriptions of their ailments, which are commonplace today and well understood. My attitude is to be sceptical, never sneering or offensive, and quietly examine the facts, and see if, over time, there is any truth to it. For example, there is now evidence that the magnetic field of earth is important to human health, and that the debilitating effects of space on the health of astronauts are somehow related to the withdrawal of the larger portion of this field. These days, space stations and the space shuttle are fitted with Sherman rings, which create a static magnetic field within and appear to restore astronaut health, enabling long stays in space which hitherto proved very damaging.
Dunno, Ian, Kyrill, jury's out. But I for one am listening. There is a lot about audio that can't be measured, of that I'm convinced. Until we can measure it all with a 100% correlation with good sound, then audio will remain an unholy combination of engineering and art with continuing daily duels to the death between objectivists and subjectivists.
Cheers,
Hugh
