miklorsmith:
As a true and proper Beltist, I have extensive experience with the pwb stuff. If you want to know how it is alleged to work, you can ask me. But... it doesn't really matter in the end, because people will always believe whatever they are inclined to believe, and that generally means following their prejudices. So even if I go to lengths to explain it to you, you may not believe a word of it. For decades, there have been many products that audiophiles have tried but established science can't find an explanation for, so it gets written off as an illusion, when it isn't.
The cream electret is indeed rubbed on and then the excess is lightly cleaned off (it only takes a micron thickness to work). The silver rainbow foil is indeed adhesive. It is cut in strips 15mm x 2-3mm wide. What and where you place it influences how it will affect sound. Yes, I have tried different foils and the different foils do indeed produce different sonic effects. The silver rainbow foil is the least good of all the foils, but the cheapest, hence the most popular.
I have just read messages where people are trying to guess how this stuff might work, with the usual ideas about how the CD laser mechanism might interact with the foils or how cream electret interacts with the optical properties of a CD... Please don't do that! It clouds everything up, and makes a very little understood phenomenon even more poorly understood. -None- of the PWB products have any effect whatsoever on the audio signal or acoustic waves, which includes the cd's laser mechanism. They are nothing like the products of anyone else (with the exception of one of Machina Dynamica's), including Mapleshade's, despite whether they appear similar to you. A foil or the cream could have as much or more of an effect on your hot water tank than it does on your CD. (In fact, I would prefer to apply it to those kind of things than CDs). It helps to know where best to apply them, but for beginners, the CD or LP speed logo is a fine place to start.
The spiral tubing is great, I use it at the end of my headphones and USB cables (for my mp4 player). I understand why you say the cable rings add tizziness... don't write them off! Its because you dont have them in the right location. I don't know what cable rings you have or where you have tried them, but i suggest this: attach them to an alligator clip, and listen along the length of a cable, say your interconnect. That will better tell you where to apply them for correct sound. Or simply start by applying them to the input end of the IC, just where the wire meets the connector.
martinr:
>> its quantum physics B.S. as far as Im concerned. Weird stuff but worth a try if you're a tweaker.<<
It's not quantum physics BS, but if you think it is, I'd like to hear specifically why. If you have a better explanation of how the phenomenon works, that doesn't include the usual dismissive placebo theory, I'd like to hear that too.
gooberdude:
I've read some of the threads on AA that you were referring to. So I'm wondering if you're being sarcastic when you say about May's threads on AA, that it says a whole lot about PWB's conviction in their products?
I'm not so sure about the locations you tried for the foil sample you received. I've tried similar locations on a Rega P3, and didn't get good results (other locations on the deck proved to be better however). You might want to stick to the traditional CD logo for your foils. The foils -do- make a noticable difference, not just by my own experience, but I have blind tested them on total noobs. Careful listening and an open mind is usually all it takes for people to recognize their sonic signature. It may not be obvious what changes have taken place, because like all Belt products, they change characteristics that we are not used to having changed, since conventional audio operates on different components of the sound. The Belt stuff tends to make things simply sound more "natural" and less "electronic". Now how do you define "natural" to someone who has yet to recognize that sound?
Try this: Listen very carefully to a good recording, then quickly remove your foils, place them on the CD or DVD logos, many at a time, then listen again for a few minutes. Then quickly remove the foils, leave them adhesive side up on a sheet of paper, move the paper to another room, listen again. If you can't hear differences the first, try a couple more times. Many of these tests fail not because of the product or even the listener's ability, but the test methodology. And you're right, because even in a technical sense, it really does produce positive energy!
>>What gets me the most about P.W.B. are the prices.<<
Yeah, most people have that reaction looking at the price list, because they don't understand the products at all. Once you get beyond the "does it work?" stage, you look at that price list differently, and realize that the costlier products are far more effective, and simply priced according to the relative value, not their cost of manufacture. It all works out to the same in the end. It might cost you $1k to upgrade your cd player, and if $1k of an alternative means provided better sound than the cd upgrade, it might make more sense for some to take the alernative path. But most people find the foils and cream more cost effective than anything else you can get in this business.
The $850 clip you mentioned, is a good example, for it is a product that affects -everything-. Everything that the device treats improves the overall sound, and the devices you can treat is almost limited to everything you have in your house... hence to "those in the know", the sound can improve in the end -far more- than anything $850 will get you with conventional upgrades. And if you think you can get any clip (or magnet) that looks the same and it will do the same thing, its because you dont know what they can do. Trust me, been there done that! The positive energy of such products comes not in the cost, but in the sonic benefits they provide. I have proven to many that they don't have to cost anything to provide at least some hint of the benefits the products provide.
The ideas, whatever you may think of them, just work. The old guy that runs your recording studios might be even more amazed if Belt's products were installed all over the place, and he did recording tests after the installations, to find that they improved the quality of the recordings! But there isn't a "physical" connection to understand, like a "smoother cd surface", so it would be harder to appreciate in that sense. But try smearing Mapleshade's product all over the place and see how much the recordings are affected!
