[satfrat]

I asked Jack Bybee about placing the Purifiers on the return (negative) side of the speakers, and why I was getting positive results. ...

       Hi Mike, Elco1 asked youa question,,,, I will repeat it,,,, What did Jack Bybee say???? I can tell you what I told me, he said that thru his experimentation, he found that 2 Bybee in series on the positive lead worked best in his Bybee speaker filters. I concur! I`ll also say that 2 Bybee inlines on a digital cable takes nothing away and adds tremendous dynamics to the music. AND 2 large Bybees in an AC application, one on the hot lead and the other on the negative in a balanced power conditioner give the best results for total system dynamics. These are my observations and mine only, ymmv? Regards, Robin

[cryotweaks]

Thanks for the info Stu,  makes me want to fire my soldering iron up and Tweak my preamp.

Perhaps we need a Bybee workshop, where all interested distributors and enthusiasts can bring their gear, put in to practice the proposed tweaks, try new ones, and listen to the results together.  I say we meet in your home town, yeah.  A trip to Hawaii, and a tax writeoff...

Ya think we could get Jack to attend?

I answer to Satfrat's question.  Jack didn't say anything to me.  Only that he was in a hurry at the time and would get back to me.  In the meantime, he instigated a dialogue between Wayne Donnelly of enjoythemusic.com, Stu of Audio Direct, and me.  It appeared that all of us had been working on similar ideas unbeknownst to each other.

[Hantra]

I`ll also say that 2 Bybee inlines on a digital cable takes nothing away and adds tremendous dynamics to the music.

You have to either have a really low resolution digital playback system in the first place, or be totally stone drunk to not notice things missing as soon as you throw a Bybee onto a digital line.  

I mean no disrespect, but perhaps you should go back and listen again to something acoustic which actually has harmonics before judging how good the Bybees are.  I thought they were great, until I finally decided to take one off while listening to some Tony Rice.  Holy cow!  It is hard not to hear what they take away. .For me anyway, and anyone else who heard it at my place.

Perhaps we need a Bybee workshop, where all interested distributors and enthusiasts can bring their gear, put in to practice the proposed tweaks, try new ones, and listen to the results together.

I'd surely like to go to this so I could learn how to get things that the Bybee does well, without the murderous side effects. .

B

[satfrat]

First off Hantra, you seem to have attitude for someone who`s not trying to be disrespectful, second,, I don`t drink,,,  third, I AM listening to these incredible Bybee digital improvements on Monster Cable Interlink 400 coax thru very old Bose floorsanding speakers. BUT that said, these dynamic improvements to the music are so obvious with none of the downsides that you refer to that I can only conclude (in my mind) there may be a hidden agenda here at work. Either way, my component shortcomings will be alleviated shortly and if I heard what your hearing (which I sincerely doubt) I WILL post a retraction and personnally apologise to you for this post. But I would have spent the amount of money that I have on Bybee`s if I wasn`t absolutely convinced of their affectiveness and have no problems saying so, regardless of your insinuations. Regards, Robin

[Hantra]

you seem to have attitude for someone who`s not trying to be disrespectful

You're right man. . .  I did have a bit too much of an attitude in that last post, but I still am not trying to disrespect YOU.  I am disrespecting the product b/c I have heard it with my own ears, and people I respect in the industry hear the same thing I heard.  So my attitude possibly is one of pity for the folks who didn't take the time to sit down and pull these things out to hear what they do to the music.

I was going to ignore your trollish comments about having a "hidden agenda", but I will say that my only agenda here is to share my own experience so that others might listen for themselves more closely to hear what they are losing.  I suppose I could be just as much a "theoretical physicist" as Mr. Bybee himself.  We both have the same credentials, but I don't make claims to have a "superconductive" device that frees your hi-fi from the damnation of renegade electrons.  

my component shortcomings will be alleviated shortly

Good for you man.  Although I may have had a bit of an attitude, I applaud you for being man enough to admit your system shortcomings.  As you increase your system's ability to resolve microscopic details, and real harmonics, you will surely be able to hear what I am talking about. . .

L8r,

B

[satfrat]

Well Hantra, after what you just said, I feel no need to wait for a system upgrade to apologise right now for the "hidden agenda" remark. That was more a defensive remrk than any personal beliefs on my part about you as I`ve always liked your insightful posts. But there`s no doubt that I`m opinionated and have an attitude of my own. But I will continue to stand behind my thoughts on the use of Bybee`s on the digital coax til such time as I realize different. Have a great day guy!  Regards, Robin

[Hantra]

I`m opinionated and have an attitude of my own.

That makes two of us. . .    

Perhaps 2 Bybees on the digital would have put back what it took away with just one.  

Nevertheless, if I spent the money on two Bybees, I'd be inclined to believe that there was no negative impact as well. . .

Doesn't matter anyway.  If it sounds good to you, it sounds good. . .  I just don't want anyone to be missing anything.  Just seems plain wrong.  

B

[john curl]

Most of the responses on this thread seem to be hearsay evidence from conversations at some point in time with Jack Bybee.  Well, I talked to Jack Bybee about it this morning, and he says that different devices used over the years behave differently.  You just have to try for yourself, to find what is optimum for you.  Also, most of us would agree, in advance, that Bybee filters in series with tube rectifiers, or even filaments will not do much.  There are good reasons for this, mostly because solid state diodes make problems that tube diodes do not.

[audiodir]

Mike: Jack was in town a year or so ago, and he put on a show and tell for the local audio club which includes Jim Hagerman. Jim's  attitude mirrors many of the other engineers with whom I have talked about concerning the Bybees. Most are rather incredulous and very skeptical, one designer saying that it was akin to developing a perpetual motion machine. I sent that guy a set of Bybees and he installed them on his speakers, and he called me to tell me that there was no way he was ever going to take them off. I had another engineer, a Boeing EE working on the data-com links for the commercial aircraft and he reported that after taking the devices to his work bench all he could measure was  a simple resistance from zero to RF frequencies. Ever the skeptic he installed the units in his kid's system and after they broke in he transfered them to his main system. He reports that his wife started grumbling about how bad the sound became....
At any rate most engineers work with voltages and tend to neglect the current lag, primarily because there was almost nothing we could do to eliminate the current/voltage lag. We finally have a way to do it, but it forces us to rethink a lot of the circuit applications (not that I am an engineer!).
One of the additional problems is that the perspective changes very dramatically, particularly in the lower frequencies. Prior to inserting the Bybees in my system I was resigned to the fact that woofers always sounded slow. I attributed that to the extra mass a typical woofer has in comparison to a tweeter. With the Bybees, however, the woofer speeds up so much that it can sound almost as quick as a tweeter, showing that the current lag is primarily responsible for the perception of a woofer sounding 'slow'. With so much more information coming from the larger drivers, the midrange and the woofer, very often the perception is that there is less highs and less detail, when the opposite is true. With more information, sometimes it is harder to perceive all that is going on. The analogy I like to make is a comparison between a photo and a line drawing. It is very easy to pick out what is going on in a drawing, but often because there is so much detail, the photo makes it difficult to absorb everything at first glance.

Stu

[Hantra]

With so much more information coming from the larger drivers, the midrange and the woofer, very often the perception is that there is less highs and less detail, when the opposite is true. With more information, sometimes it is harder to perceive all that is going on.

Stu:

That makes sense.  In my situation, I have no doubt that there was information missing.  An example is, on track 1 of "Unit of Measure" by the Tony Rice Unit, there are many instrumentsp playing.  Listening to it with the Bybee was great!  The extra bass was a nice addition to my system.  

When I took it out, both my friend, and I were flabbergasted!  In addition to haveing Tony playing right there in the room, NOW we also had a bass player, a mandolin player, and a fiddler!!!!!  Before, the sonic picture seemed quite homogenized, and much of the information was there, but it all was just mashed together as part of the sound.  With the Bybee off the digital line, you could make out the bass player, and even the size of the bass.  Also, I did NOT hear the mandolin at ALL before.  Tony's guitar had the harmonics I was accustomed to hearing when I see Tony, and when I have played that Santa Cruz many times.

There was extra bass, but not enough to cover all that up!!!

B

[KevinW]

Hrm, very interesting thread... I want to do a little sleuthing though on the dramatic problems that Hantra experienced.  He has good ears and isn't one to have an agenda outside of talking about what has worked best in his direct experience.

Were you using the add-on bybee that plug into an RCA jack, or were you using soldered in bybees?  And what part of the signal path were your bybees located?

On a digital signal, adding essentially an extra cable with an extra metal-metal contact would likely produce reflections of the high-frequency digital signal that would intermodulate with the "clean" signal and cause the problem Hantra experienced.  

I would always try to solder in bybees whenever possible.  In the digital domain, cardas quad eutectic solder makes the best sounding joints.

[Hantra]

Well Kevin. . .Thanks for being the only one who thinks I am sane.  hehehe

Actually, I wouldn't mind trying a Bybee or two again in a different configuration.  Perhaps the Bybee just doesn't work well with my DAC.  I'm not sure.

Were you using the add-on bybee that plug into an RCA jack, or were you using soldered in bybees? And what part of the signal path were your bybees located?

I was using one of Wayne's Bybee Inlines.  My Bybee was right before the DAC, on the digital cable coming off the transport.

Perhaps because that Sony is so ruthlessly revealing, it was easier to tell what was happening.  Perhaps since most people have digital with artificially sparkly highs, they don't completely LOSE the highs, and probably just lose lots of the nastiness.

Who knows at this point.  Like I said, if I could get the added "oomph" without the homogenized sound with no subtractive effects, I'd love to do that.

Also, remember when we were talking about Eddy currents with regard to the Jenna cables?  The AU24 are supposed to have extremely low Eddy currents, and I wonder if when you add the Bybee, it just brings back some things that the AU24 takes away.

L8r man. . .

B

[KevinW]

My understanding of how Bybees work is slightly different in terms of the underlying physics. I learned the following from Jena Labs, who purposely designs her cables to not need a bybee filter.  Jack has told her that her design is the first cable he's heard that received no additional benefit from the bybee filters.  She certainly knows a thing or two to get that kind of praise.

Jack Bybee calls the filters a "quantum purifier" because it removes a form of noise that is quantized in a strict physical sense.  An analog electrical signal is anything BUT quantized, but there is a special circumstance in which "phonons" are created by the transmission of an electrical signal in a conductor.  This phonon moves at the speed of sound, and is thus instantly out of phase with the electrical signal.  The phonon is then re-converted to an electrical signal at an impedance junction, at which point it is pure noise.  Other names for impedance junctions are: voice coils, transformers, inductors, etc...

The phonons are created whenever an electron encouters a so-called "Josephson Junction", which can be caused by a number of things.  A non-copper atom in the crystal lattice forces electrons to "bend" around, creating phononic energy.  Likewise any break in the crystal structure of the copper atoms, either from physical cracks or many multiple crystal boundaries has the same effect.

Cryogenics and Bybee filters are very similar in the underlying physics. Cryo treatment works because it "crams" the copper crystals together, smoothing out any jaggedness.  When the copper warms up again and expands, the copper crystal boundaries retain the smoothness.  The colder the cryo gets, the better the effect and the smoother the crystal boundaries become. Cryogenics essentially helps to eliminate the need for bybee filters, because less phononic energy is produced.

But back on topic.  I have seen people describe the Bybees to work by bringing the voltage and current back into phase.  I believe this is an incorrect simplification for those who are either not familiar or unwilling to accept the quantum mechanical explanation.  Instead, the bybees work by removing out-of-phase current from the signal entirely.  Until bybees came along, there simply was no way to remove phononic energy except for cryogenics, which is only partially effective.

[KevinW]

I was using one of Wayne's Bybee Inlines.  My Bybee was right before the DAC, on the digital cable coming off the transport.

Hantra the problem is because you are using an in-line bybee filter.  You don't want another non-soldered metal-to-metal contact in a digital signal path.  Even the slightest impedance junction can cause reflections and ringing in the digital signal.  I am certain this is what you experienced.  Try soldering a DIY bybee just behind the input to the DAC to get the best effect. Until then, you should reserve negative judgment against bybee filters.

Digital signals are funny like that... anyone know why they specify that digital connections be 75 ohms?  It's to prevent a large impedance change in the digital signal path.  That impedance change causes reflection and ringing, which sounds like crap.  This would be effective if all digital cables, sources, and receivers were made by a signle manufacturer.  But since they're most certainly not made this way, there's enough variation that the standard doesn't always work and the ever-elusive system synergy is again required.

[Hantra]

Kevin:

You're probably right about that. . .

Totally unrelated, but. . . . If AU24 uses OHNO single crystal continuous cast, it wouldn't have boundaries, right?  Then again, that sounds physically impossible.

So, if anyone has spare Bybees they want to sell at decent deals, let me know.  I'll try another on the inside. .

B

[KevinW]

Totally unrelated, but. . . . If AU24 uses OHNO single crystal continuous cast, it wouldn't have boundaries, right?  Then again, that sounds physically impossible.

Hantra, your're quite right. It is physcially impossible to produce a cable with only ONE crystal.  However it is possible to reduce the number of crystals per unit length, which does reduce the number of crystal boundaries and hence reduces the phononic noise.  So-called "single-crystal, continuous cast" is marketing excess.  However, by reducing impurities, and reducing the number of crystal boundaries, Audience is doing the right thing.  Jena Labs does this also.

[bubba966]

So, if anyone has spare Bybees they want to sell at decent deals, let me know.  I'll try another on the inside. .

B

I believe Marbles had one Bybee he was looking to sell that's for exactly that application. Ask him if he's still got it.

[Marbles]

Nope, it's gone.

[satfrat]

Most of the responses on this thread seem to be hearsay evidence from conversations at some point in time with Jack Bybee.  Well, I talked to Jack Bybee about it this morning, and he says that different devices used over the years behave differently.  You just have to try for yourself, to find what is optimum for you.  Also, most of us would agree, in advance, that Bybee filters in series with tube rectifiers, or even filaments will not do much.  There are good reasons for this, mostly because solid state diodes make problems that tube diodes do not.

                       Hi John, in my case, it`s NOT hearsaye as I called Jack ( said hi t his wife too ) and specificly asked him what the difference was between his standard Bybee speaker filter and the Ultra model. I knew nothing about Bybee`s at the time but after having 2 large ones installed into my BPT balanced power conditioner and hearing the depth perception that was created within my speakers, I knew I wanted more of them in the chain. What he would me has held true in all applications I`ve tried and with 21 Bybee`s in my audio/video chain, that`s quite a few. I love reading about other peoples impressions/thoughts about Bybee`s and their different application but for me personally, I`ll listen to my ears first and foremost! Regards, Robin

[audiodir]

The lack of result of installing Bybees in the digital path is actually not surprising. The digital pulse rate is essentially low current but very fast voltage spikes. I doubt if there is much current/voltage time delay there. In checking my system, I realized that I had not installed any Bybees directly in the digital path as they seemed to have little effect. I can easily see why they could impair the digital sensitivity since the slight resistance afforded by the Bybees could lower the voltage to the point where it could be below the sensitivity of the receiver. Placing the Bybees in the power supply does seem to help though.
I do recall experimenting with soldering the Bybees directly in the digital pathway and hearing little difference. I removed them and placed them elsewhere in the system. The talk of using the RCA adapters spurred me into trying them on the digital path and Hantra is right, they suck!
Bybees do work extremely well in video pathways and I have them installed in the RGB outputs and have placed them in the S video and composite video outputs also.
The key here seems to be an analog waveform signal benefits from the Bybees, not PCM stuff.

Stu