Figuring out an epoxied circuit?

[Jobet]

I've been told by some of my closest friends that this could well be the very first mainstream application and demonstration of the existence of scalar waves.

If there is no empirical evidence to support me, then it's just because nobody has gone there yet. Like before Magellan, the earth was flat. No I don't want to presume, but it does seem that way. It is the first mainstream application of scalar waves that produces tangible, oops, I mean sonic evidence.

The author of Wikipedia, well...let's just say I don't know him and it should be mutual.

So there, let's leave it at that. I'm not really out to get any of your votes. However, I hope it does occur to you that your conclusion will seem hollow, when the chance to debunk it is already in front of you, and you didn't take it.

If you look at the links on Philmusic, on one of the threads there is posted pictures of a stripped scalarizer. Yes, I don't mind if you all looked and saw that it is a set of coils, with a magnet, wrapped around something.

Yet on the same thread and others there are the praises, the findings and all that. Oh yes, even the flames. Again, if you have an alternate explanation, I'm all ears. And conversely, we can webcam up and I can show you what's inside and how it's made. If that makes a difference. If not, let's leave it as it is.

It's okay sir. As Jim Croce said "if it gets me nowhere, I'll go there proud". Fortunately, it got me a little somewhere already.

Warmest.

Jobet

[PerroGrande]

Scalar fields or not, if your device produces changes to the sound of a device that can be quantified and demonstrated, and are generally regarded as "pleasing to the ear", then you're still on the "plus" side of scale.

I'm steering clear of the Physics conversations for the moment.  My undergrad degree is in Physics, so I'm not completely without clue when it comes to the underpinnings of this conversation.   

From a marketing perspective, R.G's point is very sound.  Say, for example, in a reasonable double-blind test your device can be shown to be "superior sounding" to a majority of respondents; and frequency-response curves and Fourier Analysis can show that there is, in fact, a visible change (for the better) after installing your device.  If you have these things, and your product is reasonably priced for the effect it produces, then you don't necessarily need to claim (true or otherwise) that scalar fields are involved in the production of the effect. 

If there is no empirical evidence to support me, then it's just because nobody has gone there yet.

...or it is because it doesn't exist.  Again, I'm not saying that this is or isn't the case here -- just that there is another possibility. 

I'm still interested in seeing the "before/after" B1 curves and Fourier analysis.  While I'm not necessarily convinced that you've discovered a scalar field application, I'm not ruling out the possibility that what you've created might sound good (even if it is within the realm of plain ol' Physics).   

[Jobet]

Good idea.

Let's steer clear of the Physics, call the device the X-Widget, proceed with the empirical data (Fouriers etc) and proceed from there.

Suits me just fine. Let's do that.

I'll design the test methodology for the large unit that we use for vocals and run pink noise through that.

[DougH]

Any differences I hear in the clips are extremely slight, and could be accounted for by differences in picking pressure between the clips, as far as I can tell.

People use antique and ancient terms to describe things that are common when they're trying to BS people.

Excuse me, I need to go change the condensers in my amp...

[MikeH]

I've been told by some of my closest friends that this could well be the very first mainstream application and demonstration of the existence of scalar waves.

If this is true I hope you've been working on your nobel acceptance speech.  Seriously!

[Mark Hammer]

1)  People can notice relationships that are subtle, but real, and go for many years attributing them to the only potential causes they know of, even though those are not the real causes of the phenomenon in question.  Perfect case in point is astrological signs.  The position of stars many light years away could not hope to have any effect on personality/temperament, yet individual characteristics have been attributed to the location of stars in the cosmos at the time of that person's birth for countless generations.  Of course, none of those generations had even the faintest clue that there are seasonal fluctuations in hormones that can influence neural development in utero, so they attributed these subtle, but somewhat reliable patterns of birth-date/personality to the only things they had dependable information on - the location of the stars.  To cite that genius of logic and rhetoric, Donald Rumsfeld, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, and things can happen for reasons we don't yet know about because we didn't realize those reasons could exist.  I think delusion is much too strong a word for it.  However, humans have a deep-seated urge to find causes for things, and even when the causes identified are not the "real" causes, they are more comforted by having a cause they can point to than by not having one.

I hope that doesn't come off sounding like an insult.  The point is that you have a given training, and a given experience with the device, and it has to lead somewhere, right?  It may be that what you perceive auditorily is correct, but the theoretical explanation is a few degrees off.  Maybe.  Maybe not.

2) The thing that doesn't seem to have been discussed here yet (or maybe I missed it in the longer and more convoluted posts) is how an effect that is subtle can consistently supercede whatever the technology is that is under test.  There are things I can do to a crappy guitar/speaker/amp/etc that will improve it sonically because it makes up for shortcomings in the technology; shortcomings that are a reflection of lower quality control at point of production.  Those same interventions will not always work, however, especially if I apply them to what was a good product from the start.  There have been countless amps from "the golden era" that had everything the better-known amps had except for maybe a high-enough plate voltage, a decent speaker, a well-designed cabinet, enough capacitance in the power supply, or whatever.  There have been countless guitar pickups produced in the golden era that had everything going for them except that the manufacturer didn't pot them, matched them up with 100k volume pots, used too much shielding on the cover, used poor magnets, etc.  In other words, they had everything except X, and so suffered in audio quality.  All it took was something so bonehead simple, and a sow's ear instantly became a silk purse.

So I ask myself, whether the phenomena you report reflect something that can be imposed on top of any technology you want to throw at it, or whether it is a phenomenon that compensates for some shortcomings that routinely appear in many (but not all) products.  For example, the BBE process compensates for cumulative errors in phase alignment between harmonics and fundamentals along the signal path, all the way out to the drivers.  Conceivably, one should be able to identify a signal path where phase alignment/coherence is paid attention to and maintained at each step of the way, and the BBE process adds little other than coloration.  The BBE process is a real and repeatable phenomenon, but because its very nature is compensatory, it is not a robust enough phenomenon to override the technology ALL the time, just enough of the time to be a useful consideration in many instances.

That's certainly not a weakness.  Rather it is a matter of understanding what the legitimate expectations for the product may be.  At the moment, you and many others are clearly "knocked out" by how something so simple could produce the effect noted.  I think what elicits so much doubt here is the sense that the phenomenon appears to have no limits, or at least none have been alluded to.  My sense is that much greater confidence in what you claim would be prompted if you were able to say "It will work under THESE circumstances for THESE reasons, but will show diminishing returns and often no added value under THOSE circumstances for THOSE reasons."  When a phenomenon has real and more importantly predictable limits, people are generally more willing to set doubt or suspicion aside.

Naturally, when you stumble onto something that impresses the daylights out of you, it is only human nature to be enthusiastic about what it does do, and spend less time thinking about what it doesn't do.  That is often the point where people may make commercial claims they later wish they hadn't made.  Just a thought, not a criticism.

And just in case no one noticed, not ALL cutting age R&D in the effects world goes on in North America, Japan, or Europe.  Sometimes people in other parts of the world stumble onto stuff too. 

[PerroGrande]

Sounds like a plan, Jobet!  Although -- I think the "Scalarizer" name is kinda cool -- so I'll pass on the X-Widget name for the time being. 

Regardless of what it is or isn't, what it does or doesn't do, people are claiming that they like the resulting sound.  So *something* is clearly happening.

I was speaking with a co-worker today discussing, of all things, expensive speaker wire (and the audiophile who dropped 15K-bucks on his speaker wire).  I made the comment that, psychologically, there may be a mechanism deep, down within the psyche that says something like, "yo... you just dropped 15K on freaking wire.  This wire is GOING to sound better -- even if it doesn't really sound better."  (probably related to the self-preservation mechanism -- lol)

Anecdotally speaking, I would venture a guess that this lil' gizmo does NOT fit into that category.  Guitar players tend to be bombarded with the "good tone is expensive" message from early on.  This device isn't priced in the "expensive" category for most players, so I'm postulating that the "yo..." mechanism doesn't kick in.

Then there is the "music store" syndrome... I know that for me, when I play a guitar in the store, it seems to play better and sound better than when I get it home.  Has anyone else noticed this?  I've had it happen several times.  I think that in some way, somehow, going to the store intimidates me --  probably because there are SO many guitar players who have skills far greater than I hanging around at most music stores.  The result is that I unconsciously dial-up my "A-Game" (such as it is) when I'm there.  When I return home and relax, the A-game goes away.  Ostensibly, this could explain some of the reports.  The device gets installed, and the subsequent A-game shows up for a while.  Who knows? 

I'm eager to see the resulting data that you turn up.   

[R.G.]

Good idea.
Let's steer clear of the Physics, call the device the X-Widget, proceed with the empirical data (Fouriers etc) and proceed from there.
Suits me just fine. Let's do that.
I'll design the test methodology for the large unit that we use for vocals and run pink noise through that.

Good! I think you'll get a much better response to it.

I'd be very interested in the impulse response, the swept-sine waveforms at a number of signal levels, and the pink noise response.

If it does produce repeatable, measurable effects on time and frequency response and harmonic spectra, it doesn't really matter whether it's scalar waves or Banquo's ghost in there making it work that way, does it?

[Jobet]

Yes. Glad we agreed on something. Truly, it really doesnt matter and the sooner we got that out of the way, the better.

Luckily, we still have an MXL Blue Bottle condenser microphone that is still stock. This is what I'll use as the test instrument.

Just came from the shop, we A/B éd Behringer CS100 compressors. One without a scalarizer, the other with a scalarizer. The owner of the one without the unit was floored. Anyway, nuff of that for now, I think it better belongs on the Philmusic boards. Since I'm a newbie here and yeah, I still have to build my credibility around here

I'll be able to do this test by Saturday or so, because semester is ending at the university and it's that time for last minute paper checking and grade calculating.

In the meantime, you can dive into this review. For the life of me, I don't know this guy but judging from the gear and his scalarizer combinations, he must be the owner of a number of  those 30 or so units that made its way to the US. The third review from the guy named Ricardo.

http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Guitar/product/Gibson+Baldwin/LP+Signature/10/1

[Jobet]

Took a short break. Couldn't seem to get this desire to get a test done out of my head.

So I was able to come up with a very simple test methodology that didnt require me to be in my studio.

I rigged up a baby jack cable, cut it in half and inserted a crystal scalarizer in series.

I then plugged one end of this setup to the lineout of my laptop, and the other to the line in, thus creating a feedback loop.

Firing up Cooledit Pro 2.0, I generated a pure sine wave at 1 kHz, and put that in one track of the multitrack view.

Then I set the recording in to the line-in jack and started recording to another track. So what happened is that the sine wave coming out of the line-out goes back into the line in and gets recorded on another track. I set both tracks to an amplitude of -1dB for maximum uniformity.

So here's the results. The pure sine wave when run on a frequency analysis showed this graph :



The track from which the scalarizer was installed in showed this track :



I don't want to get over-excited but it does seem to appear that harmonics are being generated by the scalarizer setup.

[Meanderthal]

 Reminds me of the spectrum analysis for an exciter. I remember a directx plugin that did something similar... sounded good on guitar, but processing an entire mix thru it usually just sounded like distortion, unlike both a physical BBE or the plugin version.

Is this test repeatable? If someone else were to run the same test the same way on the same software... 

Edit: I see the level is higher also... Is it also amplifying? I has so far imagined it would be basically passive, with a little signal loss, but there is juice running thru there so...

[Jobet]

Reminds me of the spectrum analysis for an exciter. I remember a directx plugin that did something similar... sounded good on guitar, but processing an entire mix thru it usually just sounded like distortion, unlike both a physical BBE or the plugin version.

Is this test repeatable? If someone else were to run the same test the same way on the same software... 

Edit: I see the level is higher also... Is it also amplifying? I has so far imagined it would be basically passive, with a little signal loss, but there is juice running thru there so...

Yeah. I guess it can be replicated. The method is all in there. I got two sign-ups for scalarizers...they can easily replicate this. The shapes might be different though because I'm planning on sending mostly metal scalarizers.

Whew...I hope you're not implying that I pulled out a BBE VST plug in. I don't have it and we didn't acquire it after our Chief Recording engineer said it was no good.

The higher levels...I don't know what to make of it yet. Could be noise ingress. Or if we wanted to play with Tesla-esque parlance, it could also be a manifestation of "negative resistance" . But RG's right, lets do Occams Razor and the levels are coming from a higher noise floor. There is no amplifying, if you notice the 1kHz fundamental, they are at exactly the same levels for both charts. It's the noise floor that came up because the audio had to get out of the computer, pass through the baby jack cable and through the scalarizer and back into the computer.

I doubt if the spikes are noise though. They're perfect, falling on every multiple of 1. One would have to be very lucky to get that kind of result, considering that noise is energy of a random nature.

[Meanderthal]

 No, a BBE analysis wouldn't look like that at all on a sine wave, since it doesn't generate harmonics. But, an exciter would look like that, and if this works the way you say it does, it would fall into the category of exciter... maybe scalar exciter?  Those harmonics appear to be multiples of the fundamental. When you had been saying infinite harmonics, I had been thinking white noise, so I was a bit confused until I saw that.

Anyway- I had suggested an independent test (peer review, standard operating procedure for new discoveries) because it establishes proof, there would no longer be a question of if it does anything, nor what it does. The only question that would remain is: How is it doing what it does? The answer would fall then into 2 categories- 1- it works the way you say it does, and 2- it works some other way. Either way, you're on to something big... If it were me I'd go that route.

[Mark Hammer]

Some 35 years ago, I was wiring up my crappy little turntable (crystal cartridge!) to my equally crappy guitar amp.  My dad came into my bedroom, and because the wire from the tone arm was too far for me to reach while I was holding onto something (probably an unsoldered wire, knowing me), I asked my dad to hand it to me.  In a kind of "manual spoonerism", he picked up the wire and inadvertently extended his empty hand to me instead of the one holding the shielded cable.  There we found ourselves, holding hands, with the other hand holding a cable.  Much to my surprise, the sound was louder and better than when I had directly plugged the cables together the previous day.  We got my kid sister to come in the room and hold hands with each of us, and damned if the volume wasn't even louder.

So, you know, as much as I am inclined to dismiss stuff as poppy%^&*, there is a little part of me that has witnessed some strange strange s**t, and remains open to the counter-intuitive, including sources of level-boost where you weren't expecting them.

[Jobet]

Couldn't wait to get home from school/work. Ran the same tests again as I did. Yep, it really does.

So I proceeded to do it on the metalcore. 1k pure sinewave looped back through a baby plug cable with a metalcore spliced in between Same effects but look at this chart :



Interesting. Same harmonic spikes, however if you notice, the even order harmonics (2nd, 4th, 6yh and 8th) are larger than the odd-order (3rd,5th, 7th). Wow. This little bugger is discriminating against buzzsaw type odd-order harmonics ! Now my eyes are confirming what my ears have been telling me this past year. Thanks guys, if not for you, I wouldn't have thought of this simple test rig.

[R.G.]

Unfortunately, you don't need scalar waves to do that. Plain old diodes generate harmonics just fine. So do tuned circuits create response spikes from noise by resonance.

If you're thinking that there are no diodes in there, don't forget that you can get rectification effects from metals touching dissimilar metals and other materials. That's how cat's whisker receiver sets work.

[Jobet]

Can you get harmonics visible to the 10th order with cat whiskers ?

Besides, the wires used are magnet wire althroughout. There is no dissimilarity, and more importantly, there is no "point contact".

I'm not saying that you can't do it any other way, it's just the way I did it (or I think I did it, according  y'all).

If we're going around this bush in this way, we might as well stop coz we are going to get nowhere fast this way. No amount of evidence will ever be enough at the rate this is going.

I thought we agreed to sidestep the physics ? Let's call it the Cat Whisker Widget then ? How come all pedals have dissimilar metals and them and yet will not produce this effect, clipping diodes, power , soldering lead and copper pads and all that. Want me to eliminate that by making a Cat whisker out of a razor blade and a strand of wire and pass the signal through that ?

I cannot "force" you to take it into your paradigm if it will not fit in any way. Either your mind is already set and hence cannot be helped, or you really want it to not be as I think it is. Because we can do this allll day and find every frikkin explanation from cosmic rays to sunspots affecting the harmonics to global warming to ambient electrical noise being the cause. Everything EXCEPT the primary principle on which the device is designed on.

[Jobet]

Okay okay. Let's give it a rest.

No researcher worth his salt should be drawing conclusions this early. Myself included.

I'll do this again on a pro-grade setup which will have far less electronic noise than the run-of-the-mill laptop soundcard.

[mdh]

Unless I'm missing something, it sounds like you're not controlling for the process of re-recording the sine wave.  If you're comparing the frequency spectrum of the pure sine wave to that of the sine wave re-recorded with your widget in the signal path, it seems like the wrong comparison to make.  You should be comparing the sine wave re-recorded through a regular cable to the sine wave re-recorded through your widget.  That would control for any effects that might creep in during the D/A A/D conversions that are happening when you patch line out to line in.

My apologies if I misunderstood and this is what you're already doing, but all of this testing will be much more productive if everyone can agree that the methodology is sound.

[R.G.]

Can you get harmonics visible to the 10th order with cat whiskers ?

Yes.

Besides, the wires used are magnet wire althroughout. There is no dissimilarity, and more importantly, there is no "point contact".

No oxidized wires? No solder joints? No resonances? No noise?

I'm not saying that you can't do it any other way, it's just the way I did it (or I think I did it, according  y'all).

And like I said, there is no doubt that it does SOMETHING or even that it sounds good, maybe even better than anything has ever sounded before, maybe even like angels singing. But that it does SOMETHING is no evidence of HOW it does it until you dig into it.

If we're going around this bush in this way, we might as well stop coz we are going to get nowhere fast this way. No amount of evidence will ever be enough at the rate this is going.

That's a good statement, and in the interest of keeping an open mind, you might think of it as applying both ways.

You have concocted a thing that does something. You built it according to some "guidance" you got by reading speculative stuff off the internet. You also randomly substituted things in until you got some sound you like. Then because you got something you liked, you accepted wholly that the stuff you read that led you down the path must be true; and that four hundred years of really smart people doing trial and error and figuring out a whole set of interlocking natural laws must be wrong.  Not only that, you refuse to listen to any explanation of how that collection of centuries of work can equally well explain the effect.

The next thing you would say back is that every so often, some really smart guy comes along and throws conventional physics out on its ear; you would cite Newton, Einstein, and the distributed discovery of quantum physics. And you'd be right. However, all of those "revolutions" produced new extensions to the body of work that were (a) testable, and (b) produced repeatable results when tested, and (c) produced predictions for effects that could be tested and show the difference between the previous thoughts and the new work. The difference here is that I have looked hard, and I can find no evidence, even in the proponents of scalar wave theory, that shows (a) testable (b) repeatable (c) predictive evidence that they even exist. I grant you that it is possible that there is a new subtlety to the laws of physics that has yet to be discovered. There is a huge body of hot-shot young physicists that would love to get their name on that next discovery. But they are going to test the dickens out of it first to keep from looking like a fool in front of their peers.

A good maxim to remember is that the race is not always to the swift nor the contest to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

I thought we agreed to sidestep the physics ?

Actually, you agreed to sidestep the physics in your explanations. And that would be fine, I would have no objections to that at all. You came back with some data that shows your device does something, which is great. But there's not a shred of evidence about HOW it does it. I merely pointed out how the existing body of knowledge might explain that.

I cannot "force" you to take it into your paradigm if it will not fit in any way. Either your mind is already set and hence cannot be helped, or you really want it to not be as I think it is.

Think about what you just said.