Can snake oil fix a bad room? (a survey)

I would not personally recommend spraying fluids on electrical contacts in case you short out connections. Gold-plated contacts are very resistant to corrosion. Keep the equipment away from moisture and very humid environments and simply wipe contacts with a clean non-abrasive cloth that it VERY slightly damp. I personally use unscented Dettol anti-bacterial wipes for cleaning my audio equipment. I take one out the pack, wring it out very thoroughly until only slightly damp, put it over my index finger and gently rub the surface to be cleaned.

Well this probably proves nothing but here goes. The yellow noise spectrum is with the RCA caps in and black is without the caps in the extra input sockets of my EXP. Output of Accession on full, SME IV arm in rest with Phoenix loaded at 100 ohms.

Yes which wasn't what I expected Richard. I think even the little mid and high frequencies would be more audible at my listening levels. Bearing in mind I turned the Accession output up by around 10dB these are pretty low levels of noise so I doubt I could hear the difference shown in the noise floor, which would surely be masked by the music and the vinyl roar even on my cleaned records?

Instead it is probably what Graham has written about RF mixing with audio, and what happens when that gets into a circuit. Maybe I should run the test on gear that is not as well engineered as GSSP/HFC! If I have a chance tomorrow I will record the same section of an LP with and without the RCA caps and probably see no difference! With the caps on the music does sound better to me, a little crisper on percussion and more focussed. Or I've been at the snake oil again...

Fatmangolf wrote: Instead it is probably what Graham has written about RF mixing with audio, and what happens when that gets into a circuit ... With the caps on the music does sound better to me, a little crisper on percussion and more focussed. Or I've been at the snake oil again...

"Designers have often been surprised at the signal integrity and EMC problems caused by simply replacing a device with the same type in a smaller package. One designer used a chip-scale IC in 2000, operating at the very low clock frequency of 1kHz, and was amazed to find that his product was failing emissions tests at 1GHz, due to the 1 millionth harmonic of the clock."

(Cherry Clough Consultants, Advanced PCB design and layout for EMC. Part 1)

So, if I replace a negative feedback parallel capacitor bank with a series capacitor bank I hear less "hash", but the only difference I am able to measure is due to the parallel inductances of the capacitors changing the direction of the phase curve ever so slightly positive at 110MHz, where the series capacitor bank does not. The difference is only 1.3 degrees.

The IC I am using is a shrink size package...

"The increasing emissions occurs because smaller silicon feature sizes means

    less capacitance in the devices
    faster switching edges (shorter transition times)
    hence more energy in a harmonic spectrum that extends to higher frequencies

The shrinking silicon feature size issue ... also applies to some analogue ICs. ICs are being made using silicon fabrication processes that employ ever-smaller feature sizes simply to improve the yield from the silicon wafers to make more money for the semiconductor companies.

So even buying the same old devices doesn't protect a manufacturer from 'die shrinks', and a new batch of ICs can make a previously EMC-compliant product non-compliant, or even make its operation unreliable by compromising signal integrity."

(Again, Cherry Clough Consultants, Advanced PCB design and layout for EMC. Part 1)

Some will consider this snake oil I'm sure.