Audio Tweak gone bad...similar experiences?

I'm wondering why no one has touted the benefit of a bowl of linguine placed right above the amp transformer? Seems to absorb spurious electrical charges until the mold sets in. And no, rigatoni does not work as well! The sauce does matter though. White clam sauce seems to work best.

qdrone,

Glad you agree with my listening experience--I was beginning to think I was hearing things.

I have tried to do abx testing, but every time I do, I recall that I don't agree with a-b-x testing, so I can't decide if I agree with my results. Then, I write a letter to the editors of the major audio mags, but they don't get published. I wonder why? Maybe I should act on my threat to cancel my subscriptions?

Yeah the wheatback pennies are the ones that everyone says makes the difference. The Lincoln memorial ones are way over rated.

I use the steel pennies from the 40s. They seem to work best but have to be alternated heads up and heads down. Also, a piece of eight can work very well but only if it has been under sea water for at least 200 years. But actually, a doubloon is best if you can afford it. Cheers!

Ahhhaaaaa!!!!!

As in "Pocket Full of Kryptonite"
--Spin Doctors

Bearotti,
1982, 1982, if I remember here in the USA we were in the mist of a recession. Of course you would of been to young to remember. Inflation was starting to raise it's ugly head, commodity prices were soaring. Copper prices were soaring as well.

The US Treasury Department faced with the inflated cost of copper and silver ordered the US Mint to come up with an alternative to using copper and silver in coins.


Synthetic copper. Pennies made in 1982 were made of synthetic copper.

Kryptonite, thats right, Krypotonite was used as a bonding agent in the 1982 synthetic penny. Though in a very small amounts it was present in the bonding agent.

Millions and millions of these synthetic pennies were made in 1982.

In 1983 Sony introduced the first consummer CD player. Here in the US it sounded like crap. Sony could not understand why their CDP sounded so poorly in the US. To make a long story short Sony discovered small traces of Kyrptonite in the DAC of the CDP. This was effecting the clock in the CDP. Problem is it took Sony several years to discover the problem, not until the early 90s. Where was the Kyptonite comming from? All those millions and millions of 1982 pennies. Everybody was carrying them around in their pockets.

The US government and Sony has kept this secrete from the public. The US government has been trying to destroy all of the pennies made in 1982.

Turns out Cdc was somewhat correct in his post after all.

The fact that the 1982 penny was placed on top of the right speaker had nothing directly to do with the failure of the DAC. Just being in the vicinity of the DAC caused the DAC to fail. Kryptonite!!
=============

How did I discover this cover up? Through the USDOJ: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
========

Sorry I was not more specific...the penny was heads up when I found it...I found it on my birthday and it desplayed my birth year...I thought it was supposed to be a GOOD thing, you know, like the stars being in alignment or something. It would seem not though.

Jea48, hmmmmm; well now I'm really Buffaloed.

Hmmmm......"Other than THAT ONE THING, Mrs. Lincoln, 'How was the play...' "

You could try the very rare 1942 cooper or the somewhat less rare zinc coated 1942 steel penny, both great vinage pieces. Stay away from the chinese junk (tung pao)with the square holes in them, they sound worse than chinese tubes. Watch out for mis-stamped coins, they could have blown out you amps. Happy Listening!

Has anyone tried the WWII steel pennies?

Someone in the Asylum says these are the only real way to get audible results. Using other types of pennies is senseless.

Was the penny heads up? Also, was it deep cycle cryo'd? All dependent upon the outcome...

There are, now, silver pennies available for audiophile applications -- and cryogenically treated for a small premium. Silver is a better conductor as you all know.

Silver dollars, dimes, etc, mentioned above won't do: they have the wrong gauge for the application. "Multistranding" the pennies, as in a piggy bank, creates channel cross-talk and vulnerability to emi -- not to mention problems due to chaotic surface contact between the pennies.

What we really need is a selection of matched, NOS, wide-bandwidth pennies.

I put ALL my pennies in ceramic piggy banks, then carefully locate each piggy bank on top of the speaker, sounds great, but terrible *HAF*

FWIW : I use Blue Tac under each hoof.

Cdc, With all due respect I must strongly disagree with your premise. He was using the penny on top of his right speaker. Last time I checked speakers are still an analog device. Though some times called digital ready, confusing.....

Any way after spending several hour into the late night hours, rereading Bearotti's post over and over looking for a clue to what possibly could of caused the right channel of his DAc to go out, it hit me.

>>"I found a penny and placed it on top of my right channel speaker in hopes to "improve" the sound...'<<
[Bearotti]

He found a penny!!!
Heads up? Or tails up? Everybody knows you never pick up a penny that is tails up, It is bad luck....
Jim

I use a silver dollar. It sounds about 5% better than a penny. I would like to mention that people have pointed out the diminishing return for my investment. I point out to them that I have had it 20 years. Many items have come and gone in my system. The silver dollar just keeps going strong!

To hell with all you naysayer.

Pennies and digital have bad synergy. Since digital is only 1's and 0's. You need to go analog if you use pennies.

For digital, you'll need coinage that is an even number like 10 cents or 50 cents.

BTW, you'll want solid core pennies not the crap aluminum core the U.S. mint is pumping out today.

Maybe it's because you didn't have you Wheaties!

I want to know what Elizabeth has in the tweeky bottle.

I haven't laughed this hard in a LONG time (seriously, tears here). Thanks, Ben.

1. make sure the penny doesn't fall and short across your speaker leads

2. you gotta use a wheatie (wheat eared pennies don't have that harsh solid state sound)

3. only then are you ready to take the tweakies advice above (all of which I agree with... especially when the pieces of advice are in direct disagreement)

An atomic clock on top of each speaker works wonders. Might even fix your problem.

All this makes no cents!

Your problem was that you were one penny short. Just my 2 cents..........

I've found that the drunken penny is really the best way to go. Find a canditate of the appropriate vintage, and break it in by bathing it in pure grain alcohol for AT LEAST 24 hours. (I've found that vodka can also work well, but you'll need to break it in for at least a week if you go that route.) This way, even if you're so unfortunate to pick one with some spiteful karma, it'll at least be appeased and/or confused enough to not be aggressive. Trick is, you'll have to repeat the process approximately monthly or the little bastards can get hung over and downright mean. You really, really don't want that. It also helps to have two or three in the bath, more or less all the time. That way you can rotate one out at a time and always have a couple of backups appropriately sauced. Also, they seem to perform better for not having to drink alone -- so having a couple of backups is not just convenient, but also the key to being a good host. Treat them right and you'll hear the difference.

you should have cryoed the penny

Many of those 1982's were machine stamped at the Denver mint at a time when that facility was undergoing quality control problems. It seems the Mint had outsourced to a foreign copper source which had questionable links to anti-American groups abroad. Much of that copper has been determined to contain nanotechnology (even before it was developed) that disabled electronic devices of any kind and has been unknowingly introduced into any products manufactured from that metal. Anyone in posession of such coinage or other copper products is in very serious personal danger as are their electronic posessions. You probably got one of the 'sleeper' coins programmed to cause American electronic devices to self-destruct at a preordained time. You may well have discovered the initial phase of a foreign attack marking the beginning of the first wave of a sleepers awakening to begin their attack on unsuspecting Americans and our very way of life.

Fortunately, have developed a disarming device for such subversively contaminated copper which is very similar to the flux capacitor and which operates on similar principals by channeling the nanotechnological particles into a time warp and sending them to a time before copper was invented thus rendering them ineffective. I can sell you this device for a very modest $199.95 (PayPal transfers accepted). Surprisingly, it looks very much like a Timex battery clock. But don't be fooled. It has subtle proprietary modifications I am not at liberty to disclose.

I feel that in the interest of the 'brotherhood of man' I must divulge,without concern for my self interest,i.e 'profit',that I have found the most 'awe'some tweak yet.I have cryoed some conch shells that have been laying around in the household for years,(picked up during dives in the Keys).You would be truly amazed at the effect these things have on the sound characteristics of audio gear.I figured that since one can 'hear the ocean' in them then certainly they should be a cinch for making a mid-fi system such as mine sound much more expensive.Since not everyone lives near the ocean as I do,I would be happy to cryo some and ship them out,for a small fee to cover expenses!

I have found NOS pennies from the 50s work the best. Early 60s NOS pennies are ok, but anything newer you are just wasting your money. Just my 2 cents....

Don't forget to give this information to Classe's repair facility. They probably have a quick fix as this is a common cause of equipment dailures. Also, the techs could use a good laugh.

I find dimes to work better because of the silver content vs the copper in pennies.

Was the penny oxygen-free? Sometimes the OF pennies, in a desperate attempt to obtain oxygen (especially the older ones), will steal oxygen from nearby components. (I've had tweeters, CDPs, even cables go like this.) I think you had such a penny, and your DAC was the victim. I'd do a diagnostic on the DAC, checking for blue ICs or a faint wheezing in the output stage.

blue tac under the penny works good, the super mini vibro pods work less good, plus remember to de ox the penny once a month

My penny was a 1982, same as my birth year, that I found on my birthday while at work a few weeks ago. I figured that it had to be a sign of good luck...apparently not!

You need to experiment with the placement and orientation of the penny. Some people swear by Lincoln head up, others prefer Lincoln head down. Trust your ears! Also, you might experiment with some cryo'd-NOS "wheat" pennies. They're reputed to be the greatest advance in sound reproduction in the last 30 years.

What year was the penny?