March 2008
Audiophiles Are Not Crazy!
We understand about having a magnetic personality.
Article By Steven R. Rochlin
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  Audiophiles seem to detect things before science can explain them. Early digital disc/player sound quality was all over the map, yet measured nearly perfect by many. So if it measures perfect it must sound perfect, correct? Well, at least it should all sound the same.

"Digital audio does not sound the same!" shouted the Golden Ear crowd. The ABX and TechnoGeek (TG) crowd decried the Golden Ear folks. The TGs had their Tektronix measurement devices and read out perfection on their instrument's display. Remember, TGs think that audiophiles are kooks or some form of cult, with greedy psudo-science companies looking to fleece the public of their money. As an example, years later digital was proven imperfect by measuring a new thing called jitter. Measuring jitter today is an understood phenomena and accepted as proven science. The TGs with digital being perfect mantra were proven wrong!

Take your measurements and shove... or should i be saying frankly, my dear, i don't give a...

Nevertheless, i have just seen a study to blow away the TGs yet again. Remember, some TGs think that demagnetizing CDs is utterly stupid. While audiophiles do hear differences between non-demag'ed and demag'ed CDs, the TG crowd says we are crazy. C'mon, aluminum and gold is intrinsically not magnetic so why would one need a demagnetize them? Well TGs, you are wrong and as of today there is now science to back up the demag CDs sounding better audiophile claim!

Just released in the news is that magnetic particles of gold and silver have been produced and proven. Professors Jose Javier Saiz Garitaonandia and Ms. Maite Insausti Peña at the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the Basque Country, have scientifically proven that gold and silver can indeed become magnetic! As now seen within the February issue Nanoletters (Vol.8, No. 2), an article states that they have "...achieved, by means of a controlled chemical process, that atoms of gold, silver and copper - intrinsically non-magnetic (not attracted to a magnet) - become magnetic." It continues by saying, "The magnetism of these nanoparticles is a permanent one (like iron) which, even at ambient temperature, is quite significant. This amazing behaviour has been obtained not just with gold (a phenomenon which had already been put forward as experimentally possible) but, in this research, nanoparticles of silver and copper (the atoms of which are intrinsically non-magnetic) with a size of 2 nm (0.000002 mm) have also been shown to be magnetic at ambient temperature."

The point we should not ignore is that while some phenomena happens at either very high temperatures or at near absolute zero, this finding claims that the metal's magnetism "is quite significant" at ambient temperatures. Scientists in Australia and Japan have verified these finding. So today, my friends, marks the day the TGs are once again proven wrong and they can stop their harassment of audiophiles who hear differences even though (in the past) there was no scientific proof.

In addition, this newly proven fact of magnetized gold and silver happens in particles so small that it has never before been available in classical magnetic elements of this size and marks the smallest magnets to have been scientifically recognized. Those Golden Ears types must sure be great listeners!

In closing, the article finishes off by saying, "This work poses new questions as regards what have been the accepted up to now as the physical mechanisms associated with magnetism and opens the doors to interesting applications yet to be discovered, some of which are related to the use of magnetic nanoparticles for the diagnosis/treatment of illnesses. Likewise, this article is destined to be a point of no return for research into fundamental questions about magnetism."

The proof is in the listening. As always, in the end what really matters is that you...

Enjoy the Music,

Steven R. Rochlin