Audio malarkey. (Skeptimania).

I vacillate between being entertained and being annoyed when it comes to dealing with audio businessmen who build/market products that are either utter overkill or obvious scams/gimmicks. The former category includes amplifiers that are built like they were going to be mounted inside an M1-A1 tank or launched from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle, and cost as much as a decent used car. It also includes pricey CD players (I am talking about players that cost more than, say, $500), and definitely includes those early, ultra-pricey, two-channel-only SACD players that were produced as "statement" products. And needless to say it includes small speaker systems that cost several thousands of dollars and cannot reproduce decently below 50 Hz, as well as larger systems that cost as much as a modest home.

The second category includes ultra-expensive speaker wires and interconnects that are not able to do any more than carry current from one point to another with typically minimum LCR impact. It also includes bladders, slabs, or spikes that are designed to be installed under amplifiers to help soundstaging, focus, depth, and imaging, as well as green-ink treatments, disc pre-play spinners, tuning dots, and devices that somehow remove residual magnetism from discs that are made out of aluminum and plastic. It also includes test discs that are designed to remove magnetism from entire audio systems.

Lately, thanks to this magazine's publisher, I have had a chance to experience some additional products in the second category. However, a job like this should not be a simple "listen and comment" undertaking. Consequently, this inquiry will be a team effort that actually makes use of a bit of engineering science. With the expert help of Fred Davis, an electrical engineer who also worked with me when I reviewed some Dunlavy Z6 speaker wires a couple of years back, this issue's column will try to deal with what these products can and cannot do for serious audiophiles. Hang on to your hats--and your wallets.

The first item I had a chance to play around with was a Dynamic Design, Blueline Shielded Power Cord. This little item, in the four-foot length that was sent for review, has a list price of $400.

OK, now just what is this piece of wire all about? Well, for one thing, it is indeed very heavy. In his memo to me, Fred noted that the cable: "has all the appearances of being a home-made power cord. The cable is shielded, and the shield and inner conductors are enclosed in spiral-wrap tubing (a commercial cable-wrap product) which is itself covered by woven tubing. A standard hospital-grade plug is used with what appears to be a standard IEC connector that is buried under shrink tubing. The cable is thick and stiff, and electrically it won't do anything to degrade the conduction of mains power to a component."

This is pretty much what I thought prior to shipping it off to Fred. It is as thick as a small garden hose, and so stiff that it looks like it would be a real chore to get it to snake in behind any piece of equipment that was backed up reasonably close to a rear wall. Indeed, there was no way I could comfortably use it with any of my rack equipment. Hooking it up to anything required pulling my cabinet further out from the wall than I like.

In his memo to me, Fred continued: "Its only advantage appears to be the shield, which would be an improvement if a manufacturer-supplied cord was not shielded and the operating environment was so rich in RFI that shielding would be warranted. Of course, the cord would still not do much to reduce the interference already floating on your house wiring (unless you have an excellent line filter)." To me, his last sentence is the critical thing.

Before I sent this cable to Fred, I did some analyzing myself. One thing I did was to use an AC voltage sensor (the kind you might use to determine whether a wire was "hot" without actually measuring the voltage) to see if any energy might be leaking out of the cable. That would be an indication of its ability to prevent exterior energy from leaking in.

Sure enough, when I compared the Blue Line cord to a standard power cord, there was less residual energy leaking out than what I measured with the standard cord, although there was plenty of leakage around the hospital-grade connector.

It was impossible to do a quick series of A/B comparisons with this wire and the cheaper standard item, but I did give it a decent try over a week-long period with an Onkyo DV-S939 DVD-A player (Dynamic Design recommends at least that long for a proper break in, with maybe a month for certain kinds of equipment) and found that, as Fred indicated, it did not degrade the performance of that equipment. Later on, I used it to connect an RBH 12-SE subwoofer I was reviewing, and it worked fine with that sub, too.

However, it did not do anything to improve things, either. It just, well, supplied power to the hardware. Any shielding advantages it offered were completely nullified by the fact that the wire run from the wall outlet to the circuit-breaker box at the back of my house was many times as long as the Blue Line Power Cord and completely unshielded. Using this wire, assuming that one's electrical service was somehow deficient, would be akin to installing one titanium link in a mostly aluminum chain. The link would not do a damned thing to improve the strength of the chain. If you are absolutely committed to using a shielded power cord, and want to do so without breaking the bank, you can get one over 9 feet long for around ten bucks from Digi-Key, or most any other electronic supplier.

Another package sent to me to audition included a heavily encased, single RCA-tipped shielded cable from Better Cables that goes by the name Silver Serpent. Available factory direct from the company (the website address is www.bettercables.com), it costs $90 in the two-meter length I received and can be used either for a composite-video hookup or I suppose as a line-level digital feed.

The former would be pointless with even the best cable, because nobody uses a composite-video configuration for state-of-the-art video. They use either an S-Video hookup or, better yet, a three-lead component-video interface. Regarding those technologies, the company had also supplied my publisher with two-meter S-Video and component-video connectors, with list prices of $70 and $120, respectively. I could not properly review the latter, because so far none of my video monitors can handle that kind of interface, even though all of my DVD players can output such signals.

However, I can handle S-VHS, and during a series of face offs between the Silver Serpent cable and a $12.00 version that I purchased at WalMart a year ago (I use this cable when hooking up outboard DVD players to my main system, for review), I could not see any difference in picture quality with both standard movie program sources and the test chart on the Avia test DVD.

I also shipped off the composite cable to Fred, in order to have him check out its electrical characteristics. In another memo to me, he stated: "The shrink-tubing around the outside prevented me from opening it up (without wrecking the cable) to see what type of wire or insulation might have been used. They say it is silver, but I have no way of confirming that. It is a fairly low-capacitance cable (about 16.8 pF/ft.), and its resistance implies a conductor that is about 19 AWG if it is silver and about 18 AWG if it is copper, which would partially explain why it is so stiff. Such a high current capacity wire in an interconnect doesn't really seem necessary. It appears to have a characteristic impedance of 150 ohms, which is meaningless for audio frequencies. However, I would not recommend it for long 75-ohm video applications, although in short lengths it may be OK."

So goes the cable. I think that we can conclude that a cable like this is pretty much overkill for audio applications, and its stiffness would make it awkward to use in a typical installation, when the amp, receiver, CD player, DVD player, etc. might be fairly close to the wall behind the equipment rack.

The next product is a bit more interesting, because it is something that has the potential to be useful: a power-line filter. It is made and marketed by Quantum Products, and is called the ElectroClear, QRT Enhancement System.

According to a blurb sheet that I downloaded from the Quantum Products website, QRT (which stands for Quantum Resonance Technology) is a "material treatment system utilizing electromagnet field theory in a proprietary manner to improve the transfer function characteristics of conductive materials." Hey, this sounds revolutionary, and might be something that transcends consumer audio and video. One has to ask oneself why these people are fooling around with small potatoes like audio and not providing this technology to the entire communications industry or power distribution for serious profits.

They go on to say that "the ElectroClear is a highly refined shunt filter that installs across the power line, cleaning up noise and interference without affecting the flow of electrical power." Another blurb sheet stated that multiple modules are recommended, and that plugging assorted appliances into them will filter out line noise that might impact the sound of your audio system. Another website comment stated that "With the ElectroClear in place, you will hear more detail, greater micro dynamic involvement, more truthful timbre, greater focus, enhanced imaging, and the remarkable loss of a glare and `blur' you didn't even know was there before the ElectroClear was in place. You will see more vivid saturated colors, more realistic depth of field, enhanced contrasts, more dimensionally accurate spatial effects and greater detail and clarity."

The blurb sheets are extensive, and interested parties may check out the rest by going to the above-noted website at: www.quantumqrt.com. The ElectroClear has a list price of $60, and is also available in multiple-unit packs. It comes with a 30-day, money-back guarantee, and carries a lifetime warranty. In addition to the blurb sheet, I downloaded an internet review of the ElectroClear, and noted that the reviewer, an individual who typically gets really excited about esoteric high-end technologies, gave his full endorsement to the device.

OK, I interfaced the filter between the wall outlet and an Onkyo TX-DS787 receiver that I have been using in my living room system for some time (the receiver was reviewed in Issue 86), and made a point of doing some careful listening over a two-week period. As far as I could tell, it did nothing to clean up the sound, which as best I could tell did not need cleaning up to begin with. I should note that the ElectroClear's back surface did get slightly warm. This would be unusual in a standard surge protector, but Quantum notes that the device is supposed to do that.

As with the wires, I shipped the ElectroClear off to Fred and this is what he said about it. "The power coming in the plug goes straight to the socket through short lengths of wire. There is no filtering and there is no surge suppression."

I suspected as much, myself. I had previously opened up the device and noted that it had a small circuit board inside, with the AC connections not diverted at all. Fred noted that "The little circuit board contains a CMOS IC that is a 12-stage binary ripple counter (about $0.50 in small quantities). It is set up to count at the power-line frequency. Its twelve outputs go.... nowhere. They are not connected to anything. At best, the circuit might generate some very low-level noise at the harmonics of the power-line frequency (its outputs toggle at 60 Hz, 30 Hz, 15 Hz, 7.5 Hz, down to 0.014 Hz)."

He continued. "Interestingly, it doesn't even count well; since the slope of the clock input to the chip is so slow, the first output (which should provide 30 Hz from a 60-Hz input) is at the same frequency as the input. I also find it interesting that the chip is powered by 12 volts, when the chip manufacturer specifies the absolute maximum operating voltage to be 7 volts and any voltage above this may destroy the device. Even though the label on the box clearly proclaims `Power Line Filter' and `Quantum Resonance Technology,' I seen signs of neither."

Fred also noted that the reason the backside gets a bit warm is that "They drop the 120-volt power line down to 12 volts with a 3.9k ohm/2 watt power resistor. That sucker's gonna heat up! As long as the case and wire insulation can withstand the heat, it should be OK."

So much for the ElectroClear line filter.

I have saved the best for last, and I want you readers to hang on to both your hats and your brains as you read the following analysis.

The final item sent to me to "review" is also made and marketed by Quantum Physics: the Symphony Power Line Conditioner. However, this device is substantially different from the ElectroClear line filter, in that it is not inserted between the wall plug and the power cord. Instead, it can be plugged into a wall outlet anywhere in the room ("up to 30 feet away from the system," according to the web-site blurb), and it supposedly cleans up the sound via the company's Quantum Resonance Technology process. Yep, it is a member of the same product-category group as the Tice Clock.

There is no way the device could feed a filtering signal back into the wall outlet, since it gets it power via a standard wall-wart hookup. But I wanted to cut it some slack and assumed that maybe it works in mysterious ways. That is certainly what some of the enthusiastic internet reviews I read concerning this device appeared to imply.

I could go on and on, but here is what Fred had to say about the sample I shipped to him. "Well, once again, we have little more than a noise maker tied to ... nothing. In this case it's a little more sophisticated than the ElectroClear since the noise generator is a cheap microcontroller programmed to generate what appears to be pseudo-random pulses. These pulses are capacitively coupled to a tiny transformer whose secondary goes ... nowhere. It appears from the circuit board that at some time it may have connected to some resistor networks and four connectors, but none of these components are currently mounted on the circuit board."

He continued. "The green LED indicates that the five-volt regulator for the chip is working. Period. The only connection to the power line is through a low-power, DC output wall-wart power supply. It's hard to imagine that any quantum-level filtering is going to find its way back to the mains through that. The noise source connects to nothing, so perhaps it's radiated energy? No, it's housed in an aluminum enclosure (weighted by a steel plate glued to the top to add some heft). I guess it really is magic! Note that there is no apparent filtering or surge suppression offered by the Symphony as well."

In a follow-up note, he continued. "What they tout repeatedly on the website is their Quantum Resonance Technology and near-room temperature superconductors. I don't see evidence of any of that in these two products." (Those products being the ElectroClear filter and the Symphony.) He continues. "I'm sorry, but if this thing is touted on the box as a `Power Line Conditioner,' it's going to have to be coupled to the power line somewhere in order to work. As I said before, the ElectroClear might use radiated noise electromagnetically coupled to the line (which I seriously doubt, and would never the less increase noise and not reduce it), but the Symphony has NO direct connections to the power line. It's only connection is back through a 12 VDC 200mA wall-wart power supply that Quantum doesn't even make! In that case there are several layers of components between the circuit board and the power line."

In still another note he said: "Today I took the Symphony to work and hooked it up to a spectrum analyzer. I could send you the plot, but it's more information than you can probably use. What I see coming out of the microcontroller are a series of `humps' (like the fabled back on the Loch Ness monster) decreasing in amplitude. (The hump width and shape is due to the pseudorandom distribution of pulse widths.) The first major hump is centered at about 21kHz, the next one at 86kHz, and so on every 60kHz or so. Each hump is about 4dB less than the previous one. I ran the curve up to 500kHz and it was still going. The signal coming out of the small transformer mounted on the pc board shows a shift in the balance and bandwidth. There are only about five humps that stop around 262kHz. So the transformer acts as a filter of sorts for the nothing that doesn't connect to it."

Getting back to the earlier filter, he noted: "I also measured the spectrum of the ElectroClear, and it's completely different. It shows narrow spikes, not broad humps, centered on the power-line frequency harmonics. If there's `magic' in the pseudorandom pulses of the Symphony, why should the ElectroClear do anything? Not to mention that neither approach has much coupling to the power line in the first place."

Quantum claims that the device will work as effectively on TV equipment as on audio equipment, and this is a good thing, because it is a lot easier for an equipment reviewer to spot differences in a TV picture than it is to pinpoint differences in a musical program that is streaming along. When I had the Symphony on hand, I left it plugged in next to the 27-inch TV monitor in my living room for a whole day. (This is my smallest set, but I felt that for really careful picture analysis, it was the best choice.) After giving the Symphony that suitable period, I turned on the TV, installed a first-class DVD movie into my player, and while watching the show from a distance of two feet from the screen, unplugged the Symphony. There was no change in the picture. I did this several more times, and also tried it with a cable feed. No change.

So goes the Quantum Symphony powerline conditioner.

Devices like the ones Fred analyzed are common within the high-end product-producing community these days. These items (and conceptually similar ones produced by other companies) might work for you, but my guess is that their impact will be strictly psychological.

-HF