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Re: I suggest we create a new Asylum....

With acknowledgements to Enid Lumley's work some 20 years ago.
I think the immature reaction to Enid from so many members of the audio industry was disgraceful. The people know who they are and I think they should hang their heads in shame.

Peter and I had not heard about Enid Lumley until some of the Hi Fi magazines in the UK began to report on what Peter was discovering in the late 1980s and someone sent us copies of Enid's writings with the comment "You all seem to be discovering something similar". But, by that time, Enid had written her last article for The Absolute Sound.

The more I read of Enid's writings, the more I saw the parallel with what we were discovering. We were calling the strange things we were finding within the environment which were affecting the sound as "adverse energy patterns" (because we had to call them something!) and there was Enid calling the strange things she was finding within the environment which were affecting the sound as "Audio Gremlins". The list of things Enid was finding having an adverse effect on the sound coincided with the list of the things Peter was finding !! Neither of us knew the existence of each other at that time but we were both simultaneously discovering similar things.

From what I can glean from Enid's writing and experiments, it seems that she was still trying to fit what she was finding into conventional audio thinking i.e 'something having an effect on the audio signal or something having an effect on the acoustic air pressure waves in the room'. I think that if she had carried on for a bit longer, she might eventually have made the realisation (which Peter eventually made) that it is not the signal being affected by what is happening in the environment, nor is it the acoustic air pressure waves being affected but it is the human being reacting and going under tension - which in turn alters the perception of the information reaching the working memory i.e "the sound information". The way Enid describes the improvements she could hear mirrors the way we (and others) describe the improvements - transparency, greater clarity, palpable images of instruments and voices, the air of the hall the recording was made in, the feeling that you are there etc.

Further on the subject of not knowing the existence of each other. There was yet another similar thing happened a year or two later. Very many of our customers knew of Peter's technique of freezing objects using our domestic deep freezer and gaining improvements in the sound. Imagine our surprise when Robert Harley's article on Cryogenic freezing of CDs appeared in the October 1990 issue of Stereophile. Here was a description of someone (Ed Meitner) in Canada discovering, in parallel with us, how freezing things could give improvements in the sound. Ed Meitner had discovered this by freezing at cryogenic temperatures, Peter had discovered this by using our domestic deep freezer. Peter and I had no knowledge of what Ed Meitner had been discovering in Canada and I am absolutely sure that Ed Meitner had no knowledge of what Peter Belt was doing in the UK.

If it is there to be found, it will eventually be found. But the process can be so much quicker when not stifled by ridicule and mockery. Or by being instantly dismissed out of hand without any consideration or thought.

The reason why I use the parallel with Joseph Lister so much is because IT IS such a parallel. Not just for Peter and I but for so many other people attempting to move progress further on.
In the Joseph Lister story, it is not only the ridicule aimed at Lister which is the parallel but it is the attitude of so many people involved in audio paralleled with the medical profession 100 years ago.
Many audio people state "What you have suggested cannot happen because of what we have been taught - end of discussion."
100 years ago, the majority of the medical profession rounded on Lister saying "How can spraying the OUTSIDE of the patient with carbolic acid possibly have any effect on whether the patient develops septicaemia or not when we have been taught that the micro organisms which cause septicaemia are IN the patients own bad blood and may (or may not) erupt spontaneously - in other words - they believed that it was pure chance whether the patient developed septicaemia or not - nothing to do with unwashed instruments, unwashed surgeons hands, filthy blood stained, pus stained frock coats !! In other words, the majority of the medical profession would not listen to some upstart Doctor from Scotland telling them something they had not thought about themselves and were not prepared to try for themselves. And, it was not even Lister who made the first conceptual breakthrough, it was Louis Pasteur in France when he was making his own wine !

When any intelligent person, seriously involved in audio, hears a completely unexpected change in the sound they will go through a conventional check list searching for an explanation.
First they will go through the conventional electronic check list - has the signal been affected?
If the answer to that is No, then they will go through the conventional acoustic check list - has the acoustics been affected ? If the answer to that is NO, then they will go through the check list of "Is it my imagination ? If the effect is still there after many repeats, then they go on to the next on the list - Is it my mood ? If the effect is still there through many changes of mood, then they go on to the next on the list - Is it auto suggestion ? If what has happened was never suggested in the first place then it cannot be auto suggestion so they go on to the next on the list. Is it effective marketing ? Again, if it was never suggested in the first place then they are stuck !! They have to somehow search for an explanation whilst keeping others informed about what they have heard until they can formulate some explanation!!
So, the bottom line is that what has happened has happened, even though there might not be an easy explanation the effect is still there and if you are a 'professional in audio' then you have to deal with it - it has happened and there is no going back !!
May Belt.


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