Hunting the Snark: More On
The Strange Audio World Of Peter W.
Belt
When the men in white coats finally
come to take me away, the psychiatric
report will read as follows:
"The patient
is a retired man who still does
part-time work reviewing classical
music. When interviewed at his
home, he was affable enough but
asked us to wait while he completed
some adjustments to his stereo
system. We observed him methodically
taping a picture of a dog, a small
rectangle of white paper with
five pinholes in it and an aspirin
tablet to the top panels of each
of his loudspeakers. When asked
why he was doing this, he simply
smiled knowingly and said, ‘Listen
to the sound.’
The patient’s
wife said this was typical of
his behaviour over the past few
weeks. He had dismantled their
expensive amplifiers and CD player,
had smeared a mysterious white
cream over their inner surfaces
and had also attached small pieces
of metal foils to the equipment’s
cases. Although all of this was
done quite safely apparently,
the patient consistently refused
to explain his reasoning to us,
saying only that we wouldn’t believe
him if he told us. His wife added
that she had been required to
spend more and more of her time
listening repeatedly to the same
small selection of discs for comparative
purposes, and when the patient
had insisted on putting two photographs
of himself (a current one and
another from his childhood) into
the freezer compartment of their
domestic fridge, she had decided
to seek help….."
In a previous MusicWeb
article (Click
Here) I described how three products
from Peter Belt’s company, PWB Electronics
in Leeds, UK had dramatically enhanced
the sound from my audio system, with
particularly spectacular effects on
a cheap white-goods store DVD machine.
My most recent experiments with Belt
‘treatments’ have yielded even stranger
results, and have forced me to think
hard about my knowledge of physics.
As you read this, you really will
need to suspend your disbelief one
again, at the very least temporarily.
The theory behind
early Belt devices was that ‘electronic
smog’ (in the form of unremarked but
adverse electromagnetic fields) affected
human perceptions of the performance
of hi-fi equipment. Clear this up,
the reasoning said, and better sound
reproduction would result from quite
expensive components. Since even the
physical spinning of a CD could generate
electronic pollution apparently, then
fixing this by applying small pieces
of permanently charged metal foil
to the discs was one of the things
that would do the trick. So far so
good.
In a similar fashion,
two other permanently charged PWB
Electronics products, ‘Cream Electret’
and ‘Spiratube,’ both seemed to produce
beneficial effects when applied to
audio equipment and to cabling, and
these effects were substantially enhanced
by subsequently freezing both the
audio leads and the foil-treated CDs.
No great difficulty there either,
at least on the face of it: somehow
(although exactly why freezing was
effective remained unexplained) these
simple treatments were doing something
useful and common sense said that
a physical explanation for the effects
would be found eventually.
What did remain a
puzzle though was that according to
Peter Belt, one of the charged foil
strips used to treat CDs had to be
placed in a very specific location
– over the ‘Compact Disc’ logo that
appears on all commercial discs, to
be precise. And unless this was done
exactly, the perceived benefits to
the sound did not occur. Why ever
not? If the printing on discs
was generating spurious electromagnetism,
then either all of the print should
be covered with the charged foil,
or else the specific placement of
the foil strips should make no great
difference. But the placement of the
foil really did affect the result,
which means that something additional
to the ‘smog’ theory must be at work
on CDs to produce the benefits. Peter
and May Belt’s ideas about what this
seem so outlandish though, that I
need to describe two more experiments
before discussing the Belts explanations.
And I warn you in advance, that if
the last lot of experiments seemed
fairly odd to you, these are like
something out of Lewis Carroll’s The
Hunting Of The Snark.
Hunting the Snark
Part 1: Freezing Your Photographs
"Just the place for a Snark!"
the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of
the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"
Fit the First. Choose
two photographs of yourself, a current
one and another taken when you were
much younger, place them in separate
sealed plain polythene bags and store
them inside the freezer compartment
of your domestic fridge. Listen to
your audio system playing (the source
of the music doesn’t matter) and decide
if the sound has improved. If unsure
whether this is the case, remove the
photographs and their containers from
the fridge and you will hear the sound
deteriorate markedly. And so will
anyone else present at the time.
Fit the Second. Remove
the photos and their bags from the
fridge. Take a standard red fine-point
permanent Staedtler Lumocolour pen
(No 313) and write 'x 26 'x (the dashes
are important) on both sides of each
of the bags containing your photographs.
Fit the Third. Take a domestic flashlight,
remove its batteries and with the
same red pen write 'x 26 'x on each
of them. Replace the batteries in
the flashlight.
Fit the Fourth. Using
the red pen, write 'x 26 'x on a CD’s
printed side and also on the outside
of its plastic storage case. Take
your domestic flashlight and shine
the beam for a few seconds on the
written 'x 26 'x markings on the bags
containing your photographs and then
to the markings on the CD and its
case. Replace the photographs in the
freezer and play the CD. The sound
will again have improved considerably,
even if the whole idea seems as mad
as apple crumble to you.
Fit the Fifth. Apply
Step Four ad lib by sticking
marked labels to your audio equipment,
more CDs, tapes and to the disc labels
(both sides) and to the sleeves of
your long-playing records as well
as to any other batteries that may
be to hand (in remote controls etc.)
Fit the Sixth. If
by this time, you are absolutely sure
that you are Doing The Right Thing,
then proceed to the next experiment.
Hunting the Snark Part 2: Aspirins
For Your Speakers
"Just the place for a Snark! I
have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have
said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."
In my last
article, I mentioned a new free Belt
‘device,’ a small rectangle of white
paper (pin-pricked with small holes
in each corner and another at the
intersection of the diagonals) but
have now taken its use a step or two
further. When the pin-pricked rectangle
was applied to the wood of one of
my loudspeakers, it initially changed
the perceived sound of the whole audio
system for the better. But the next
Belt-induced steps really are Snark-like
because the benefits are enhanced
even further by a) placing a picture
/ photograph of a four legged animal
with a tail underneath the
paper rectangle and then b) placing
a single common-or-garden aspirin
tablet of all things over
the rectangle's centre pin-prick.
There is no doubt in either my mind
or my wife’s that this extraordinary
process did make a perceptible difference
to overall performance of our home
audio system, even though the Belts’
explanation for it does take a fair
amount grappling with…well, for me
at least.
"The method employed I would gladly
explain,
While I have it so clear in my head,
If I had but the time and you had
but the brain--
But much yet remains to be said.
"In one moment I've seen, what
has hitherto been
Enveloped in absolute mystery,
And without extra charge I will give
you at large
A Lesson in Natural History."
…. So here we go.
Current Theories: Electromagnetism
and Morphic Fields
"There was also a Beaver that
paced on the deck,
Or would sit making lace in the bow:
And had often (the Bellman said) saved
them from wreck,
Though none of the sailors knew how."
Electromagnetism / Quantum Mechanics
Please accept for
the moment that while it is true that
I sometimes write April Fools for
MusicWeb, I am making none of this
up nor am I in the pay of PWB Electronics.
It is simply the case that both of
these bizarre experiments really have
added to the improvements which my
audio system gained from my first
round of ‘Belting.’ Strictly speaking,
I ought to say that the experiments
have improved my perceptions
of the system’s sound, because according
to Peter Belt and his wife May, the
system has not changed at all.
Instead, what has happened is that
the Belts’ peculiar ‘treatments’ have
cleared up more of the ‘muddle’ that
previously impaired my capacity to
hear the system’s true capabilities.
The Belts maintain
that even modest hi-fi equipment delivers
much more information than we can
normally perceive and the spectacular
improvements to the sound from the
£25 DVD player that I reported last
time, are certainly some kind of witness
to that. Having said this though,
the inference that more expensive
equipment is a complete waste of money
would be incorrect, since my Primare
DVD30 is still superior to
the £25 machine. On the strength of
the fact that the sound from the Primare
appears to have improved also, it
really does seem that there are factors
at work in most listening environments
which impair appreciation of what
any audio component can really
do.
In an article called ‘What a Mess!!
An alternative view of reality’ published
on the PWB website (Click
Here) May Belt writes:
"Every day,
technology is producing astronomical
numbers of objects that seriously
impair the senses and our well-being.
We have, yet again, constructed
a number of experiments that require
virtually no financial outlay,
yet are capable of exposing an
invisible technological pollution
which is extremely harmful to
all human beings…Simple everyday
objects such as batteries, magnets,
photographs and the very music
recordings that we attempt to
replay all conspire to seriously
impair our senses. To understand
this problem, it is necessary
to realise the very basis upon
which nature evolved the senses.
Within each and all living creatures,
there is an attempt to maintain
an inner symmetrical pattern.
The senses all measure the degree
of asymmetrical energy patterns
exterior to the body and compare
the external asymmetrical energy
patterns against the internal
symmetrical energy patterns. Modern
science and technology has surrounded
each individual with innumerable
objects which have asymmetric
energy patterns that create a
chronic problem for our senses.
It is necessary to remove the
effect of these environmental
pollutants so that the senses
can begin to function at a high
level."
Leaving aside for the moment the
problems caused by what ‘symmetrical’
and ‘asymmetrical’ mean in this statement,
the article continues:
"Each individual
human had a fundamental adverse
problem imposed on their senses
when they had their first photograph
taken. A photographic image captures
the unique identity of the subject
of the photograph but imposes
a significant temporal (time)
asymmetrical pattern. The action
of this photograph radically changed
the inner symmetry of the senses
of the photographed human being.
(my italics) Fortunately, this
debilitating adverse condition
is reversible."
And May then goes on to explain how
the freezing of photographs restores
lost temporal ‘symmetry’ because:
"This experiment
demonstrates that within the freezer
compartment, there exists a high
degree of symmetry and that this
symmetrical condition is imposed
on the temporal asymmetric condition
of the two chronologically spaced
photographs and is, in turn, imposed
on the senses of the human subject
of the photographs. It is unfortunate
that the vast majority of people,
including many who work in science
and technology, do not appreciate
that a photograph functions
within the quantum mechanical
world."
Well, in one sense of course everything
functions ‘within’ the quantum mechanical
world, even though we may not understand
how. And even after remembering that
people once believed that being photographed
stole their souls, I can’t quite stop
twitching a bit when quantum physics
is wheeled out too readily as the
explanation for otherwise imponderable
physical phenomena. But there’s even
more to come:
"The experiment
with the photographs also demonstrates
that the conditions within the
freezer compartment are also a
function of the quantum mechanical
world ...and… the next part of
the experiment involves the use
of a battery operated flashlight
(torch). There can be very few
people who are not aware that
the light created by the flashlight
consists of a stream of billions
of particles of light and particles
of light (photons) are the essential
energy producing pattern within
the quantum mechanical world……
…..Isaac Newton
was convinced that light always
consisted of minute particles
and this concept became known
as the 'corpuscular theory'. This
established Newtonian theory was
challenged at the end of the 18th
century when Thomas Young performed
the double slit experiment which
demonstrated that light was propagated
with wavelike properties and could
be changed to have the properties
of individual particles by subjecting
the light to different conditions.
It is interesting to note that,
because of the stature of Isaac
Newton, this convincing demonstration
by Young was ignored for many
years by the scientific establishment.
There have, since this time, been
innumerable high quality experiments
to explain the duality of light
- all to no avail!"
At this point the
article becomes more difficult to
rationalise, and continues…
"Experiments
to explore how the human senses
function, readily demonstrate
that, when the human senses interact
with light and other natural energy
patterns, a process occurs similar
to that which takes place when
the wave formation of the energy
is manipulated to form a particle
condition. If this process is
understood within the space co-ordinates
of x, y, z and t - the y co-ordinate
represents the natural energies
in wave formation which interact
with the human receptors and create
a particle structure, on an object,
which is the 'x' co-ordinate.
The human body,
having the ability to manipulate
the raw basic energy patterns
of nature to activate the complex
human senses can, by writing with
a Red pen on an object, create
the 'x' co-ordinate onto the object.
This is a direct interaction of
the manipulated energy patterns
on the human being, superimposed
on the random energy pattern on
the object. The object is then
left in a permanent state that
all human beings, within its presence,
can interact with on a one to
one basis….Within nature, there
are now a number of established
effective number sequences. One
of these is 'x 26 'x."
Now despite Heisenberg,
Schrödinger’s Cat and all that,
I’m not completely convinced that…
‘when the human senses interact with
light and other natural energy patterns,
a process occurs similar to that which
takes place when the wave formation
of the energy is manipulated to form
a particle condition.’ I think I can
see what May Belt means but at first
reading this felt like a big over-generalisation
to me and - misquoting both Finnegans
Wake and Richard Feynman simultaneously
- I found myself thinking ‘Three Snarks
for Muster Mark. Hah!’ Until that
is… an irritating niggle occurred
to me about the figure ‘26’ in the
'x 26 'x red pen formula.
Twenty six just happens
to be the Atomic Number (the number
of protons in an atom) of Iron. And
while May Belt’s article gives no
clue about whether or not this significance
is intentional, since iron is an essential
part of blood haemoglobin (though
I’m no biologist, I should add) there
just might be a (loose-ish) sort of
argument here, for some kind of ‘connectedness’
(at an electromagnetic if not an actual
‘quantum’ level) between objects marked
with the formula and human beings.
And the marks have to be made with
a permanent red pen. ‘Well,
it’s a thought,’ I thought.
Now by sheer chance
too (or by one of those peculiar coincidences
that CG Jung and the physicist Wolfgang
Pauli called ‘synchronicities’) at
just about the time I began this investigation,
I happened to bump into a research
biologist greatly interested in the
effects of electromagnetism on humans.
This was Roger Coghill whose laboratory
in Wales is deeply concerned with
investigating such effects with substantial
scientific rigour. His web site (Click
Here) describes the work and the
site’s link to ‘Endogenous Fields’
is maybe just relevant to what May
Belt is saying.
The use of photographs to
transmit these notional perceptual
effects still needed more explanation
however…..
Morphic Fields
"But oh, beamish nephew, beware of
the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish
away,
And never be met with again! "
To explain the notional
‘linkages’ between frozen photographs
marked with a red pen and similarly
marked audio components, the Belts
also rely heavily on the theories
of Rupert Sheldrake (another research
biologist) concerning the supposed
existence of phenomena that he calls
‘Morphic Fields’ and ‘Morphic Resonances.’
A full account of these can be found
on Sheldrake’s web site (Here)
for those interested in learning more.
And although Sheldrake’s ideas are
distinctly controversial and regarded
as nonsense by some of his more orthodox
colleagues (a past Editor of ‘Nature’
once suggested that one of his books
should be burned, for instance) he
is undoubtedly a carefully trained
scientist who conducts his studies
with a good deal of rigour.
If I catch Sheldrake’s
drift correctly he says that:
- Genes do not wholly explain
the development of organisms (simple
or complex) and that ‘fields’
(called biological, positional
or developmental ‘fields’ by some
biologists in the past) are needed
to impose different kinds of order
on otherwise random genetic processes.
- These ‘morphogenetic' fields
are not fixed forever, but evolve.
- The fields are inherited by
new members from past members
of a species through some kind
of non-local effect that
he calls, ‘morphic resonance.’
The consequences
of these propositions are that the
‘morphic fields’ presently organizing
the activity of the nervous system
in humans and other creatures, are
inherited through morphic resonance,
conveying a collective and instinctive
memory among species. Individuals
within a species however both draw
upon and also contribute to
the collective memory of their species.
This accounts, Sheldrake says, for
why new patterns of (animal) behaviour
sometimes spread more rapidly over
huge distances than would otherwise
seem likely. Sheldrake maintains for
instance, that humans in one location
can learn and (digest) new ideas faster
once some kind of critical mass of
people somewhere else have
already learned them. It’s not telepathy
exactly but a mysterious ‘something
in the air’ that makes the accelerated
learning possible.
Now, although I don’t
understand these ideas in any detail,
it does seem to me that Sheldrakes
‘morphic resonance’ and the increasingly
validated notion of ‘quantum entanglement’
in which widely separated clusters
of atoms can somehow interact with
each other even over large distances
- (Click
Here for a recent discovery in
Denmark about this) - aren’t conceptually
(bad pun coming up) a million miles
apart. Einstein called quantum entanglement,
‘spooky action at a distance’ (probably
incorrectly as it happens) but even
so it’s just possible that the Belts
‘quantum mechanical’ explanations
for their discoveries may not be quite
so far fetched after all.
If, as the Belts
maintain, the adverse temporal asymmetry
(still not quite defined) generated
by a photograph is removed by freezing
it, then the real person’s ‘morphic
field’ might just change too with
the result that another a layer of
muddle is removed from his/her perceptual
processes. Though not stated overtly
I assume that two photographs are
needed to cover the individual’s life-span.
Interestingly, May
Belt e-mailed me to point out that
the red pen ‘treatment’ works without
photographs being placed in a freezer
but also said that the ‘symmetry’
of the freezer can be demonstrated
fairly easily. If the red pen is used
to sign either one’s name or
to write the formula ‘x 26 ‘x on labels
which are then attached to either
CDs or to pieces of audio equipment,
the sound always seems to improve.
If however these labels are replaced
by others made after personal photographs
have been frozen, and are then marked
with the red pen in the suggested
manner, a far greater improvement
will occur. Going back to the first
set of labels will then make the sound
seem very unpleasant – despite the
fact that an initial improvement was
perceived when they were applied initially.
This, May says, is simply because
our memory of acceptable sound changes
each and every time we hear an upgrade.
The Belts’ explanation for the ‘Aspirin
on the Speakers’ experiment also depends
on ‘morphic resonance’ (according
to the PWB website here
.) Some kind of interaction between
the evolutionary processes that produced
early dominance of sight over hearing,
the mammalian eye’s reactions to light,
and the adverse ‘morphic’ properties
of wood, are claimed to be the foundation
for the effectiveness of the pin-hole
device. The fact that aspirin comes
from willow bark (one of the few trees
to have apparently ‘positive’ morphic
effects on the human organism) is
claimed to explain the beneficial
effect of the strategically placed
aspirin tablet. This is a seriously
summarised version of the explanation
however and more detail is available
from the web link above.
Conclusions
All of this would simply be good clean
knockabout stuff, were it not for
the plain fact that something useful
does happen when any
of these experiments are carried out
particularly when they are applied
cumulatively. And although my initial
reactions to the Belts’ explanations
for why their devices work were fairly
dismissive, the more I think about
them, then the more I become open-minded,
if not entirely persuaded of their
accuracy.
I am still at a loss
to understand exactly why the CD
logo needs to be covered when
Silver Rainbow foil is applied to
a disc however, but I’m told that
this discovery (and similar ones like
crossing out bar-code markings with
a red pen) were made after Peter Belt
had conducted a long series of trial
and error experiments some years ago.
So it does seem to me that something
very interesting is going on at PWB
Electronics, however outlandish it
may seem and however imperfect the
Belts’ explanations remain to theorists.
It’s possible of
course, that my wife and I are suffering
from Folie à Deux, the
psychiatric condition in which the
delusional world of one person is
accepted as reality by another. If
that’s true - and if my current attempts
to understand the Belts’ explanations
for their products are simply aspects
of my need to preserve my psychic
equilibrium - I can see that Folie
might be the real ‘reality’. That
would certainly explain why the mental
health people haven’t been round yet.
"It's a Snark!" was the sound
that first came to their ears,
And seemed almost too good to be true.
Then followed a torrent of laughter
and cheers:
Then the ominous words "It's a Boo-"
"In the midst of the word
he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished
away---
For the Snark was a Boojum,
you see"
Bill Kenny
PS Apart from rude messages
affirming that I am indeed as mad
as apple crumble, comments on the
two pieces about PWB Electronics are
welcomed at the Music
Web Bulletin Board.
Contact Mrs May Belt
for more information or a sample of
Silver Rainbow CD Foil either by emailing
foil@belt.demon.co.uk
or by surface mail at PWB Electronics,
18 Pasture Crescent, Leeds, LS7 4QS,
UK Please enclose your name and postal
address in your communications.
The PWB Product Users
Group is at http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/PWB
The PWB Web Site
is at http://www.belt.demon.co.uk
Lewis Carroll’s The
Hunting of the Snark can be found
Here
