Brain Cramp: Last Thoughts (probably)
On The Strange Audio World Of Peter
W. Belt (BK)
My pieces on the audio
tweaks and theories developed by Peter
Belt’s Leeds based company PWB Electronics
( ‘Hunting the Snark’ here
and ‘Read this facing North’ here)
appeared in MusicWeb about a year ago,
and apart from trying a couple of further
experiments once these articles were
published, I decided to leave the subject
dormant to settle in my mind. Other
curiosities emerged in the last few
months however, alerting my attention
to further PWB developments.
A fair summary of my
thinking up to the end of last year,
was that I was convinced that some of
Mr. Belt’s products – ‘Silver rainbow
foils’ ‘Spiratube’ and ‘Cream Electret’
– had improved my perception of the
sound from my audio system sufficiently
well to be ‘real’ repeatable effects:
and I was reasonably sure that freezing
CDs and slowly thawing them out again
also had some merit. Against this though,
the genuinely ‘whacky’ Belt experiments
- leaving photographs of myself in the
freezer compartment of my fridge and
sticking an aspirin tablet to the cabinets
of my speakers – were understandably
more worrying to someone of an introspective
nature like myself. I pondered hard
about whether the ‘improvements’ I had
‘heard’ from these extraordinary practices,
were down to good old self-deception.
They had to be, I reckoned, since the
Belts’ explanations for them made my
head hurt whenever I started to think
hard about them
So far so bad, but
worse was to come. Just before Christmas
last year, on our way to Denmark via
Birmingham, my wife and I called in
to see Len Mullenger and David Dyer,
the owner of the MusicWeb reference
audio system (here.)
They had tried freezing duplicate CDs,
had played them ‘blind’ in the reference
system and had heard no difference whatever
between the frozen and unfrozen discs.
More doubts loomed, except for two factors
that I really hadn’t expected: David
and Len play discs a lot louder than
we do - we asked them to turn the volume
down quite a bit - and secondly, both
Lyn and I had the sneaking suspicion
that our home audio system costing a
fraction of the price of the reference
despite using a similar power amplifier,
sounded (how can I put this tactfully?)
well, rather more like a live performance
regardless of the signal source.
Now, allowing fully
for the subjectivity of the comparison
and also being mindful that people listen
for different things from audio, the
niggles about ‘Belting’ wouldn’t quite
go away after this. I should of course,
have taken some of my own ‘Belted’ discs
to the reference listening session and
more obviously still , should have taken
some reversible Belt ‘treatments’ with
me for Len and David to try out. I didn’t;
I ‘forgot’ to put them in our holiday
packing and yes, Professor Freud, you
could be right – perhaps I simply wasn’t
ready then, to disprove my illusions.
The truth can make
you free apparently, but first it makes
you miserable. On returning home after
Christmas, my niggles were still with
me and I did something radical to test
Peter Belt’s ideas even further. I froze
and slowly thawed a whole DVD player
– not my expensive one of course, but
the £25 white-goods store machine that
I had previously ‘treated’ with Belt
Spiratube and Cream Electret. Lo and
behold, as they say, the machine sounded
even better after this, and the performance
/ price ratio between it and my Primare
disc player biased further in the cheap
machine’s favour. But then something
happened that gave me brain cramp with
a vengeance: I found a PWB product that
made my system worse.
I received more product
samples from Peter Belt’s wife May after
the first two articles and had deliberately
put them to one side, preferring instead
to explore how the first batch of treatments
felt over time. By January 2006, I was
still very happy with the system and
encouraged by the success of freezing
the DVD player (and then some power
cables subsequently) I explored the
new ‘foils’ carefully, testing each
one incrementally, almost invariably
in the presence of other witnesses who
were unaware of what was happening.
The results were mixed, varying from
further spectacular improvement right
through to an instance of distinct and
obvious deterioration in audio quality,
which neither Mrs. Belt nor I could
explain, and which may be the first
example ever recorded of such an eventuality.
If that really is the case, then it
is of considerable interest in terms
of theorising about how PWB products
might work.
Foiled Again
As well as the sticky
‘Silver Rainbow Foil’ that is applied
to discs, PWB Electronics produce a
large number of other foils for direct
application to audio equipment and their
environments. One of these, ‘Inside
Foil’ can be applied to the inside surfaces
of almost any component with claimed
success. I tried this first (the usual
small narrow strip) by placing it in
the rear-firing tuning port in only
one of my main speakers. When my wife
came into the room, she spotted immediately
that the ‘foiled’ speaker sounded different
to the untreated one and also said that
the sound from it was somehow airier
and less constricted than the other.
Placing an identical piece of foil in
the untreated speaker’s port produced
a result little short of miraculous:
both speakers ‘disappeared’ sonically,
leaving only a three dimensional stereo
image apparently emanating from ‘nowhere’
and genuinely ‘out of the boxes.’
Since we had previously
thought this effect unobtainable in
our acoustically difficult, low-ceilinged
cottage living- room, this was a spectacular
and completely unexpected success and
a serious incentive to further experiments
with ‘Inside Foil.’ All of these were
rewarding: applying the same foil strips
to the cases of amplifiers, tuners (including
the Sky Digibox) and disc players brought
further definition to the sound so that
more of the signal was audible even
at reduced volumes and the television
picture was better too. The effects
were more incremental however, and not
so obviously startling as the initial
change noticed after treating the speakers.
After double-checking
that removing the ‘Inside Foils’ from
treated equipment reversed the
perceived improvements (it did) the
next step was to apply samples of ‘Morphic
Message Foils’ to the system and it
was here that we stumbled on the quite
unexpected effect of sound deteriorating
dramatically in one particular circumstance.
‘Morphic Message Foils’ depend on the
Belts’ assertion that evolutionary processes
have affected mammalian hearing adversely
(see ‘Hunting the Snark’ again here)
and as a consequence the foils have
curious names like ‘Safe Hole’ ‘Comfort’
and ‘New Type Communication.’ They are
supposed to overcome the inherent auditory
deficits occurring when sight replaced
hearing as the dominant sense during
evolutionary progression. I confess
freely to having serious intellectual
reservations about this idea and the
linked notion of Professor Rupert Sheldrake’s
‘morphic resonance’ cited as the theoretical
underpinning for these foils in PWB
literature. Nonetheless, experimentation
continued despite my reservations: unbiased
appraisal was still the game’s name.
What I expected to
happen was simply Nothing. My idea up
to this point had been that at least
partial willingness (open-mindedness
or a kind of faith maybe) was necessary
in order to experience an effect from
these products, and I was reasonably
confident that I would notice no effects
whatever from the application of Morphic
Message foils to my equipment because
I was sceptical about the theory that
underpinned them. I was wholly and completely
WRONG: there were effects, slight and
positive for the most part, but definitely
and reversibly negative in one
particular instance. While the foils
did help when applied to the frozen
player and to my amplifiers and tuners,
the sound from my Primare player worsened
markedly after foiling it. Without the
foils the Primare was accurate, lively
and natural: with foils it was imprecise
and lifeless. Foils on - rubbish, foils
off - music. I made four or five repetitions,
just to be sure.
Reasons To Be Cheerful:
Part One
The important thing
about this observation was that the
PWB effect seemed to happen independently
of my personal expectations or of a
theoretically credible mind-set. I had
no idea what ‘Inside Foil’ was meant
to do before I used it, had no expectations
about the results it might produce and
it still worked spectacularly well.
On the other hand, I was very confident
that my scepticism about ‘Morphic Message
Foils’ theory would guarantee that no
effects at all would result from using
these products, and that turned out
to be completely false. Something was
happening in all cases, even if one
result was paradoxical.
One important variable
was relevant to these observations.
The Primare, the Digibox and my speakers
are at one end of my living room – the
player is near the television set while
the rest of the equipment (including
the cheap DVD player which I use for
audio only) is at the other end. This
seemed worthy of further investigation,
and as it turned out, the observed ‘failure’
became something of a comfort. It meant
that maybe I wasn’t as gullible as I
had begun to suspect and the brain cramp
I was suffering eased off. Yes, I concluded,
some aspects of Beltian theory might
well be very dubious, but the effects
of the products could still be
real. People used to think that phlogiston
existed before we discovered oxygen,
but flames had always burned and metals
rusted.
As it happens, there’s
an idea in social psychology called
Cognitive Dissonance which goes
some way to explaining both my brain
cramp and why some people are so vehemently
dismissive of Peter Belt’s products.
Cognitive Dissonance (CD) theory says
that perception of conflicts between
elements of knowledge (or between attitudes,
emotions, beliefs or behaviours) can
produce uncomfortable personal tensions
in people faced up by the dissonance.
This tension is often reduced by the
acquistion (or invention) of new thoughts
or beliefs that explain away the conflicts,
even when these new ideas are completely
false.
In my own case, the
thing that I’m calling brain cramp came
about because I couldn’t bring myself
to believe the theories the Belts use
to explain how their products work which
made me uncomfortable and self-doubting:
and when ‘non- believers’ get so vehement
about PWB products (as some audio journalists
have been for example) they invariable
conclude that the Belts just have
to be lying charlatans, snake-oil
merchants fooling gullible people with
flim-flam. Interestingly, the most vehement
critics rarely seem to try Belt products
themselves – they just know that
they’re rubbish and a confidence trick.
And even if they do try some products,
the same critics almost always conclude
that they’re imagining any perceived
differences. QED then? Well, CD more
likely.
Reasons To Be Cheerful:
Part Two
After noticing the
paradoxical effect of ‘Morphic Message
foils’ on the Primare player, the obvious
thing to do was to reposition it to
the other end of the room, switching
the cheap DVD player over at the same
time. The problems about doing this
though, were that the two machines always
sound different to one another, as might
be expected given the eighty-fold price
difference between them, and there is
a huge difference in the length of cable
runs required for each location. On
balance however, I thought that the
Primare sounded slightly better with
foils on when placed near the amplifiers
where the cheap DVD player had been
previously and that the opposite was
true of the cheap machine. There might,
I thought, be something peculiar about
the Primare’s original location or the
cable runs, or there might not. The only
arguments one way or another were that
the cheap DVD player seemed similarly
affected when moved ( ie it became worse
with foils on) and that the Sky Digibox
- also situated near the television
- was hardly affected at all by the
Message foils, despite having picked
up considerably (like the Primare) with
the the previous application of ‘Inside
Foil.’ Odd though.
Further thought about my experiences so far,
caused me to consider the possibility that some of the inconclusive
‘double-blind’ testing of PWB products reported on the Belts’
web site and in some audio literature, compares chalk and cheese
rather more than it thinks it does. My cottage happens to be over
400 years old and is built from a combination of stone and cob,
a mixture of earth, straw, sand and water which might
be contibuting somehow to the problem with the Primare though
I wasn't sure how. But given that some early theories about Belt
products had to do with removing ‘electro-magnetic pollution’
in equipment and the environment , and also that later ideas were
concerned with ‘unblocking’ human auditory pathways, I turned
to considering whether there might be other variables at work
to account for the unparalleled commitment of Belt enthusiasts
and the die-hard disbelief of the sceptics. Back then, to thinking
about the MusicWeb reference system.
The volume at which
Len Mullenger and David Dyer listened
to discs was a shock to my wife and
me. To our minds, orchestral sound from
the reference system seemed louder than
in a concert hall and despite reassurances
that it wasn’t, we were much more comfortable
when the volume was reduced. From our
point of view, we couldn’t listen to
the music for the sound
– gloriously clear and undistorted as
it was. Len and David can though, so
discounting the fact that they both
have hearing impairments (which they
obviously do not) it is fairly obvious
that we listen in different ways.
Here are some further
possibilities about variance in listening:
- Everyone may hear things slightly
differently all the time to other
people, but we have no real means
of comparing our experiences.
- Some people may listen to their
equipment rather than the music playing
on it.
- We may all value slightly
different aspects of music and hi-fi
reproduction, eg. balance between
instruments rather than overall clarity,
rhythmic pace versus phrasing, indefinable
beauty of tone from singers rather
than accuracy of pitch, melody rather
than harmonies and so on. The list
is potentially endless.
- We all may vary enormously in the
levels of concentration / attention
we use when we listen to music.
- Our expectations of what
we can derive from artificial music
sources may differ considerably. Some
people wish to replicate live performances,
others may simply want background
sounds. Personally, I am always baffled
by Classic FM’s view that music is
relaxing. Mostly, I find it
enjoyable hard work.
On top of all this,
there are obviously limitless differences
in listening environments, furnishings,
power supplies, numbers of electronic
gizmos and that curious notion of domestic
‘atmosphere’ that we often appreciate
but cannot describe accurately. Since
my cottage is often described by visitors
as having a very ‘friendly’ feel, if
I believed in Feng Shui (which I simply
don’t know much about) I might be inclined
to investigate this further. On the
other hand of course, I can just sit
back and appreciate the friendliness
for what it is.
All in all then, I’m
inclined to think that subjective appreciation
is the only truly satisfactory guide
to audio performance or the evaluation
of PWB products. One person’s Dansette
is another’s Linn Sondek and each can
be satisfied with what suits them best.
All the science in the world cannot
pin down experiences ‘accurately’
however much scribblers like me might
think otherwise. Especially when it
comes to ‘Morphic Green Cream.’
Reasons To Be Cheerful:
Part Three
If anything could be designed to produce brain
cramp then the Belts’ latest product was it. Members of the PWB
news group had asked for a ‘kit’ for treating Mp3 players and
other portable devices and when Mrs Belt kindly sent one to me
to play with, the results were again startlingly impressive. The
kit contained more Morphic Message Foils, four other PWB foils
and a small sample of something called ‘Morphic Green Cream’ which
was what caught my interest most.
In the news group’s
postings there are references to this
cream claiming extraordinary results
from it despite its relatively high
cost. It can be applied to almost anything
in minuscule quantities and after playing
with the kit for a while, I thought
I’d test the cream out further. Applying
it to only one terminal of one speaker,
I was staggered to hear the sound stage
take a further gigantic leap away from
the source and crystallise into a genuinely
3D reality. Doing the other speaker
(one terminal only) completed the transformation
and had me enthralled. I was so impressed
that I begged another small sample from
Mrs Belt and generously she sent me
not just a sample but a complete pot
of this extraordinary stuff. ‘Apply
it over the foils,’ she suggested, ‘It
helps.’
Helps? OK, but the
real question was would it, could
it help the ‘adverse’ Morphic
Message Foils on the Primare player
in its original location? Morphic Foils
on the player – worse again as usual.
Morphic Green Cream on top of the added
foils though - better than without the
foils. Very much better, as it
happens.
Never a man to be convinced
by one-off trials, I repeated this process
on my son’s audio system recently. It’s
all fairly old, certainly not high-end
by any stretch of the imagination and
he plays mostly rock music on it. Without
the cream it sounded loud and indistinct
but he reported a marked improvement
after the treatment of one speaker terminal.
‘There’s more of everything,’ he said,
‘and you can hear every instrument clearly
now, even at lower volumes.’ After treating
other elements in the system, including
his Mp3 player, he was firmly convinced
of the benefits.
Morphic Green Cream
was originally meant for manufacturers
I understand, and seems to be so effective
that the news group respondents have
been talking seriously about down-grading
their equipment, substituting cheaper
treated components for higher-priced
gear, presumably to the chagrin of audio
dealers in some cases. I have no idea
how it works, but in the same way that
I don’t know what makes my old house
feel so comfortable to visitors, I am
content to hear the cream’s benefits
without a full theoretical explanation.
I asked Mrs Belt once whether she thought
that there was an upper limit to the
benefits of PWB treatments, adding that
common sense would say that there should
be. ‘I don’t know,’ she said candidly,
‘but then common sense says that many
of our products can’t possibly work.’
Brain cramp, now then? Me? Hah!
Bill Kenny
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
