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From: wmartin@STL-06SIMA.ARMY.MIL (Will Martin)
Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end
Subject: Re: Magic Clocks
Message-ID: <10138@uwm.edu>
Date: 12 Mar 91 13:46:45 GMT
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I sent in the submission which started this thread, and I can now answer
at least one of my own questions. Many thanks to those who have
responded so far! I just got the Nov/Dec '90 issue (#68) of TAS in
the mail, and in it there is an article on the clocks. Interestingly, I
had pulled the term "Magic Clocks" out of the air to title my
submission, before I saw this article. They, too, selected that same
terminology for their title! 

1) TAS thinks it works. They keep emphasizing that it makes no sense and
they cannot explain it, but they still say it works. They did an
unscientific single-blind test which seems to support their claims.

2) In direct opposition to Stereophile, they say the stock Radio Shack
clock has *no* effect. Only the "treated" clocks work. 

3) The original firm which began all this appears to be "Coherence
Technology". They're the ones treating the R-S clocks. Tice treats
Spartus clocks. 

4) Tice does claim that the clock is just a vehicle for the treatment,
and anything else will do, too. They are coming out with a black box to
use instead of the clock. What I couldn't figure out from the text was
whether the black box is a device the user plugs into the wall and then
plugs their system into, like a power strip or distribution unit, or if
it is just a featureless box that gets plugged into the wall somewhere
and kept out of the way. Some words in the article seem to imply one,
and other words imply the other.

5) They claim it has a noticeably good effect on video images, both on
high-end fancy systems and on the picture & reception of ordinary
low-end TVs.

6) There is a little more discussion on the scope of the effect; I had
asked about the "connection" between the clock and the system, and it
appears that plugging in the clock anywhere on the same side of the 
step-down power transformer that feeds the house will do. Now, this
leads me to ponder several points:

	a) Since those transformers service several houses, usually,
that means that a single treated appliance could "smooth the electron
flow" for all those houses. So a neighborhood of audio/videophiles could
save money by a group purchase.

	b) Why limit this "treatment" to an after-the-fact plug-in
appliance? Why not treat the generators at the dam or power plant?
Smooth that electron flow from the very start! I haven't yet seen any
discussion as to whether the electricity flowing through the power lines
would get un-smoothed, thus making this futile. Sounds like an
interesting experiment... If the smoothing is in fact stopped by
transformers, this wouldn't do any good. But I would think "smoothed"
electricity would flow through the distribution wires with less loss,
thus being a technology of great interest to power companies, due to the
vast savings they could glean!

	c) But if transformers stop the effect, how does it get past the
components' own power transformers? Or do only "big" transformers stop
the effect? If so, maybe "big" treatments, like of the generators, would
overcome the transformers downstream...

The saga continues... :-)

Regards, Will
wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil