Can a tiny silver bowl affect music reproduction


I am speaking of the Ziplex one half inch wide silver bowls, but the same questions apply to the Synergistic Research ARTs.

About two weeks ago I had four audiophiles in my listening room. We were listening to the impact of the Tripoint Troy Signature. I was standing and noticed that one of the eleven Zilplexes in my room was laying flat on the three silver support rods on the wall. It was the one that is about midway down the left wall and about seven and a half feet off the floor. It is supposed to be at a 45ยบ angle facing the wall. As unobtrusively as possible I stepped on a foot stool that I leave there as this is a common happening and carefully inclined the bowl into a proper condition. I then returned to where I was standing.

Someone asked what did I just do, and I stated the above. They all were in disbelief about how it could have such an effect. I told them that Zilplex had been at CES and at the RMAF about a year or two ago, I repeatedly did their demonstration of removing all eleven Zilplexes. Always those in the audience said exactly what my four friends had said.

Having stumbled onto these a couple of years ago, I said that the inventor and owner really didn't have an explanation for the effect that it was all a trial and error process, which, of course, had taken countless hours. Synergistic Research also has a comparable bowl device, which Ted Denny attributes to his hear Tibetan monks and their bowls. There are of course Tibetan bowls. Syn. Res. ARTs are bigger than the Zilplexes but neither is the size of typical Tibetan bowls.

Tibetan bowls, of course, resonate when struck or rubbed at the rim. SR ARTs ring when knocked together. Zilplex don't ring. I asked Zilplex about this and was told they ring but at a frequency we cannot hear. My question is why would ringing bowls located variously in a room, greatly improve the apparent size of the rooms and the realism of the reproduced music?

All I can say is that they do, and I have heard no real explanation.
tbg

Showing 18 responses by geoffkait

Mapman, I was attempting to be facetious. Why would anyone - in this economy - when selling something as esoteric as tiny silver bowl resonators limit production? Doesn't make sense.
Empty Coke or Busweiser bottles are very audible, just try placing one or two on the floor somewhere. Cheap, too, for all the DIY advocates out there.
You forgot to mention the Frank Tchang Acoustic Resonators that were the first tiny bowl resonators, the Tchang bowls notable due to their use of pure exotic metals such as silver, gold and platinum. If I recall correctly the geometry of these tiny bowls is associated not only with an audio frequency wavelength but also with a very high electromagnetic wavelength in the microwave. Wasn't it Tchand who recommended placing an acoustic resonators in other rooms or even inside the refrigerator?
Tbg, brilliant pebbles can still affect the sound when placed in a closet anywhere in the house. Better send them back to me. Lol.

For a second there I thought you were talking about my 1" tiny ceramic bowls.
Tbg, sorry you haven't had any luck with crystals. These things happen. Of course, it should be pointed out a great many people have. Alan Mayer products, Acoustic Revive products, even the new Walker Black Diamond Crystal, not to mention the pebbles. Like Mpingo discs, it takes some patience to discover the ideal locations. Surely, the tiny little bowls you refer to are location sensitive, eh?
Tbg wrote,

"Geoffkait, I specifically left out the Acoustic Resonators for two reasons, they are not Tibetan bowls, and they are no way near as effective."

They are ALL bowls, including my ceramic 1" bowls. Calling them "Tibetan bowls" I think confuses the issue somewhat. I think that eleven bowls would certainly be better than say three or four. Did you have eleven of the Tchang Acoustic Resonators? Has your system changed. Lots of variables involved.

"For me the question still remains "how can resonators improve the sound?"

Have you read any reviews of the Tchang Acoustic Resonators to see if their mechanism of operation is revealed. Do you know how Mpingo discs work? You are a reviewer, right? I thought reviewers were supposed to be able to get to the bottom of these things.
They are Helmholtz resonators. They have a relatively low resonant frequency due to the wide, short "nozzle" of the bowl even though the volume is low. A clue to how they work is the placement of the bowls at first reflection points and standing wave locations. An empty coke bottle also exhibits a relatively low resonant frequency when one blows across the lip of the bottle. In fact, coke bottle resonators should work very well in a pinch.
Maybe Zilplex should go on Shark Tank. Does limiting production somehow make the product more exclusive? "Make hay while the sun shines," my granddaddy always used to say.
The tiny silver bowls were introduced ten years ago. The whole idea of these type things is not new, they have been been thoroughly reviewed in the press and have been demonstrated a great many times at shows. If there remains ANY mystery as to whether they can have an enormous effect on the sound it is most likely only in the mind of the uninitiated. If there remains any mystery as to HOW they work, well, that may be, at least in part, due to lack of due diligence since many of the reviews go into great detail on the subject, for example the review in 6 Moons by the two PhDs.
Mapman, why would you place them on top of the OHMs. What would you hope to prove? Have you not been following the discussion with respect to the proper locations for the singing bowls?
Tgb wrote,

"I also know that he tried many bowl sizes and metals and countless placements of the devices as well a many different numbers of those devices. Trial and error are the only alternative if there is no theory on which to base these decisions."

But that's not really true. For ten years, ever since the Franck Tchang tiny silver bowls came out, detailed instructions for placement have been discussed ad nauseum in the many rave reviews, most notably the 6 Moons Review by the two PhDs. I provide simple instructions for my ceramic bowls, which, not very surprisingly, mirror the instructions for other tiny bowls. Now I'm starting to see why you didn't have much luck with the Moingos. Lol
Csontos wrote,

"If anything, they are probably just effective as a form of eq. Gearing the size to accommodate a certain freq. band and then focusing the reflection in particular directions stands to reason."

That can't be right since the tiny bowls are (intentionally) placed in locations where there are high sound pressure levels such as room corners, first reflection points, second reflection points. Nothing so mundane as focusing certain frequencies. The tiny little silver bowls have been fairly well understood for at least 10 years, ever since Franck Tchang introduced his Acoustic Resonators, just as Helmholtz resonators have been understood for, what, 150 years?
Excerpt from a review of the Tchang Acoustic Resonators by 6 Moons in 2007. Apologies if I posted this previously.

"The resonators also become focal points for intense overtone radiation. That is denser at their points of origin than in the surrounding air. As directional organs, our ears key into these radiation sources and our acoustic perception of the space we're in is altered. Again, no music needs to be played to sense this spatial overlay. Speech will do, or the sound of our own foot fall. Being completely passive, the resonators can only be activated by received energy. As HF modulators, a full-range input obviously isn't needed. Franck Tchang has used a spectrum analyzer to corroborate this action up to 3GHz. By affecting the ordinary acoustic damping through adding parallel values from the resonators, original HF content reappears. It becomes audible again and rebalanced against the LF energies. Treble decays improve and the subjective impression of audible space deepens. The resonators equalize air pressure differentials and can be installed in a fridge, mailbox or outside a room. Distance will not affect their efficaciousness. That's quite a fatal blow to common sense but there it is according to the maestro. Franck has treated recording studios, performance venues, bars, living spaces and entire buildings. His demand as an expert tuning maestro is growing. That brings to mind Combak Corp.'s Kiuchi-San who enjoys a similar reputation in Japan."
Uh, the name of that particular thingamabob is getting uncomfortably close to the Quantum Temple Bell.
Empty Budweiser bottles work quite well, too. But not necessarily in a good way. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that empty beer bottles in the rooms at CES are one reason the sound at the show sucks so consistently.
A Helmholtz resonator's characteristics are determined by a combination of variables - volume diameter of nozzle and length of nozzle. There is no reason on Earth why a tiny little bowl cannot have as big an impact as a much larger bowl. It's not just the volume. Hel-loo! For the Sugar Cubes from Franck Tchang even greater heartburn for naysayers as the hole in each Sugar Cube has the diameter of a gnat's proboscis.