Do you pay attention to electrostatic discharge (ESD)?

Yes. ESD is a difficult behaviour of materials that has bothered me much over the years, that is hard to master - it seems to trigger all sorts of intriguing changes in tonal qualities, which are always negative in direction. I used the technique of switching off equipment to 'reset' these type of degradations, during several periods over the years, but found that almost immediately switching back on again was enough to restore full quality. Have you experimented with the length of time before turning it back on, to see if there's a pattern here?

A simple "trick" I have used for seeing if my touching equipment, etc, is causing an effect is to hold a folded paper towel, so that only the paper actually touches the surface when I do something - this changes the ESD behaviour, and gives me feedback as to whether something is going on. Experiment, experiment, experiment - I would be loathe to use 'treatments' unless I was absolutely sure that the impact would be positive, and long lasting ...

Most consumer products are pretty hardened against ESD but eventually something will fail. ESD can also cause "hidden" effects like leakage paths that degrade performance and may allow more EMI/RFI (noise) into the system.

Making sure all equipment and the rack is grounded is a start. Always touch the rack (if metal) or chassis first then any knobs/switches/whatever. I am in the habit of touching the chassis with my left hand and leaving it in contact whilst pushing buttons or turning knobs with my right hand (reverse if you are left-handed).

You can buy antistatic floor mats to place under the equipment rack. They have a ground wire you can attach to the wall safety ground. Step on the mat before touching the equipment. There are sprays but I have not found them terribly effective, especially on carpet, and you don't want to risk ruining the rugs with chemicals. I'd go the mat route (I have used one before to great effect). You could also buy a wrist strap, grounded to the rack or some convenient point, and et in the habit of slipping it on before touching the equipment.

There are support groups and counselors for dealing with your affection for material things and need to constantly touch them...

I might be misinterpreting your thoughts and experience. But, it seems most likely to me that the electrostatic charge builds up on you, not in your system. Touching your (presumably) properly grounded components discharges you and likely has nothing directly to do with the system. It is not itself building up an electrostatic charge. It is just doing what nature makes it do, carrying that charge which accumulated on you to ground, assuming the system is properly designed. To me, it is inconceivable that a properly grounded chassis could accumulate and retain an electrostatic charge. If the chassis is ungrounded and "floating", I suppose there might be a possibility. But, as you can see, this may be a downside of such an arrangement.

Yes, the carpet might be the major factor in your accumulation of the charge. Low ambient humidity might play a role. Hence, a humidifier might help. I think there are also grounded floor mats, which you could place where you would step on one as you reach for your system controls. I would think that a decent high resistance voltmeter between any component and a good ground would clearly show whether or not electrostatic potential is accumulating on the equipment itself. That might give you peace of mind on that score. But, again, I think charge accumulation on the equipment itself is unlikely.

Your "fact" that the system sounds better if left unplugged overnight, seems potentially a bit fishy to me. Personally, I do not trust my own acoustic memory to tell me reliably about sonic differences with that much intervening elapsed time. The subconscious mind plays tricks on all of us, affecting what we think we hear. We are all susceptible to that, even if we consciously know about the influence of the subconscious on our perception. Offhand, I do not know of an easy, reliable way to test your hypothesis one way or another.

My own problems with electrostatic charges affecting my system were pretty much limited to my vinyl days. I noticed in the very dry heated air on cold days in wintertime a definite tendency for LP discs to accumulate a static charge and to attract much surface dust as a result. I could also hear a mild static discharge when I touched them on removal from the vinyl sleeve or picking them up after play. There was not much of a problem at other times of the year when humidity was higher. I discovered that some disc treatments like Last caused a definite improvement in this.

The old Soundstream recorders were vary sensitive to static. You had to ground yourself to the chassis before touching any of the controls. It was a 74LSxxx digital control chip problem.

Static is way you should unplug a computer before changing cards. Same thing goes for audio interconnects. But modern IC chips are much more resistant to static damage. (see reply #4)

Once everything is up and running, static won't affect the sound.

I still remember the dirty look I got when I walked up to a system at CES a few years ago and the moment I touched the front panel it shut down! The exhibitor was furious. I was amazed that his equipment would be this sensitive and he was going to blame me!

Static buildup. Happens all the time at RMAF.

when I first got the Rockport Sirius III turntable static became a significant issue, more in the wintertime when it was cold and dry. the Rockport's air bearings both for the platter and arm eliminated pathways for static charges to drain so the build-up was greater. I got in the habit of 100% of the time tapping the rack to discharge my own static prior to touching anything in the system.

now 13 years later I still always do it. in my current system it seems to only get bad again in the winter when it's cold and dry, and especially if I just have socks on my feet, then it's worse as a walk across the carpet. occasionally when I ground my finger on the rack the charge is so severe it will put my preamp into oscillation. that has happened a hand full of times. if I turn it on and off it's ok.

a static charge can be a serious issue.

I have attended and taught ESD courses numerous times. Walking across carpet we can generate 7500 V at 55% relative humidity (RH). Drop to 40% RH, and it goes up to 15 kV. Down at 10%, not all that unusual in Colorado, and it's 35 kV! For reference, it takes about 3 kV before we even notice it (more than enough to damage a lot of components; standard HBM ESD rating is around 2 kV). It hurts around 10 kV, and at 30 kV can cause damage (trauma, burn mark).

While stationed at beautiful Minot AFB, ND I always carried a large brass key, in order to discharge the static electricity prior to touching any metal object or another person, if I was feeling evil. Even with the large key, it was sometimes painful, as the spark could be as long as an inch! I was told back then that an inch long spark required 100Kv.

Apart from actual skin touching on parts of equipment, controlling triboelectric behaviour, that "thing" which causes ESD, is one of the dark arts of audio, IME. This is what cable lifters are about, I use a cheap and nasty variation of that to get results - anywhere where part of a system can physically touch another part, or some part of the room, and the level of touching is sensitive to vibration, from any cause, may cause audible effects. I spend huge amounts of time fine tuning this, trying to eliminate every last skerrick of negative impact from this.

Why does this happen? Why can I hear the effects? That's very hard to answer, it drives me nuts a lot of the time - I may have a technical outlook, but I don't know what the reasons are much of the time; I just do what seems reasonable to try, until the SQ I want is achieved ...

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - I wouldn't get too fussed, mcduman, every situation is different: how sensitive the listeners are to these quality changes; how susceptible the particular gear is to these factors; how many loose ends there are to deal with. Personally, I would just start experimenting, to see if I could hear changes in the sound when I alter some obvious things - and take it from there ...

I happen to notice the impact strongly, many others I'm sure wouldn't ... there is no black and white in any of this.

Cheers,

Static has yin and yang.

Sometimes it can be utilised for curing your audio system.


I wrote about this in 2009

Funny thing happened on the way to sonic heaven

These days, in any room, in any system, if I can perceive imaging to be skewed towards the left, I'll wash the CD disc under tap water and then dab it dry with tissue paper and play the disc and it will usually cure the problem - snapping centre fill imaging right back to centre.

If I want a stronger remedy - the clear transparent cd jewel case still remains the best solution.
(The act of plugging a cd disc up from the jewel case - plastic rubbing against plastic - creates a very potent form of static, of which I've come to categorise as yin)

Sometimes, if I'm naughty, I bring a couple of CDs (that I've wiped with a dry cloth earlier) into a Hifi shop and ask them to play those discs. They never fail to make the system's imaging to become skewed towards the left.

Why always left?

I have no idea.

But it works everytime.

jeromelang said:

Sometimes, if I'm naughty, I bring a couple of CDs (that I've wiped with a dry cloth earlier) into a Hifi shop and ask them to play those discs. They never fail to make the system's imaging to become skewed towards the left.

Why always left?

I have no idea.

But it works everytime.

Click to expand...

Indeed, naughty behaviour ... . The image skewed that way means that the left channel is working less well than the right, more distortion is being added on that side. How the data is encoded on the disk, and is handled subsequently, one channel coming before the other in the stream of data, would likely suggest where the aberration is occurring ...

Static electricity thrives on cable lifters that are insulators. The better the insulation, the happier the static electricity is.
Not that static on cables (once the system is up and running) will be a problem.

Uh, unless it is anti-static treated, bubble wrap will increase static charges/discharges... And anti-static gloves don't help if you are not grounded to begin with. Studies show they can actually hurt by providing a lower-impedance path for discharge. You must discharge yourself before touching the equipment. You could try picking up a wrist strap that you put on (or at least grab) or provide some other grounding means. In the past I have put down an antistatic floor mat and made sure the equipment rack and equipment had a good ground so ESD had a path outside the components. The floor mat doesn't help much if you step on it with rubber (insulating) soles but will help a little even then.

Wrist straps: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...wrist+strap&rh=i:aps,k:antistatic+wrist+strap

Floor mats: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ic+floor+mat&rh=i:aps,k:anti+static+floor+mat

You must have ground wires on these products.

At some point I could pull one of my old presentations on ESD and post. It is a big problem here since the air is dry and we work on sensitive electronics. I have seen a half-million dollar piece of test equipment get killed by someone walking by and inadvertently brushing the probes with his jeans...

HTH - Don