Decibel_116
AK Subscriber
So, I was cruising a reputable high-end audio dealer website this morning and I run across the Synergistic Research "Atmosphere" and "ATM" products. It looks like a monolithic tower you place in the middle of your listening room. The claim is that there is more natural and man-made RF (Radio Frequency) during the day than at night and that's apparently why things sound "different" at night than during the day. So this device apparently is placed into your listening room to inject more (but better) RF into your room to make it "RF neutral". There's only one small issue, your ears cannot "hear" radio frequencies. It is not installed into the signal path so keep that in mind. It has several different settings (controlled by your iPad) that emulate a close-mic'd intimate setting, an ambient room, and a Grand Canyon setting. There are videos demonstrating this product switching through all the settings, all of which sound like various levels of reverb or delay have been added to the signal. Somehow this device is causing the electronics to distort in a predictable manner to produce these effects. While it is a known fact that some people prefer certain types of distortion in specific applications, I am really having a hard time with the very premise of this product being sold as a "high end" item. I want my signal path free of RF interference/modulation. In an audiophile world of power conditioners, shielded power cables, balanced interconnects all aimed at rejecting RF interference, this makes no sense to me. Can someone explain to this old engineer how this makes any sense?
