@geoffkait
I do know that virtually all types of environmental electrical noise like EMR, EMI, etc (whether produced by AV gear or other sources) are positively charged ions. Even heat given off from a transformer is a form of EMR. Ever go into a teenagers room/hideout after they've been at it for a while gaming, with the TV on, music playing, wireless headphones, cellphones, etc, etc and the first thing that hits you as you open the door is not only the heat, but the totally stuffy air quality in the room? It's not really the kids themselves using up the O2, it's all the active gear. Even in a room that has air vents in it like the rest of the house, this room will be much worse because of all the stray voltage in it (particularly if this room has the router in it and it's 5G or more) and the vast bulk of that stray voltage is in the form of positive ions. The overwhelming amounts of positive ions are what is physically displacing the O2 in the room.
Negative ions are good here because they can cancel out the positive ions (ionic cancellation) and a one for one cancellation would be best.
Prolonged low O2 levels have been implicated in a vast range of medical conditions and diseases, including cancer, going back to the 1930's. Ions (positive or negative) can be ingested, inhaled, can be both absorbed and released through the skin or they can pass straight through your body. If excess positive ions can displace O2 in the room, they can and will also do the same thing in your body. Not the best thing, long term.
But, aside from some health benefits, it turns out that ionic cancellation is a great way to improve AV performance as well. IF you have a way to generate the negative ions...and the right kind of them..
Negative ions come in only 2 flavors of molecule size: large or small. The large ones tend to be man-made (air cleaners), because they are easier to make in terms of the physics behind it. Unfortunately, the body cannot utilize large neg ions. The small ones can react in either the body or in the environment to form O2 or, once in a while, an H2O molecule. Small neg ions are made in nature all the time, like when standing under a waterfall while the friction of the falling water droplets through the air generates lots of O2.
The only products for AV gear I know of that offer ionic cancellation (and that produce small neg ions) are made by Alan Maher Designs. I have tried a lot of AMD stuff over the years and have found it all to be amazingly transformational to sound and performance, to video, too. That it presents a healthier living environment at the same time, to me, is a nice byproduct.
I'll see if I can't answer your pop quiz a little more directly later on, if I can both distill what I believe what I may already know and also after I have a better chance to verify it for myself, to be sure. And I just may run that Q by Alan and see what he will say about it, too. It's a good Q.
