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How does relative humidity affect our music?


Winter is here in the Northern Hemisphere, so things are changing both outside and in.

Last week I posted a thread because I cleaned my current CD player for the first time using an old Milty CD Lens Cleaner that I found when I rearranged my CD rack. I thought, and still think, that perhaps one or more pieces of the brushes broke off and were still on the lens. The music wasn't a precise as it was before, and I was fearful that I'd damaged the laser with the cleaning.

Another thing that was noticeable was a very significant amount of excess bass. That didn't make any sense to me because I couldn't see how anything like a laser misreading would increase the bass like that.

Now I'm wondering if the excess bass might be a result of low relative humidity in my room. I checked it and it was 30%. I pulled the humidifier off of the shelf in the garage and set it up between the living room and dining room but couldn't even get the humidity up to 40%, so I went and bought a second one for the back part of the house. Now I have the relative humidity up between 40%-50% and the bass sounds fine.

My question is: was it the lack of humidity that caused this problem and if so, why? Did it affect the sound waves traveling through the air? Did it in someway dry out the absorption panels, making them more reflective instead of absorbing as they normally do? I also noticed that my sinuses were congested due to the change in the weather, so was it just my hearing?

Has anyone else noticed this, or have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Chuck
krell_man
samhar
1,048 posts
 
Chuck I think these are helpful. I've noticed a differences in the sound at different temps and humidities.

http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Sound_Propagation.html

or

http://www.ijs.scbaghdad.edu.iq/issues/Vol53/No3/Vol53Y2012No3P689-692.pdf
rja's avatar
rja
2,372 posts
 
Would think humidity affects wood pulp speaker cones. I know humidity changes affect wooden musical instruments and gut strings.
lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,417 posts
 
Aside from the atmospheric change, does your CDP still sound "off?" Is there any way to see the laser module on your unit?
zd542
5,339 posts
 
I may be wrong, but I don't think humidity will have that much of an effect. A couple of things do come to mind, though. The first thing I would check is your speaker cables. If you biwire, maybe one or both of the cables going to the high frequencies became disconnected somehow. Also, check them to make sure they are wired in phase.

Another thing it could be is warm up. Its different for each piece, but some components need a very long time to warm up. Several days in some cases.

You may also want to check your IC's. Its possible that you may have broken a connector when you were moving stuff around.
krell_man OP
827 posts
 

All,

It's sounding clear again after I used the compressed air lightly on it. I'm still a slight bit bass heavy, but I can't get the relative humidity much above 40% right now.

When all of this happened, I hadn't move anything around, and I leave the system on unless we're having really bad weather.

I know that different tweaks like the Acoustic Revive RR-77 supposedly do things to manipulate the air or air molecules which has an effect on the sound waves. I do have wooden panels in my room as well as the absorption panels too.

The increase in bass is just something new to me and I'm trying to figure out how to tame it.

Everyone have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Chuck
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