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
Dryer air is more dense than moist air because diatomic N and O is replaced by H2O which is lighter. Truncation of sound as it travels through air is frequency dependent with higher frequencies more greatly attenuated. THe more dense the air, the greater the truncation.

Hard to believe the above is accounting for the entirety of your experience.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Given we can enjoy this hobby as we do, we have much to be thankful for.
Many house experts warn against raising the humidity above 40% in the winter so one does not develop a mold problem. My system sound best when I keep the humidity 35-40% and I use a humudistat to measure the level.

Andrew,

This is what I don't understand, nothing changed in the room. I also have a humidistat like David.

All I did was:

Use the CD Lens Cleaner
Turn on the furnace because the temperature dropped

Chuck

David,

Thanks, I didn't know about the possible mold if the humidity rises above 40%.

Chuck
Chuck, maybe after using the cleaning disk and the compressed air, you now have a clean lens and are hearing the true sound of your system. Just a theory.