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Some time later we exchanged extensive emails with Louis Motek of LessLoss. Besides his power cables which we had reviewed, Louis was on to something else. He called it the Blackbody, essentially an EM trap/transformer meant to be placed near or on an audio device. By design the Blackbody would absorb a wide range of EM radiation and re-emit only a fraction if any in the form of harmless infrared radiation (heat). We reviewed the Blackbodies and found them to work favorably on all audio components, especially those based on circuits steered by high-frequency clocks like a DAC or class D amplifier.

Louis mentioned in one of his mails that he noticed a difference in how his car behaved when transporting some Blackbodies. This could have been the added weight to the car or the intended EM action was now affecting his car’s control electronics. It was time for another experiment on our end. This involved replacing the ASI resonators in our car with Blackbodies. While resonators mount easily to an engine with bluetack, the Blackbodies’ higher weight and substantially larger size  meant they had to be placed in the passenger compartment as close to the engine as possible. To make a long story short since this is an audio magazine, the Blackbodies exerted a comparable effect on fuel consumption. For statistics, a period of slightly over 2.000 kilometers showed a near 9% improvement. Truly precise measurements will no doubt show other figures but our point is, the gas mileage improved.

We thus had two very dissimilar solutions for combating audio-related EM radiation that also had benefits in the automotive arena. Even though being physically very dissimilar, one common feature of the ASI and LessLoss solutions is that they're both passive. We heard of other EM fighters based on the Schumann resonance but those are all active and might work primarily on the human brain directly where the 7.83Hz master frequency is very close to the brain’s alpha waves which induce a state of relaxed alertness. Whilst being another interesting subject for further investigation where many already report very positive benefits, we first wanted to find another passive EM fighter to include in today’s survey.

Embarrassingly we found one in the form of the Shakti Stone without much effort. The embarrassing bit was simply that the Stone had been to market for 15 years already but we simply never had paid much attention to it. We’d seen the Stones in use at shows but that was it. Time to rectify this situation. Thankfully inventor Ben Piazza proved understanding and in due time a box with several Shakti ‘EMI dissipation apparatuses’ arrived. Contrary to our assumption, the Shakti Stone had nothing to do with a stone at all. The official designation is electromagnetic stabilizer and the 16.5 x 13 x 4cm Stone weighs a scant 580 grams. For a stone that’s very light. Piazza is very forthcoming about what’s inside. US patent 5.84.761 explains it all and includes exploded views for even more clarity. Basically the Stone is an EMI dissipation or dispersion device using three different circuits. Each circuit is tuned for a certain band like microwave, radio frequency and electric field. The microwave circuit dissipates EM frequencies in the range of 1.5GHz to 100GHz. Shakti uses an array of 20 pyramidal-shaped resonant chambers that are coated with a sort of metallic carbon-based paint. Carbon is a naturally occurring substance capable of dissipating unwanted microwave frequencies when those hit the resonant chambers. Each pyramid is sloped to its point at 51.25º just like the great pyramid of Giza, surely no coincidence.

Circuit number two tackles frequencies between 500kHz and 50MHz. Here Shakti uses a quartz oscillator as dissipater. In order to address a broad frequency range Ben Piazza uses 17 irregular shaped and differently sized natural quartz crystals divided in two arrays. In the Stone the crystals are harnessed for their piezoelectric function which converts an electrical input to a mechanical output. For the 50Hz to 200kHz band the Stone uses a third circuit with a pair of permeable iron bars and neodymium magnets. The bars are used to enlarge the magnets’ flux area and at the same time work as antenna to pick up fields from outside the Stone. When the Stone with its magnetic field comes into contact with an electric field of say an audio transformer, there will be an exchange of energy. The electric field wants to get rid of the ‘annoying’ magnetic flux in its vicinity. The electric field wants to physically push the magnets away but since they are fixed, the expended energy converts to heat. That’s how the Shakti Stone eliminates/minimizes external EM field exposure.