About Us
My vision
Good day. My name is Norbert Maurer and I have the vision of giving every music lover a natural, life-like music experience with my Vortex HiFi products. I know it is possible - I experience it every day!
About 30 years ago I myself experienced great music evenings with goosebumps in the hi-fi business and loudspeaker production (MASON Akustik GmbH) of my parents with inexpensive, modified hi-fi systems for less than 2.000 DM. And these goose bumps are what drives my team from Music & Acoustics and me today too.
Today, after 30 years, the systems are better, but the music experience doesn't affect half as much! Due to my long occupation with RF optimizations (see patent of 1984) of hi-fi stereo systems and the research into unusual sound phenomena, I see the most important reason for the limited perception of music in the modern domestic environment and the interference from modern digital technology. The sound potential of today's hi-fi systems is huge - but must be exposed through special interference suppression measures.
The images below show a stress measurement of the autonomic nervous system when a laptop is turned on in the vicinity of a test person. It is clearly visible that the laptop is stressing the test person's nervous system. This stress is the number 1 sound brake in hi-fi.
I would like to give you the goosebumps experience that I used to have when listening to music.
This goal should be able to be implemented with your own system even with a small budget. Therefore, at Vortex HIFI, we consciously forego the last bit of what is technically feasible in favor of an absolutely exceptional price / performance ratio. To do this, however, we had to go completely new ways in terms of thinking and technology.
Mission
Vortex HIFI's mission is to provide products that are the latest scientific, but also use alternative medical knowledge to create a listening experience that, in my experience, is impossible in today's domestic environment without our innovative accessory products.
The constant improvement process is our way
We want to be your partner for your lovely hobby of listening to music through constant and real quality improvements. To do this, we constantly and holistically continue to learn and systematically expand our horizons without prejudice. Derived from the attitude of medicine, we say: "He who makes it sound is right!"
Quality made in Germany
Quality is important to us, which is why we manufacture all products in-house (Musik & Akustik, Lohmar-Germany). The very sensitive and quality-critical process of the Information and the Activation our products is up to us in one hand and can thus be improved holistically and continuously.
When it comes to material procurement, we rely on German specialists who guarantee us consistent raw material quality. As far as possible, this also applies to natural products, such as the semi-precious stones for ours PI technology and the Obsidians. Here we work together with suppliers who offer therapy gem quality.
The magic word - interdisciplinary approach
The magic word for the extraordinary price / performance ratio of the Vortex HiFi products is interdisciplinary! Only if you have a holistic understanding of how people work and really hear can products be developed that work with human hearing! Everything else is a matter of chance and experience. Therefore, good sound has always been a skilled craft and not an exact science.
To achieve the vision we combine high technology like that Nanotechnology, with building biology technology, such as source-free shielding techniques, with classic high-frequency technologies and alternative medical techniques, such as Information.
Only one thing is decisive for us - the ear!
The human physiology decides what he receives acoustically!
Since the occupation with binaural music recording (the first stereo artificial heads have been around since 1933) it has been clear that acoustically correct music reproduction must always fail due to the physiology of the human being! Any other statement has nothing to do with human reality.
Both the frequency responses (intensity) and the phase responses (time) are completely changed by the head and body with its head-related transfer functions. The placement of the speakers in relation to the listener (i.e. not the room acoustics) results in massive deviations that are dramatically greater than any fault in a hi-fi component!
The measurement below shows the sound pressure curve (frequency response) depending on the angle at the right ear. We made this measurement with the dummy head John. So if you turn your head even a little, everything changes!
We also measured the effects between the real source and the 2-channel simulation. Base 30º stereo - the perfect stereo triangle. The lower measurement shows deviations up to over 15dB. In general, there can be no question of an acoustically even halfway realistic reproduction, since the measurement is of a principle nature and independent of transmission errors in the system and the room!
Good sound is not possible without feeling good
My 35 years of experience with tuning hi-fi systems and the latest scientific findings on influences on the human hearing system show that real music enjoyment is only possible to a limited extent today. The reason for this is the influence of new forms of low-frequency to high-frequency electromagnetic interference in our domestic environment. No matter how perfect an electroacoustic system is, the quality of the listening experience is inevitably linked to the quality of the interpretation of the acoustic data via the human nervous system.
If we had a perfect acoustic signal in the human ear canal, the musical experience could still appear completely wrong or, better, unnatural, if the interpretation in the human being via his nervous system does not work naturally. But that is exactly what scientific studies of Prof. Dr. Peter Semm. 60% of the nerve cells in zebra finches worked incorrectly when they were irradiated with pulsed microwaves at around one thousandth of the German limit value. Even Prof. Dr. Magda Havas showed at a WHO workshop the massive influence of harmonics of the power grid on the nervous system up to extreme noises in the ears - i.e. the total malfunction of the hearing sense (see table).
Exactly these influences are shown by the thousands of tests that we have carried out with WLAN, DECT telephones, cell phones and switched-mode power supplies in recent years.
Human psychology changes 99,9% of the sensation in the inner ear alone
But we do not need any new scientific knowledge to understand the influence of imagination and human concentration on our own experience. It is an old psychoacoustic fact that if you talk to one person at a party, the voices of another 100 people will be suppressed by you (cocktail party effect). So you never hear what is there, only what you want to hear! Mechanically alone, the mechanism in the inner ear that is responsible for this changes the actual vibration by up to 1000 times! The reality is then just 0,1%! We deal with the 99,9%, the classic electroacoustics with the 0,1%. If you make this clear to yourself, it becomes clear why the VORTEX HIFI products work so extreme!
That is true with the party effect, just not that this happens in the inner ear. The ear is only a mediator, in other words a “microphone”, hearing takes place exclusively in the brain! How much hearing can be learned, but this is not used enough.
Regards Rolf Dörrmann
Dear Mr. Dörrmann,
thanks for the criticism. I am not writing any academic paper here, however. That what I am presenting here is extremely shortened. You are right, of course. The cocktail party effect is also called intelligent hearing and the intelligence is often in the brain. The ability of the brain to differentiate between sound sources and specifically to amplify selected details as well as to suppress interference noises in a targeted manner requires a control mechanism that is both complex and susceptible. In addition, spatially processed data about the location is required so that the brain can regulate something.
The basis that the brain can even discriminate sound sources does not take place in a "microphone", but in the so-called nucleus cochlearis. The ascending audible elements, 95% of which come from the inner hair cells, are first connected to the cochlear nucleus. These are "clusters of cells" in the cochlea, i.e. the inner ear! Here, differentiated according to time, intensity and frequency, cross-correlations are made between the two ears. Well before the brain! These very differentiated data from the inner ear are then evaluated in the brain. Up to this point, hearing a sound source is very coarse and disturbed by background noise.
But in order to work out details of the sound sources and to suppress the background noise (this is the essence of the cocktail party effect), information is now sent from the brain to the outer hair cells via the olive pits. The olive pits receive information not only from the brain, but also from the nucleus cochlearis of the inner ear, which should not be regulated. These descending audibles are 95% connected to the outer hair cells. The outer hair cells are now "motor cells" which can reduce or increase the vibrations of the tectorial membrane - this up to a factor of 1000. This creates dynamism and creates the details. This mechanism is called the cochlear amplifier - that is, the amplifier of the inner ear. Under pumping up the ear, you can see the result of the interaction of the inner and outer hair cells.
This representation here is also very simplified. What is certain, however, is that sound processing takes place to a considerable extent outside the brain and that the cochlear amplifier is the central mechanism involving the brain.
Thank you for your justified criticism - I will try to be more precise despite the complex issues.
Regards Norbert Maurer