Music, emotions and stress by Marco Kolks, Hörerlebnis

An interview with Norbert Maurer about the new Ground Optimizer from Vortex HiFi

Hörerlebnis tested the new 2nd generation Ground Optimizer from Vortex HiFi and was surprised at how big the difference is compared to the first generation. Basically, the Ground Optimizer reduces low-frequency fields that negatively affect people. According to measurements by Vortex HiFi, a special grounding technology eliminates interference from the device ground by up to 98 percent. If you look at the differences between the two generations of Ground Optimizer, you can read a lot about communication in the body, about stress and this associated with microscopic images of the red blood cells. The developer, Norbert Maurer, has assured that nothing has changed in the technical structure. The significant differences are due solely to other, so-called information. How can there be such differences without the signal having changed?

HE: Mr. Maurer, you advertise on your website with the slogan: "How music turns into emotions". How do your products turn music into emotions?

Norbert Maurer: Through the unaffected perception of music. As recent scientific studies clearly show, music triggers a wide variety of emotions. This can be joy, sadness, relaxation, excitement, nostalgia or even euphoria. Of course, this range of emotions does not go hand in hand with one and the same music and also differs from person to person. Music can stimulate the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system with the release of noradrenaline and adrenaline and make people euphoric. That means creating positive stress. The body then activates a lot of energy. Energy that is available for activities. But the opposite can also happen. Relaxing or calming music can help relieve stress and calm the autonomic nervous system. This music can slow breathing and heartbeat and trigger the release of neurotransmitters like oxytocin.

HE: How do these feelings arise?

Norbert Maurer: When listening to music, various messenger substances such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, noradrenaline and endorphins are released in the brain. These messengers play an important role in regulating emotions and experiencing reward. Dopamine is primarily released when listening to pleasant music and is linked to the brain's reward system. The release of dopamine triggers positive feelings such as joy and happiness. Serotonin is associated with relaxation and mood regulation and is also released when listening to music. A special hormone is oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone released during social interaction and bonding. It can also be released when listening to music and can help create a deeper emotional bond with the music or with other listeners. Norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter released during stress responses that may help increase alertness and alertness. Last but not least are the endorphins. Endorphins are the body's own painkillers that can also be released when listening to music. They have a pain-relieving and relaxing effect. For this reason, music is now used successfully in pain therapy.

HE: Do the studies show whether this applies to music listeners or only to musicians?

 

Norbert Maurer: Basically, this applies to music listeners and musicians. For example, the striatum activates (Note d. Red.: The entrance area of ​​the basal ganglia is the striatum, which is also known as the striped body. This part of the brain is networked with the motor nerve tracts and is the first switching point for the interconnection of specific movements. Degeneration of the striatum can occur in the context of Parkinson's or Huntington's disease and usually has the effect of either hypo- or hyperkinesis.). The striatum is often activated when people listen to music associated with positive emotions, and it appears to play an important role in generating music enjoyment and cravings. Maybe that's why non-musicians like to play air guitar (Note d. Red.: Norbert Maurer laughs.). But joking aside, many emotional responses are the same according to scientific studies.

HE: In addition to the pure hearing system, other areas are also involved, for example in the brain.

Norbert Maurer: Not only the central nervous system with different brain regions is involved, but also other parts of the nervous system. I already mentioned the autonomic nervous system with heartbeat and breathing regulation. That's why we bought a computer system for heart rate analysis more than ten years ago, our heart rate variability ECG. With this we can see if someone is relaxed or not. But many brain regions are also involved. Above all, of course, the auditory cortex. The auditory cortex is the primary brain region responsible for processing acoustic information. The auditory cortex is divided into different regions specialized in processing pitch, rhythm, loudness, and other acoustic characteristics of music.

But the prefrontal cortex is also stimulated. This is a brain region responsible for a variety of cognitive functions such as memory, attention, decision-making and emotional control. Since hearing is a very active process in which experience is used and acoustic situations must be analyzed so that music can be perceived in a concrete and differentiated way, the prefrontal cortex is an important brain region. All acoustic localization via timbre (HRTF) and other complex structures responsible for distance localization are based on experience and analysis.

The prefrontal cortex is often activated when people listen to music associated with positive emotions. Another brain system activated by music is the limbic system. The limbic system is a network of brain regions that plays an important role in processing emotions and forming emotional memories. The limbic system includes structures such as the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the nucleus accumbens, all of which play a role in processing musical emotions. I have already mentioned the striatum. The striatum is a brain region involved in processing reward and motivation. The striatum is often activated when people listen to music associated with positive emotions, and it appears to play an important role in generating music enjoyment and, as mentioned, music cravings.

HE: We know that and why music creates emotions. But how do Vortex HiFi products help to turn music into emotions, or why do less or different emotions come out of music without Vortex HiFi products?

Norbert Maurer: I would like to present this systematically. To understand the connections, it makes sense if we first look at stress and how it changes our emotions. There are also interesting scientific studies on this. Stress amplifies negative emotions. Stress causes negative emotions such as fear, frustration, anger and sadness to increase. Stress can also make us feel overwhelmed and have trouble dealing with stressful situations. In contrast, stress has a negative effect on positive emotions. Stress causes us to feel less positive feelings such as joy, enthusiasm or relaxation. This can make us feel depressed or down and have difficulty motivating ourselves or enjoying things we normally enjoy, such as going to school. B. listening to music.

Stress leads to a narrowing of the emotional spectrum with a shift from positive to negative feelings.

As we all know, emotions are transferrable. We have antennae for the emotions of others, and those emotions are transferrable. Stress now causes us to perceive or interpret emotions differently. For example, we can perceive negative emotions in other people where there are none, or we can perceive our own emotions as stronger or different than usual. This is fatal for listening to music, because the central ability and task of music is to convey emotions, which, of course, must have been recognized beforehand.

HE: Let's go one step further. What does it mean for our musical perception when we are stressed?

Norbert Maurer: Even though most of the scientific research looks at how music affects stress, there are also studies that look at reverse causality, i.e. how stress affects music perception.

A 2017 paper entitled "Stress and music: A systematic review of recent research" examined the influence of stress on the perception of music and found, among other things, that stress can influence the perception of music by reducing attention and impaired memory. You remember the prefrontal cortex, the importance of which I mentioned earlier. Stress also affects the ability to recognize and evaluate the emotional aspects of music. This is to be expected given the research on stress and emotions mentioned above. This is fatal for listening to music, because in my opinion that is the central function of listening to music. to convey emotions.

Another 2014 study, entitled "Stress effects on music perception," examined the impact of stress on music perception in people with and without musical training. The results showed that stress impairs the ability to recognize and process musical details and subtleties. That's exactly what I experience every day. Musical details disappear to a large extent under stress.

In 2013, another study entitled “Stress and Music Preference” was published. She examined the connection between stress and music preference. The results here showed that stressed people are more likely to prefer styles of music that are perceived as calming or relaxing, such as New Age music. I experience that again and again, especially in the high-end sector. The same records are always put on, which in case of doubt are simply knitted. Complex works from the rock area or classical music are too complex and are annoying on most systems. Complex music is therefore played less often at trade fairs and heard less at home or stopped after a short time. Listeners sit with their iPads on their laps in front of the system and hear one “highlight” after the other – from various classical works, mind you. Many people are no longer able to give their full attention to a single classical work. I was able to read a letter to a Vortex HiFi dealer describing exactly that. He was happy about how, for the first time in years, he was able to listen to an entire classic CD from start to finish with our building biology-oriented mains filters and not just individual passages. He got into a flow (the brain is challenged but not overwhelmed) and listened late into the night. Incidentally, no filters were installed in his listening room, only one floor below, where he measured the greatest disturbances on the power line. Our concept is not about the hi-fi system, but about the stress that affects the listener from the outside. The source doesn't matter.

HE: Now we are with the music. Stress is therefore a decisive factor for the perception of music, also on an emotional level. But how does Vortex HiFi help eliminate stress as a limiting factor?

Norbert Maurer: Each of our products has two purposes. 1. to de-clutter and 2. to de-stress. We call this AIO, which stands for All in One. The combination of these two functions is always present in all products. Vortex HiFi only exists because we want to de-stress the music listener. This drives us and year after year we develop new tools to eliminate problems that arise in the modern household and stress the music listener. We always question our techniques and are constantly on the lookout for new techniques. We are not biased. These can be techniques and findings from building biology and environmental medicine. These can be current filters or shields or even techniques from quantum medicine and other disciplines. The main thing is that it works. But for some problems there was no solution anywhere, like with the Ground Optimizer. We had to think in a completely new way here, because simple grounding via cables has advantages, but also considerable disadvantages. Therefore, for example, the "grounding" via a galvanic isolating element is frequency-selective according to building biology aspects, which is why the Ground Optimizer is rather expensive. We've crafted multiple grades of quality so virtually anyone can afford a Ground Optimizer and reap the tremendous benefits of a clean ground.

HE: Hörerlebnis dealt with your product Ground Optimizer a long time ago and wrote about the positive effect on the sound. But what is different about the new MKII models?

Norbert Maurer: We cannot improve the technical design of the Ground Optimizer for field reduction, i.e. measures of classic building biology. However, in recent years we have learned a lot about field modulation in terms of information. We dealt intensively with the ideas of quantum medicine.

The challenge was to systematically introduce and improve the products using these new ideas and techniques. Of course we can hear, but our products have the problem of initial deterioration, that is, in terms of sound, any change in configuration temporarily leads to a worse sound. In extreme cases, this can take days. It is therefore very difficult, if not impossible, to rely solely on hearing during development. We need something like reliable early indicators of an effect on people. There are no physical measurement methods here. In principle, our building biology measuring devices, which represent the latest state of the art, cannot resolve these changes in the interfering field sources. Humans filter, or rather isolate, interference from the environment that measuring devices simply cannot filter out. And this despite the fact that we do not know exactly what such a biologically relevant disorder looks like. Our level of knowledge is constantly changing. We are surrounded by many natural and unnatural fields that do not affect us biologically.

Others, with slightly different vibrational patterns, are biologically/acoustically extremely relevant. We once placed an activated iPad on our device feet and listened to music two rooms away. We could hear clear differences whether the iPad was lying directly on the table or on its feet. That's exactly the phenomenon. The field radiated by the iPad wasn't gone, it was also modulated electrically differently by the other mechanical vibration. No measuring device in the world can measure these differences. Field strength and frequency spectrum are completely identical for measuring devices.

HE: Then how do you measure?

Norbert Maurer: We not only measure the cause, i.e. the field, but the effect on people. Since we have been dealing with fields (electrosmog), we have known about Dr. Magda Havas that practically every kind of electrosmog leads to a clumping of red blood cells. This is called the rouleaux or rouleaux effect. When we started to show the connection between electrosmog and the rouleaux effect, we were always accused that there were many causes for the roulette effect and not just electrosmog. That's right. It is experimentally challenging to eliminate these effects. Electrosmog also occurs in geopathogenic living spaces, in which the disturbances can be based on completely different physical variables. But what is always the same is stress. Our HRV measurements confirmed this. It is probably more of a chemical (hormones) and less of a physical effect (fields) that leads to the roulette wheel effect. So the red blood cells contracted even when

when the blood has long been removed from the body and physical exposure and no longer exposed to the field. This and other effects, which go too far here, speak in favor of this thesis. Since we made high-resolution video recordings of the blood samples, we were able to observe this behavior very well in both directions. So once in the clumping process and once in the de-clumping process. Completely different physical stimuli can lead to one and the same result. After more than 600 microscopic examinations, we were also able to detect gradual differences in stress levels in the blood. This gave us a leading indicator of how well our products relieve stress.

In this way we can evaluate any quantum physics concept and its effect on stress. If such a principle works, we can take the time to check it acoustically. We also work with other test methods, such as kinesiology or the strength and coordination test on people. A blood test is the clearest.

The result of our lengthy research is a highly optimized system of information (vibration patterns), which certainly has a major impact on the stress level and trouble-free hearing in everyone. We call our premium system Sigma technology, the sum of all knowledge. You tested two technically identical (in terms of building biology) Ground Optimizers, the blue GO 2 MKII and the green GO 3 MKII. I think the difference is big for you too. This is aural proof that it works. However, all three GO's have also been greatly expanded by our latest findings in quantum medicine. The entire GO series is basically a ground optimizer on steroids.

HE: So there seems to be a way to find a more emotional, more righteous approach with less stress with Vortex HiFi products. But why is the sound so different? Why do I perceive the timbres of the instruments more correctly? Why is the listening room no longer so reverberant – even when speaking? Why is the transparency clearer or why isn't the bass booming when the acoustics are the same? What does that have to do with emotions?

Norbert Maurer: Nothing directly with emotions, but with stress and its effects. I don't know of any scientific research on this, but one could make an intelligent guess from what has been said here and from the findings of psychoacoustics. In workshops I always ask what you hear when a violin and a trumpet play in the room? People often give me an irritated look, but then someone dares to answer that you can hear a violin and a trumpet. A matter of course for us. But why don't you hear "Geipete"? You don't hear a mixture of sounds, but two separate patterns. A violin and a trumpet. Your brain has to recognize two patterns and correctly classify the direct sound and, which is much more difficult, the indirect sound. Otherwise the timbres of the instruments will be reproduced incorrectly.

A basic statement of perception psychology is that people do not want to record the sound as precisely as possible with their sense of hearing, but rather have to recognize the cause of the sound. What's behind the sound? That means sound analysis. The senses evolved to be better at finding food and avoiding enemies who see us as food. So it's not important to pick up the sound perfectly, but to understand who made the sound and then prepare the organism for fight or flight. For this purpose, a hormone is released with a corresponding acoustic stimulus. In the fight or flight case, adrenaline is released to activate energy reserves.

In order to determine the location of a sound source, a precise analysis of the sound is necessary. In our case for two instruments, the violin and the trumpet. And that doesn't work well under stress. The sound components of the instruments are incorrectly assigned. You have to be able to concentrate to do that. But stress means less concentration. The violin gets a bit of "trumpet" and the trumpet gets a bit of "violin" or the surround sound mixes with the direct sound. Suddenly more or less reverberation can be heard. This cannot cause a signal change from a hi-fi component. If you look at the reverberation physically, a hi-fi component, a foot or even a cable can neither make the reverberation disappear nor conjure it up. But we hear these differences. However, a wrong / bad interpretation of the sound and the suppression by the human hearing system can easily change that.

Regarding changes in the bass: If a bass rattles (e.g.: high level), the listener certainly does not want to hear it. He concentrates on the instrument and that's where the cocktail party effect comes into play again. Everything you focus on is amplified by the cocktail party effect and everything you don't want to hear is toned down. Since the position of the speaker is different from the virtual position of the instruments, the speaker's distortion is localized differently and then suppressed. This also applies to room modes and reverb! Of course, all this depends on a correct and efficient analysis of the sound location. However, this is highly dependent on stress. This means that when we are more stressed, we hear more distortion (because we are not suppressing it). At the same time, timbres can be distorted, spatial information is lost and transparency and reverberation suffer. Something like this has never been scientifically investigated, but it is a reality in hi-fi.

In practice, this is easy to understand for anyone who uses our products systematically. The differences are now very large.

HE: Thank you for the interview.

Here is a PDF for the test:

Listening experience Vortex HiFi norbert maurer interview_ new