I was looking for a picture of Peter Belt recently, to put up on my website; "The Advanced Audiophile". I realized I don't know what he looks like at all these days. The last picture I had seen of him was published over twenty years ago. Google Images brought up a British chat forum that had been discussing his then state of the art headphones. Which they thought were great, but when it came to the products he developed later, that was an entirely different matter. These "lads" had in fact written him off as a byproduct of the folly of their youth, despite the fact that some of them did try out his unusual products or ideas back in the 80's... with success! They were just never intellectually curious to pursue such unusual discoveries. It seems they allowed themselves to be influenced by their peers, in order to be accepted by them, and for this reason never gave the Belt products or ideas a second glance.

That is, until I came on and gave them no choice but to! They were attacking my mentor, Peter Belt, so this was clearly a job for... "Belt-man!". Tireless defender of illogical and indefensible audio tweaks. (Well, "technically speaking", they had stopped attacking him a week prior. But Beltman isn't known for his keen perspective on time). After playing cat and mouse with them for a bit, I posted a Beltist experiment on their forum, which I described as one dealing with "Informational Fields". I told them I had created it specifically for them, but that wasn't quite true. I had actually created it for members on another forum, populated by musicians. But I did specifically refine it a bit for the Brits. Well, the usual hysteria followed from that, and the responses were all exactly the same ones I had seen a thousand times before. And by that, I mean exactly. Down to the same wording and all.

Except for one. One respondent was not typical. Although he started off typical, being highly skeptical of something he didn't believe in. But he was one of a small few who actually tried my experiment, perhaps to be able to say he wasn't being close-minded about it. He had also tried a free Belt tweak some twenty years ago (the plug notch technique). Which he insisted worked on known conventional principles. When I asked him to do an experiment with that, that would prove his theory wrong, he ignored my request. Like the rest of his chums, he didn't want to be "proven wrong". But when he, of a small handful, agreed to try my experiment in "informational fields", he was nevertheless proven wrong. He had heard the effect. Of course, those chums of his refused to believe him, saying he was being influenced by me. "I have a svengaliiiiii effect, see....". They also thought that Peter Belt's techniques and products only worked when Peter Belt was in the room. I asked if they thought he was a hypnotist as well.

The thing that made it difficult (but not impossible!), for his friends to insist it was autosuggestion, centered on the following factors: a) The man was against me and everything I stood for. b) He was already convinced that the Belt phenomenon was nothing more than the effect of cleaning a plug blade. c) He was one of the moderators of the forum. Not some anonymous member. d) When he declared he heard the effect of my experiment, he really meant it. There was no doubt in his mind about that, and he even described the sound that I obtained from that experiment. (Thought in the first round of tests, he said he didn't like the change in sound). e) Oh yes, there was more than one round of tests! Determined to prove his pals wrong, or prove me wrong(?!), he organized another set of tests the next day. This time blind, to where he did not know which CD's contained which message. He identified my message each time. f) He extended the test to a friend, not telling him what any of this was about. The friend passed the blind test as well, and heard the effects from my message.

Following this, the original experimenter declared he would destroy the messages, and never talk about this again, or experiment in this realm any longer. That was certainly a "WTF?! moment" for me, since I would have expected the man to be more curious about Beltism from this, not less curious. Clearly, some people have "issues" that even a good dose of Beltism can not cure. But it did help me confirm that my experiment was good enough, that it could be repeated by others. If not "all others". And so, without further ado, this is what it looked like: