Accustic Arts

To Teajay,
I use the thicker one that measures 1mm thick.
I did not notice any sonic downside with the Boston CD Stabilizer and found the flow of music to be more natural. It is not a flimsy CD mat that can get crumpled like Marigo's etc. It forms a very airtight connection with the CD below and forms quite a rigid clamp with the Accustic Art magnetic CD puck on top

To Tbg
Sorry in my haste to reply, I accidentally kind of portrayed the Boston CD stabilizer as a replacement puck. It is not meant to be a replacement puck, but meant to be complementary to the existing magnetic puck in clamping the whole surface of the CD down. By extending the clamping area of the original CD puck, it should prevent flutter of the CD at the rim when it spins. The idea is not new actually, in Japan one can buy a similar CD stabilizer made of Carbon fibre (Boston uses graphite) that comes with various thickness too. Yet to get my hands on those for comparison. More info on the Japanese equivalent can be found at
http://www.phileweb.com/shop/begins/
(look for CDS-1, can use Babelfish Altavista to translate)

Take a look at
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/cec/cec.html
Now that's a big solid CD puck/clamp ;-)

Oracle 2000 is not so big as that but still bigger than Accustic Art.

Perhaps someone can feedback to Accustic Art to look into this engineering aspect, and come up with Mk3 transport, or just provide us a better CD puck upgrade option, like Electrocompaniet's Spider Clamp ;-)

The Oracle turntable has already been one since 20 years ago, so the good looks should be handled down to a member of the family. Just wondering what's the price differential of a 2000 transport over the Accustic Art's, US$2000?

With regard to the Boston CD Stabilizer, methinks it weighs lighter than a CD, so no problem with the weight. The only downside I find with using the CD stabilizer with the AA transport is that centering the AA puck with the added thickness (Boston CD stabilizer is recessed to 0.5mm at centre) is more difficult as the protruding centering pin of the puck is not long enough to autolocate the centering hole of transport. I have to literally feel by touch that it is centred by wobbling the puck; if only the protruding pin was just a mere bit longer. But for the improvement such a simple device brings about, I guess a little inconvenience is worth it.

Pin may be short, but no danger of it spinning off-course.
The pucks magnet is quite strong and pins it down to the other side, so I have no worries. As mentioned earlier, the Boston Mat is 1mm thick a the sides, but 0.5mm in the recessed middle, so there is still enough room for the centering pin to locate the centering hole, although a bit more like 0.5mm would have made it easier.
So looks like in reality the Oracle2000 transport is quite a lot more expensive to make the switch. So for those who cannot afford the jump, do try the Boston Mat with the transport first, it's a no-brainer upgrade to the sonics ;-)

Esoteric X-01 LE is not a toploader player, thus using mats on it may be risky as it can jam up the tray opening mechanism should the mat slide out during closing. However, with toploaders like the Accustic Art transport, such risks are minimal, as there is very little loading movement to dislodge any type of mat. Furthermore, the design of the Boston CD Stabilizer which I am using is already stated for use on toploading transport and CD player only. So please heed the warning appropriately ;-)

I am a big tweaker.
A) Power Cords
I use mainly Acrolink powercords namely the giantkiller 4030 powercord terminated with F1/M1 Oyaide (the highest model in their lineup, Beryllium Copper plated with Platinum/Palladium ). They have replaced more expensive Shunyata powercords costing more than double. Ultimately I may get the Acrolink PC6100/7100 powercords that comes terminated with carbon fibre connectors (oem by Oyaide and same ones used by Wolff in his higher models).

B)Digital Interconnects
Currently Acoustic Zen MC2 AES/EBU, but may be switching to an Acrolink 75 Ohm digital interconnect now on trial with the most gorgeous looking BNC connector
http://www.acrolink.jp/english/products/6n_d5050_5070_2.html

C)Many Japanese Acoustic Revive tweaks...
i) RG24 Grounding Conditioner
Some may laugh, but these really lowered down the background noise considerably. A must try
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/rgc24/rgc24_01.html

ii) SIP-8/BSIP2 shorting plugs...
Leave no holes unplugged, the quality of these are better than Cardas' equivalents, and added advantages
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/sip8/sip8_01.html

iii)Pure Silk Absorber
A rather inexpensive buy but brought the most cost-effective improvement to my setup. The changes are really beneficial and quite unbelievable. A box of wool is quite big and can be shared among 2 audiophile buddies
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/psa100/psa100_01.html

iv) Quartz Insulator
Can be used as footers, top plate dampeners, emi/rfi modulators..etc as in
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/riq5010/riq5010_02.html
I use them solely under the input/output RCA/XLR terminals and it audibly brought about more refined frequencies, clear out the digital harshness and improved separation and wider sound stage. Expensive tweak, but I bought 3 sets including 1 limited edition using higher grade crystals with stronger effect.
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/riq5010/riq5010_01.html

v)Quartz Resonators
These are like the Japanese version of Marigo sound tuning dots but have even more applications
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/qr8/qr8_01.html
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/qr8/qr8_02.html

As they say, tweaking is an art, and it seems that the Japanese are really into it, as proven by the very effective range of Acoustic Revive range of products that I have tried

Forgot to mention my power conditioners
a) 2 sets of Blue Circle BC86 MKIII Noisehounds
These are parallel noise filters, but probably suck more noise than the gimmicky PSAudio Noise harvester (a recent Stereotime review commented they need 5 sets of harvesters to hear an audible difference)
b) BPT Purepower Centre powerstrips with Bybee..
c) Magnet Isolation Transformer(a cheap made-in Thailand brand that apparently OEMs for Monster) just to feed the DAC and transport. Will upgrade to a Japanese brand Balanced Isolation transformer in future once my local distributor brings it in. Namely the CSE TX series
http://www.cse.ne.jp/tx.htm

Rack/Footers
a) Finite Elemente Signature on Cerabase Footers
b) Taoc Tite 35S SuperInsulator footer on the Transport
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue22/awards_2005.htm
c) Boston Audio Tuneblocks on the DAC