Are contact treatments worth the money?

I consider the Walker Audio Extreme-SST contact enhancer an integral and necessary part of my system. I use it on all contacts and had my electrician use it on all the electrical connections for the dedicated AC lines coming into the listening room. I continue to have the same reaction to the Extreme-SST as I shared in my post several years ago:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ymisc&1101694286

Highly recommended when used as directed -- sparingly!
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For those who may be interested in actually "listening" and determining for yourself whether a contact enhancer can make a meaningful difference in your system, the solution is fairly simple. Walker Audio offers a full satisfaction guarantee on their E-SST/SST contact enhancer. Simply try it. If you're not satisfied with the results in your system, return the unused portion within 30 days and Lloyd will refund your purchase price, less shipping. Sure, you're out of pocket the shipping both ways, but otherwise it's a pretty pain-free way to find out for yourself whether a silver contact enhancer will make a meaningful improvement in your system, and be worth the cost, or not.

This was the approach my listening partner and I took. And as I've noted in this thread and elsewhere, the Extreme SST makes such a meaningful improvement in our system that we use it on all contacts and would not consider setting up another component without it. The improved results are consistent everywhere we've done some careful comparative listening both in our system and the systems of several audio friends.

As Aball points out, it's possible that a system will not have the base level of resolution to allow one to hear a further benefit from applying the contact enhancer. I've experienced that with one system we checked out. But that was only one system out of about 10 in which we've shared a comparative listening session with friends. In every other case, both we and the owner of the system heard a meaningful improvement. For several, the improvement was worth the cost and they purchased some E-SST on their own following the listening test. For a few, they heard the difference, but the improvement wasn't worth cost to them. Different strokes, and all that.

My listening partner and I tend to rely on what we hear -- if our ears tell us the sound is different, better or worse, that's what matters to us. If we both hear the same thing, as we usually do, we know we should pay attention. If there is a scientific explanation, that's nice. But, ultimately, we find that irrelevant if we HEAR the difference.

Almarg: I like your comment that "it is much better to have no explanation than to promulgate a speculative one or an incorrect one." Thanks for that observation.
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Bicycle_man, no retailer or manufacturer has chimed into this thread. Only various of us who use the products in question.
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No harm, Bicycle_man. We can certainly agree to disagree for there is much room in this hobby to differ. I agree that experimentation is important as we seek to improve the enjoyment we get from our respective systems. Sharing actual experiences is one of the great values of the Audiogon forums.

Best wishes,

Designdude, good for you to go out and try this! Glad to hear you've had some results that please you. To clean and prep other contacts in your system, unless you see some obvious corrosion, isopropyl alchohol and a Q-tip will work quite well. That's what we use here. If you decide to use a contact cleaner like Caig DeoxIT, wipe it down well with isopropyl alchohol afterwards. Many that I've tried still leave behind a sonic signature that the alcohol does not.

As you discovered, expect all of your treated connections to require some amount of break-in time. The sound initially will vacillate between bright and edgy and somewhat muffled before it settles into what you described you heard on day 2. What I find are the following time frames: AC connections - 1-2 hours; high level audio connections - 5-7 hours; phono level connections - 20 hours. Playing complex music is the best method of breaking in the SST.
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