I've been on this journey for 35 years and just had my first OMG experience for $100! Hard to believe this tweak was an exponential improvement over new $6500 speakers and a $3K phono amp. Installed cable elevators from Balanced Technology. The net result was all the potential from my components was instantly realized. Never understood what "clarity" meant until the veil was removed. I've always enjoyed this hobby. Now, I can't seem to leave my system and this addiction is beginning to scare me! |
You should try a B&W golf-ball texured port or a B&W tweeter in erection...totally useless but a great marketing tool from the geniuses at BandW or BMW as some people still think... |
Acorn nuts under speaker spikes
I was getting really tired of having my spikes scratching my floor every time I wanted to adjust speaker positioning or just angle them inward. I bought 8 small acorn nuts, local depot, put in some earthquake putty ( or museum putty ) into the acorn nut and under the spikes. They isolate very well and when moving or adjusting position of the speaker they stay on the spike....actually, they look pretty good too! |
I have found that a half round tube trap works wonders when placed a couple of feet ahead and right in the centre of the speakers.It is almost like listening to headphones,may have something to do with the old ambisonic mindset.I know it flies in the face of audio mantra"put nothing between you and the speakers" but this seems to do the trick.I think it cancels out interchannel crosstalk between the right and left speaker.One thing is certain, the centre image is rock solid not diffuse.
Now the next fun tweek has been demagnetizing my cd and vinyl collection.Next up are demagging power, speaker and IC's.The demag is working so well,there are a half dozen guys right now out trying to source units.This is the most effective tweek yet and I have done almost all there is to do.Dedicated 30 amp runs of 10 guage wire, Furman IT 1220 balanced power conditioner, Shunyata Hydra 2,and Annaconda power cords,upscale Shunyata and Goertz IC and speaker cables,while all beneficial,the Hammond F 21 tape eraser has proven to be the most beneficial and one of the least costly.To hear a before and after on an lp can turn a non tweeker into a believer. |
This is relatively expensive, but not in the context of other acoustic products for sale-Cathedral Sound Panels. For $179/pair, they make a big difference. I bought 4 pairs from Decible Gardens, who had a 20% off sale for repeat customers in July. Total cost to treat my room was $605. The last move I did today was to replace a bass trap that I thought was doing a good job in my problem corner(I already had 2 Cathedrals near the ceiling in that corner. The change that made was incredible! I tested it with Jackson Brown's, "The Naked Ride Home" cd(highly recommended). The increased detail coming from that corner put the bass trap to shame. Now there is some controversy about the Cathedral Sound Panels, including a useless graph claim. I bought before I heard about it. My suggestion to you is to try them, then decide. Doesn't one ASC tube trap cost $500-$600? I treated my whole room for that. One listen should be enough to decide. |
Put teflon tape from ((WalMart)) around each of your fuse holders and on the whole glass part of the fuse and on all wiring inside your gear and on your ac plugs. This lowers the noise floor alot.........! A MUST TRY TWEAK...............................! |
Hifisoundguy, very interesting. You know that the guys at MicroOmega think that insulation is of great detriment to sound. They would argue that putting teflon around anything is a no-no. But I will try what you suggest. How do you hold the teflon tape around the fuse? |
Tgb, when you put the teflon tighty around fuse the teflon will stay on there. When you put the teflon on all these places leave it on there for a few weeks. With this tweak I'm hearing things in the music that were blocked before! GREAT TWEAK!! |
Here's another great tweak.....us hook-up wires to replace those binding posts on your speakers and amps..... |
HiFisoundguy, when I had Beauhorns which have no crossover, I ran solid silver wires from the single driver to the outside of the binding post. I then put the spade of the speaker cables directly on it and use the lug of the binding post as a nut to tighten up the two. It was easy to revert when I sold the speakers. |
This is some big, big, big, bang for the buck. First Stillpoints ERS Paper (Google it!)for about $20 per sheet--then experiment. This paper/cloth is amazing. It absorbs EMF/RFI from everything. You can paste it to the underside of you CD/DVD player's lid, around cables, power supplies, etc. and get marvelous results---especially with digital front ends as digital is very sensitive to noise.
Second, is Walker Audio SST Silver Treatment. This is about $75 but it only takes just a wisper to make the difference to any contact: rca, speaker terminal, power cord, etc.
I challange anyone to beat these tweaks for the money. I dare you. I double-dare you! |
Condocondor, not to be combative but I have used both and sold them. In particular, the ERS paper proved a disaster in my system, even the smallest piece. It robbed music of all thrill and dynamics. Incidentally, I have found that aluminum duct tape works very effectively as a barrier to external noises.
Walker's SST was quite good, but I used it on tube pins and found it caked on because of the heat. I had to use emory boards from AudioTop to file it off. Indeed, I found the AudioTop Workstation cleaners and contact enhancer to sound better and to cause no problems on tube pins.
I fully expect that systems and tastes differ. |
Remember everything makes a difference. A tweak is a keeper and not a deceiver. So said some 21st century non Shakesperian dilbert dude. Apply this platitude while horizontal to your hi-fi. Rememeber ninty degree angles are non musical where ever you are. Tom |
Here's a couple
Marbles - if a component has rubber feet with a hole in them the marble sits in the hole (cannot roll off) and isolates it very well - not sure it it works with hard plastic feet - My Rega Planar II performs very well
Squash Balls - make great isolation devices
- I have them in black ABS drainage pipes to support shelves
- A relative has them under butcher blocks supporting his turtable and CD Player
- I cut them in half and use double sided tape to secure to components (my CD Player) I also push a thumb-tack in the bottom to stop them from gripping - sorta like a cone
Hockey Pucks - a couple of uses
- you've probably spent good money to buy the little disks that prevent the spikes from wrecking your hardwood floors. So take a some hockey pucks and instert a robertson screw and place under the spikes - the rubber is also good at absorbing vibrations. If the equipment is heavy place a large washer between the puck and the screw
- Spent good money on a record clamp? - drill a hole in the puck that allows for some gripping of the shaft and GENTLY twist it on so it clamps the record. Make sure you centre the hole - else it looks wierd when rotating
- Buy a quality puck - they look nicer - of course you could buy the pucks with your favourite teams logo!
Cork - makes a great sound insulator
- I have placed it on the underside of my turntable's glass platter to prevent music-induced vibrations
Also used it on top of my CD Player to prevent music-induced vibrations
And finally - for those components that DO NOT get hot (i.e. my CD, Tuner and phono stage) - I have found that by placing the shelf above a component within 10mm of the top of the component it will eliminate a lot of music induced vibration.
CAVEATS:
- my shelves are MDF so I do not know if this is the case for any other material
- DO-NOT use the component to support the shelf! |
Oooops - I forgot one...
20 amp Hospital or Lab grade power outlet - $7-$10
These are sooooo much better than those generally installed in houses and way way cheaper than the audiophile grade for a great performance improvement.
Get the 20 amp version: grips like a vice
Go to an electrical supply company - NOT Home Despot
Makes the bass really deep. |
try foam, e.g., egg crate mattresses for room tratment and furniture foam under components. |
Not sure if this counts as a tweak...
one guideline I picked up off of the Web for speaker placement is the 1/nth rule
Place the speakers 1/nth the width of the room in from each side wall - where n=odd number i.e.1/3, 1/5, 1/7, 1/9 etc...
So in a 12ft wide room 1/5=29" 1/7=20.5" etc...
It is not imperrative that have the Right Speaker set to the same ratio as the Left Speaker e.g. right=1/5 left=1/7 also works. As long as the ratio is odd
I have tried this a few times and it seems to get good results, you then may have to fiddle a little to get it spot on.
For Placement from the back wall - I read:
For rear ported speakers - at least 3ft
For front ported speakers Minimum 1 ft
In two rooms I have the speakers evenly spaced and in another room I have tried them at different distances both worked very well
Also I have found that with my speakers, I have to angle the speakers in such that their "point at which the sound converges" is about 2 ft behind my head i.e. when I look at the speakers from the listening position I can just see the inner sides of the cabinets.
All of the above is a guideline, since the design of the speaker can have many different effects on room accoustics
e.g. according to the Linn Rep, their latest speakers must be between 1-2 feet from the back wall and at least 3 ft in from each side wall with nothing between the speakers
Regards... |
quicksilver contact enhancer is great, much cleaner background and music i never heard before.
anyway anyone got experience with fuses replacement? any diffrent between slow and fast blow one? how to know if you equiptment take particular one? |
If I might be so bold as to suggest that you replace those innertubes with Roller Block jr's under your components and spike your speakers. Here's hoping your speakers like higher resolution. |
go to Home Depot and get those round forms used for pouring concrete columns. Place one in every corner. The 8" diameter form seems to work best (also come in 10" and 12"). They're four feet high and cost 5.95 each. If you want a fuller effect stack one on top of another so they reach the ceiling. Cover with the contac paper of your choice, cut out a top out of cardboard and place over the exposed end. You can also fill'em with cat litter or sand, but the cardboard is so dense I don't notice any appreciable difference. Caution: be prepared to fiddle with size vs placement. One corner might need 12", another 8". This is a good project for those of you who have no life whatsoever, but it will be worth the effort when you get it right. |
go to Home Depot and get those round forms used for pouring concrete columns. Place one in every corner. The 8" diameter form seems to work best (also come in 10" and 12"). They're four feet high and cost 5.95 each. If you want a fuller effect stack one on top of another so they reach the ceiling. Cover with the contac paper of your choice, cut out a top out of cardboard and place over the exposed end. You can also fill'em with cat litter or sand, but the cardboard is so dense I don't notice any appreciable difference. Caution: be prepared to fiddle with size vs placement. One corner might need 12", another 8". This is a good project for those of you who have no life whatsoever, but it will be worth the effort when you get it right. |
Unplug all the components from your preamp, other than the one you are currently listening to. This will reduce rf and improve the sound. |
Pretty much a freeby: Wrap your digital cable with about 7/8 layers of tinfoil.--Pull of the roll, the length of your cable.Lay the foil on the table--Then the cable; Roll and squeeze it tight. If it doesn't help you are out maybe 40cents. Look for mid range to upper mid-magic. The bass stays the same. This works on even 1k priced dig. links. |
Treble Magic: Cup one hand behind each ear as you are listening. You will notice a substantial increase in volume and clarity of treble response. You can decide whether this provides additional clarity, or is instead a distortion. |
I think for hands free operation; one could take an old pair of headphones/ place them behind the ears and then pull them forward till your ears flap forward??? |
Get a black permanent marker felt chisel tipped
Apply marker to the top outer part of i.e 4mm closer to top outer edge.
Some of my discs I (the ones with little print) have painted the complete top side. Liked the results.
You should get better resolution, quieter background and better decay (echoes)separation.
One marker should treat ca 50+ discs..........
If you doubt about the results, get two identical CD's- and treat one and compare. |
For anyone using oriental screens:
I used an oriental screen at the back of my room to diffuse a nasty flutter echo. I eventually realized that it was resonating at a bunch of different frequencies and creating large peaks in the frequency response that I had previously attributed to poor room dimensions.
I found that filling each compartment in the screens with sand helped immensely. My screens had six panels and each panel had 7 compartments. I drilled into each compartment at the edge of the screen (and on the edge that faced away from the front) and used a funnel to get the sand in. It was hard to avoid clogging so this process took some time. However, it decreased the resonance and even seems to have prduced some bass trap effect. Smoothed the room response right out and made everything tighter in the process. |
I recommend the iso blocks from meniscusaudio.com (amoung other sites). $2 each, 8 for $15. its about a 2 inch square piece of cork with a rubber laminate on each side. I placed four under each component, not on the feet, but between the chassis and the shelf. It smoothed out a huge amount of sibalance in vocals, mids, etc. I was shocked, really at the improvement. |
Tweak for free and with great effect: turn off the power of all your equipment and unplug the interlinks and speakercable (not the power cords!). Wait a few hours and re-install the system. All static electricity will be gone and the system will sound clean, smooth and with open soundstage. I do this once a week. Just try it and let us know! |
I had my ears professionally cleaned, and I was amazed at how the soundstage suddenly became wider and deeper. |
What does this entail and what kind of Doctor (I presume a doctor did it) does this? |
Mred, ear, nose, and throat doctors do this. I have a severe problem with wax build up and use a squeeze bottle from Murine. You can soften up the wax with their mineral oil drops, but using quite warm water will work also. It usually take about five washes to loosen the wax plugs that I have develop about every four months. |
i'm it's been mentioned somewhere here, but leave your equipment on ALL the time (solid state at least; tubes, not very practical).
everything will sound better. |
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I use the Bedini Clarifier sometimes but honestly I'm not sure if it makes a difference. There is also a CD blacklight mat that lays on top of the CD that I don't really use anymore.
Another good tweak is running a demag track. Ayre makes a disc that is supposed to be really good.
The best tweak of all, however, for newer equipment is break in tracks. Glide tones for headphones and speakers and brown or pink noise for amps works best I think. This is the only "tweak" that I am totally convinced is real. |
Go to the local hardward store and buy a rubber mat for a couple of bucks. Trace a CD around and include the spindle hole. Take a good pair of scissors and cut it out. Put it atop a CD when you pop it in the deck. If the player "fusses" a bit, cut a small wedge (approx 1 mm) from the edge of the "disc" to the center. The reduction in weight should make it more "palatable" and acceptable.
Result: Instant anti-vibration mat for CD.
Improves lower end's coherence and assertiveness as well as overall presentation.
Works with my Marantz. So far, so good.... |
The first part of this tweak is not cheap but the second part definitely is. I placed my CDP and amp on top of 2x3 bolts of gabon black ebony. This transformed the sound from hard digital to relaxed analogue. The bass became deep and true. Ebony is not cheap. After that I placed rubber squash balls under the feet of my CDP, sitting on the ebony. This brought out upper frequency dynamics and micro details. A "veil" on the upper frequency was take away. Cost $16 from Wal Mart. After 1 1/2 years, I am finally hearing what my Wilson Sophia 2s are capable of. |
The cheapest tweak is to rotate your RCA jacks about a quarter of a turn and back each day, especially if you have not treated the contacts. Note it also works if you have gold plated plugs and jacks.
Auricauricle, I currently have six different mats and can recall another 5 or 6. I would be worried that your wedge cutout would imbalance the disc are the rpms it is turning.
I have found only one mat that really has much of an effect, but it is hardly cheap. It is the Millennium CD mat and costs $119. |
After you turn on the CDP/CDT, hit the pause button. This is supposed to re-center the laser improving the sound. |
That's a good thought, Tbg; so far I have not perceived any ill effect on speed or stability. Now and then, the player refuses to read, but sonically there seems to be an appreciable difference.
Again, this was done as a spur-of-the-moment experiment that has not been subject to quantitative analysis etc.
In the meantime, I'll rotate the jacks....
Thanks for the caveat, nevertheless! |
Ultrabit Platinum from Digital Systems & Solutions, sold with Clean Disc; provides impressive improvement in the CD sound in my system. I use use a couple of drops(I find the spray amount is very excessive)per disc,spread well and wipe off with old soft cotton t-shirt. Provides significantly cleaner more nuanced sound for me. Enjoy. pete |
A comment about a speaker tweek lifted from another forum-
"Sorry if I didn't make this clear. Longer waveforms are wrapping around box speaker enclosures and being reflected later in time by room boundaries and such. Hence, a reason for room treatment. Shorter waveforms higher up in the frequency response and produced by your tweeter are first interacting with and being diffracted by the baffle and edges of your enclosure arriving just behind the pure signal at the expense of proper time and phase arrival. This would be damped and diffraction eliminated by what I make. The example that previously appeared in my avatar was on a Dynaudio Confidence C4 speaker. I custom fit to a particlar speaker. A Revel M22 appears in my avatar at present. Here is a link to an animated illustration of diffraction in action. You may be able to imagine what you would be hearing without those green and red circles- http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/images/diffdem.gif
Speaker designer John Dunlavy wrote that the phenomenon known as listener fatique is the direct result of time and phase malady. I observed this to be true in the design stage for myself. The more obvious benefits are improvements to how instruments are rendered and sound. Questions?"
That link is pretty revealing of the subject and this would be my recommendation. |
You could put a mystery bag(but then it would affect the sound)over this, and charge $150/set(3 of course)and not feel guilty. In my current setup, this opened up a window on the midrange-with voices to die for. On my Nuforce amps, I put an Eaglesound myrtle block with isonode(small) under it. Three per side. I just bought 4-inch Mapleshade amp stands on Audiogon(thanks Copperbop), and tried putting my Nuforce 8.5V1's directly on it, then with Eaglesound myrtle blocks between amp and stand. Previously, I had tried isonodes alone. Anyhow, with the myrtle blocks right under the amp and isonodes between blocks and stand, all of a sudden we get music. No contest compared to the other two ways. It's so good that I'm skipping the approved brass cones(for now), and will be looking into speaker supports. BTW blocks are $3 each, and isonodes cost $15 for a pack of 4. I believe I mentioned this tweek to both manufacturers a few years ago. |
Pinot Noir works wonders.
I can't remember if I had already suggested that previously.
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Fully agree, you need to have at least 2 glasses to warm-up and it will everything make sound warmer alternatively you can try a Humagny |
I find Canadian Club on the rocks works exceedingly well.
Just seems to make the dynamics pop. |
Honestly, I think the cheapest tweak is to buy a better whatever component you're trying to tweak. Between the power cords, shelves, cones, blocks and other bullshit, you end up spending more than a better "whatever" in the long run. That aside, I really thought the Audience single-outlet power conditioner (ARp1?) made a really positive improvement in my system. About $300 and change used. I guess this is "cheap" in the world of high-end. I plugged it directly into the outlet and attached a $50 Wiremold strip to it. |
Cheater plugs for your preamp and digital can eliminate a lot of noise on the ground line and are only a couple of bucks. |
Psacanli, do you know of any good cheaters? I have made them out of two pin wall plugs from Eagle with a three pin female and silver wire. They were better, but could not compare with going into the wall plug part of power cables and lifting the ground.
Recently Synergistic Research took some Home Depot cheaters and zapped them (quantum tunneling they say). I compared them with ordinary cheaters which I bought. Wow, the SR ones were unbelievably better and better than my home made ones.
Incidentally, the Home Depot cheaters are 89 cents @. |
Okay get off your butt and pick up the big cushion u were just sitting on. Now put it on a hard wood table thats in your living room and put your cd player on top of that.
WOW IT REALLY MAKES A GREAT ISOLATION PLATFORM. The glare is almost gone from my Toshiba dvd player, and I have 3D hOLOGRAPHIC IMAGING, along with deep extended bass. My sofa cushion is nothing special just your old run of the mill yellow foam pads found in old cars, or RV's,But it is almost 2 feet thick.
Onto another cheap tweak.Once u finish installing Deflex Panels to your internal speaker cabinents; Oh I guess that makes Tweak #2; #3 Tweak would be to stuff the remaining Deflex Panels in every bare piece of metal in your CD or Dvd Player depending on what u use for your musical source.
Now u have a cd player that sounds like 3k instead of $300.00
Don C.
Happy Listening |
