Kiwi Mad Science

When reading about the Mad Scientist‘s Black Discus products I became intrigued enough to order some from NZ.

madscientist-audio.com is a small outfit in New Zealand specialising in what you might call black matter. This material, of which there is no decription or recipe available is a hard resin with great RMI/EFI properties and, so it seems also addressing vibrational distortions.

Specifically I have experimented with the following:

Tube toppers: these go on top of small signal tubes (in my case WE435a on a Wavac EC300b amplifier) When they arrived I was already using EAT tube dampeners and the combination of the two resulted in a further tightening of the sound: incredible leading edge and reverb along with a holographic widening and deepening of the soundstage with cristal-clear height and localisation. Very worthwhile for little money.

Black Discus Nano Donuts: theses are meant to go on top of torroidal transformers, I used them with great effect on the Innuos Zenith Mk3 server as well as the Voltikus power supply on my Antelope Zodiac Platinum DAC.
The effect is not subtle: foremost a significant tightening of the bass with corresponding increase of blackness through lowered noise floor. In addition there is a heightening of micro detail (e.g. reed noises on clarinets, character of different sticks on xylophone and vibraphone, etc) They come in 3 different sizes, because of enclosure constraints I could only fit the smallest ones.

Black Discus Nano discs: 2 of these came as a sample gift in my package, which by the way because of Covid took 2 weeks to arrive in London. After some experimenting I ended up using them on my Wavac amp‘s positive speaker bindings as suggested by the Mad Scientist. To my surprise I got a reduction in sibbilance as well as greater clarity on vocals out of them. I am using Bybee Golden Goddess Speaker Bullets as well as Stein Speaker Match on my Duevel Bella Lunas, nevertheless there was a discernible improvement, albeit not on the same scale as with the previous 2 items.

This Black Magic is truly working and actually very intriguing. I wish there was a good explanation on the inner workings, that said the price of admission is modest and the efficacy well worth it.