Machina Dynamica New Dark Matter CD and Blu Ray tray treatment?

I have 3 more product to do my listening tests on (sorry Geoff another one came in that I have to do) and then I’m going to do Geoff’s NDM. I’ll do a thread on TuneLand once I get rolling.

There’s two clear sides to this hobby that I started a thread on a while ago. "talk but not walk?" I started that thread on the request of Agon members emailing me privately about the state of audio forums and how far off the hobby track they are. This was not my first experience with audio forum weirdness. On the Stereophile forum I went through something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I was sucked into the most ugly audio experience of my life. I didn’t know what internet trolling even was till I went through it first hand. IMO the Stereophile forum is permanently damaged goods now. As well it has become a graveyard of activity since (haven’t looked at it in quite a while, maybe it has changed, don’t know don’t care). JA has lost my respect as a forum mod, so be it. To me it shows his lack of caring for the hobby he has profited from so majorly or maybe I just don’t appreciate his sense of humor. I’ve told him this directly so I’ve done my duty. At the same time I respect his right to run his promotions his own way. It’s a little on the funny side to be honest now that HEA is on it’s last leg in many regards. If HEA is in his care at the moment, JA has one ill child to look after and maybe he himself has been slipping in spoonfuls of rat poison from time to time just for the grins of it. A little British humor of my own.

Posting "talk not walk" I knew exactly what was going to happen or at least thought I did. I’m sure I received well over a hundred emails telling me to give it to those who belittled our lifestyle and dumbed down the hobby so badly. My response though to alot of those folks was does it really matter. HEA now is a tiny representation of what it once was and have could have been, so me adding my hammer might be too little too late anyway. The speeding decline is gaining volume daily as it is. However it did flush out the active trolls here and makes it easy to spot them. Now you can look at a thread and within the first page choose who you are going to talk to and who to ignore.

But

This isn’t the end of the story because what I was missing several years ago is something I have always made a part of my life’s work but somehow wasn’t able to read between the lines because I was trying to understand two people in particular through my eyes instead of theirs. My moto is "everything affects everything else" and as much as I understood this with Tuning in the case of Geoff and May I wasn’t grasping this humanly. On one side I was faithful to both of them and on my own did the experiments they suggested. When I was asked about the results I gave a faithful account. When not asked I didn’t volunteer but still did the testing. I did the listening tests because it’s important to me to be in the know. I don’t necessarily care about someone else’s physics, in this hobby they’re a dime a dozen and everyone wants to be the audio golden ear guru for all time lol. Big deal :) At the same time everything really does affect everything else, that’s the way our planet and life itself works and always has. Personalities are just the icing on the cake. We can choose to scrape off that icing anytime we want and get down to the business of listening and that’s my cup of tea.

The guy who doesn’t take the time to "do" this life experiment and still talks about it as if they know what they are talking about is the guy short changing his or her own life, I’m not that guy. I have no rights if I don’t explore the possibilities regardless who I might, or what I might think, the person presenting the idea is about. Geoff Kait is as legitimate as I choose to make him, but only if I take the time to respect his ideas, products and relevance. Over the last 3 years I would guess I’ve had 30 or so audio toys sent to me to explore the possible contribution to the sound. In every case they have indeed affected the audio. To the positive or negative completely depends on the application and desired results.

A few days ago I received my sample from Geoff and my responsibility is to find where I think the product might work the best and for who, looking for what. Geoff at this point is as high on my list as the company who sent us their $25,000.00 mono block amps. Wouldn’t it be totally cool if Geoff created the perfect CD tune? I think it would be anyway. Wouldn't it be great if Geoff really was the smartest guy on campus? Wouldn't it also be great if all Geoff has been trying to do is get us to relax a little, and we simply didn't understand his sense of humor? Wouldn't it be great if at the end of the day we realized we were all family? If so, I think some of us should still hold Geoff down and give him a serious torture tickling from time to time.

Michael Green

Hi Geoff

I think it was a big waste of time for May cause like I said on that forum I didn’t know who she, you and Peter were. I got to know you guys through those posts and then the research I did by looking you guys up, and then all the emails I started getting. It was after that folks started telling me that I had listened to your products in their systems. That wasn’t unusual for me, cause I kind of live in my own world and have never really paid attention to who I was going to be working with on any given day. It’s not me being rude just very intense when I’m doing something, and I don’t get outside of that bubble. I probably don’t know 95% of the people I have ever worked with. That’s just how I’m wired. Like now when you and I are talking by PM, that’s how I am. When you give me a task to do I’m all over it. I haven’t even gone to bed for two days cause I’m working on testing things here and making testing templates to do stuff. If I have a question I’m going to ask cause when I’m working on NDM for example, I’m not the boss you are.

There are so many variables in testing something that I’m not down with is the quick change because I have learned that all of us see change and our first reaction is that we focus on an instant glance of the immediate. Something new is sticking out and that’s what we see until the rest starts to fill in the blanks. I work the other way around. I make that stage as big as it can get and then I look into the change within the context of that space. That’s probably where my testing is different from most. Most are doing their testing with built in limitations, like chassis, dampening, shielding and mass. I’m starting with a huge soundstage in an environment that is casting a stage that goes way behind me as well as in front, to the sides and up and down. In fact I don’t do my testing till the stage is equal distance in all directions. It’s super extreme nearfield. I’m almost dead even with the speakers plane. When I then install whatever it is that I am testing I can hear the stage grow or squeeze, get phazy or glow, fill out or collapse in, full range or tonally imbalanced. Basically a bunch of different cues that are similar to headphones only much bigger and with more feeling and more layering or fill. Plus I can hear if the image gets stuck in my head or if I can spin around and get the image from any direction. I can also check Pressure Zone inflation or deflation, all kinds of stuff. So whereas most folks are doing their listening test from their regular listening position, way before I get to that there’s other tests to do first. I should also include that I do settling tests.

I came to Stereophile the same way as I’m coming here with one difference. On Stereophile I didn’t know I wasn’t going to be able to be myself, I was trolled relentlessly. On here I jumped in with a thread that took on the trolling right up front. I also said I was here to talk based on my walk. Something I always do in this industry with the exception of what happened on Stereophile. I should have just backed out and moved on, instead of trying to find common ground with folks who didn’t want it. I think it was JAs fault more than anyone else. But it was my inexperience in a forum style I had never done before and frankly am not equipped to take on. It was like throwing a piece of meat to the wolves. I had no business being a part of it.

"come out of it in one piece"? I certainly came out of it changed, and sadly not for the better. Some of the innocence and respect I had for the hobby was taken from me.

anyway now I’m rambling

mg

Hi George

"Hey he sees it, if it fits, and it’s ok for even a child to see/read it, then why not.
Geoff deserves every bit of criticism, just look at his avatar here and then go to his website, for a real "roll your eyes" moment."

Have you reviewed Geoff's product yet?

MG

Hi All

part one NDM

A while ago Geoff was kind enough to send me some NDM for review. I was excited to get the product as this was the first review item I ever received from Geoff directly. Other product of his have been in some of the systems of some of my clients and I got to preview them there. I didn’t know who Geoff was when I previewed some of his goods before, so this time around was more meaningful.

First off I want to start by saying, I would have needed about 10 kits to do a full reviewing.

I think the main question on everyone’s mind is "does this work"? And from this empirical tester the answer is yes. Does the product work the way Geoff describes it working? I really don’t care. I deal with so many audiophile-ish descriptions that come from directly quoting wiki or other internet sites that for me actually doing for yourself makes things more practically acceptable and less fluff. I am hands and ears on and the rest of this stuff is being studied by professionals in labs with qualified testing equipment and years of experience, so they to me are the go to folks for the technical explanation side of things. Audiophiles sitting at their test benches are cute, but that’s about it when it comes to the real deal in tech talk.

I’m breaking this up in several posts.

MG

NDM part two

Technical Talk

My first exposure to Geoff was on the Stereophile forum where he and May Belt were tag team partners, and not tag partners for all things positive or agreed upon sadly. Up to that point I had never been in such a combative, at times even hostile, setting in this hobby. These two are the masters of audio talk jousting. Why some of you here even enter into battles with Geoff is a mystery to me. That tech-talk battling for me ended when I asked both May and Geoff about their test labs and listening systems. May Belt all out refused to talk about any system and Geoff said he hasn't had an in-room system for many years. This for me is an automatic disqualifier. If I have a studio project I'm asked to work on and I show up at the engineers place and it's an empty room, no studio, no artist, it's going to be a short recording session.

For me tech talk is accompanied by a lab. If I'm talking to Bob Hodas for example we have a testing computer lab, a system and reviewer taking notes, charts and pictures to document. If I'm in my studio, I have my live room, control room, playback reference room and mastering room. Practical application for me rules supreme. So I need you guys to understand that when Geoff uses LIGO as his main reference for isolation it doesn't go very far with me. LIGO studies vibratory structure and supports the opposite from isolation. So Geoff on my tech-tech grading scale is not exactly existent.

MG

NDM part 3

Rationale

Up till now you're probably wondering if MG is about to bash NDM. If that were the case I would publish nothing at all. Bashing a product does no one any good. Geoff took the time to make and supply NDM for us to explore and that can't be faulted. Guys out there are making way overbuilt chassis and charging a fortune, why can't Geoff make less expensive tweaks? I'd much rather invest in NDM than boat anchor audio. Sorry if that offends, but making and selling ultimate buck amps that now can be easily out performed by amps costing pennies is close to being criminal. Tweaks offer a choice in sound preferences at a fraction of the cost and that's a good thing.

MG

For a quick summary, since I have been instructed by carp not to be windy or hijacky :) 

The fact alone that Geoff is looking at possible effects on the audio signal is one that should be recognized. My review was going to turn to how even though Geoff does not have an in-room system he has an awareness of the possibilities in audio. As well even if Geoff has his own style of presenting, don't we all. Aren't we all looking to the explaining of audio in a way that makes sense to us? I like sticking closely to the fundamental forces and labs that support them as well as finding things that possibly have reached beyond what has been texted booked up till now. This is how I view Geoff. In my mind I have to separate what I read him saying, what I have studied and focus on what I am experiencing.

In the end is what I experience and how I see it fitting into our listening lives in a positive way. Can you use NDM in a positive way? In my book you can. Will it work for everyone in a positive way? I have no problem with everyone in the hobby buying some and trying it for themselves. If NDM does something you needed done, good investment, if not then you will add to the experienced collective list.

have a great weekend

Michael Green

NDM part 4

Practical Application

From what I have discovered so far NDM is not a one size fits all tweak nor is it an exclusive tweak. At first I tried one CDP type to experiment with, so I could find a pattern of placement that worked best for me. I went from full size down to 1/8" slices before I found the most entertaining setting. On the down side NDM for me took away from the fullest of soundstaging, on the up side you're able to play with some soundstage tightening. If you're after a lower noise floor and willing to loose some of the stage side this is doable. It has a slightly similar sound to mu-metal transformer shielding. It's a quieter sound, a little too dark for me personally but I know many who like this type of sound, especially if they have unruly CD problems. It's a musical taste that bigger soundstagers may not be crazy about, but for the mid size stage guy who is finding CDs bright this is a possible go to.

I will be doing more on NDM if I get more but have run out of usable pieces. Running out of pieces I did go get some similar looking plastic and found the performance to be along the same line, so maybe Geoff will be offering several types for different types of performance wants.

Michael Green

thank you Geoff, it was fun

Hi carp, thanks for your advice but I prefer doing my reporting my way. However I won’t make anymore comments unless the OP asks for them in the future on his thread.

However might I suggest that you've just limited the positive reporting on Geoff's product that I was just getting started on.

MG