Your most indispensable "tweak"?

Hi redwoodaudio

I could not agree with bdp24 more. Room treatments are often overlooked due mainly to the  wife acceptance factor. Let's face it, most audiophiles don't have the luxury of a dedicated room. If you do, don't underestimate the benefit of room treatment. A word of caution, it's very easy to over do it. When done properly it can make the difference between good sounding system and a great system. 

Placement of your speakers is absolutely critical. The difference of an 1/8" can also be the difference between good and great sound.  

As far as tweaks are concerned regarding best bang for the buck, I think a good set of isolation feet can sound amazing (if you get good ones). I bought a set of the Critical Mass System Center Stage feet and couldn't believe the improvement. They are stupid expensive but boy do the work. In my opinion, they are worth every penny. I've tried just about all of them over the years with very different results. Some were good, some were just ok, some made it sound worse. You have to be careful. At first you think everything is better and then you remove them after a few weeks and you realize that it just made things sound different, not necessarily better. I had one set I thought were great and when I removed them and put the cd player back on just the shelf in the rack my tonal color came back. When they were under the cd player the tonality and timbre was gone! Caveat emptor. My advise is avoid coming to a quick conclusion. Take your time and listen carefully and then remove them and listen to the same material. The CMS feet really just blew me away. The new Wilson "Pedestal) feet are also supposed to be fantastic.  Hope that helps. Take care.

Scot 

duckworp

With regard to the isolation feet, which three brands did you try? If you heard no improvement, then it had to be the wrong brands. Like I stated in my last reply to this very thread, there are good feet and bad feet. If you have a Critical Mass System’s dealer or a Wilson dealer in your area, ask the dealer if you can home audition a set from either brand. The Wilson’s would be better for a home audition because the CMS feet need about 7 - 10 days until they sound correct (something to do with physics which is way beyond my comprehension) the improvement from the Wilson feet are instant. Try a set under your CD player or preamp, the improvement should be immediately obvious and significant. 

The Set of CMS feet I tried freaked me out. The improvement surprised the hell out of me. You have to be patient, for the first few days, once the are in place, the system will actually sound worse. I was very skeptical but I kept an open mind. After about 6-7 days everything started coming back into focus. After about ten days the improvement was shocking. The soundstage was the first thing I noticed. Then the clarity and the transparency was off the charts. They made such a big improvement, I immediately bought two more sets (and trust me, these things are not cheap) for two other components. I need one more set for under the amplifier and I’ll buy that set as soon as I can afford it. I consider them a must have “tweak”. A friend of mine owns a high end audio store and he had a customer take home a set of the Wilson feet to try. He liked them so much he bought a set for under every piece of gear he has. This guy spent close to $10,000.00 in isolation feet! 

The other comment you made regarding the power conditioner surprised me. I bought the new Shunyata Denali v2 conditioner and that thing is amazing. Over time it even got better. It made such an instant improvement, it surprised me. I’ve had several conditioners over the years but none of them came close to the Denali v2. That thing is nothing short (no pun intended) of amazing. I will never be without it (unless they come out with a v3). The coolest thing about finding a great power conditioner is, if you buy a better preamp, you get a better preamp, if you buy a better conditioner you get a better everything! 

The moral of this story is, you have to try different products in your own system until you find one your happy with. There’s a lot of expensive mediocre products out there. Some of them are great, the trick is finding the great ones. Take care.

Scot

duckworp

I find it amazing that the exact same products could have such completely opposite results in two different systems, I must admit, I’m stumped.

Reagrding the CMS, they absolutely just blew me away. They made such an improvement I just couldn’t believe it. I had the same result (admittedly not as huge but pretty damn close) when I put the Denali v2 in the system. As you know, the Denali v2 doesn’t ship with a power cord. When I opened the box I found this out. My brilliant dealer forgot to mention that little fact to me. I called him up and asked him what the cheapest 20 power cord he had in stock just so I had something to use until I could figure out which really good cord I would get. He sold me a Shunyata Venom cord that retailed for $250.00. The blow away results I’m getting with the Denali v2 is surprisingly with that cord! Talk about bang for the buck. I am going to eventually put one of their Sigma XX cords on the Denali v2, should make a significant improvement over the Venom. Take care.

Scot