Tweaks. Small, individually affordable items that make modest improvements (OK, sometimes just differences) to sound quality. They can be slipped under the spouse’s radar with barely a whiff of suspicion. Good tweaks are worthwhile and even good fun.
Nordost’s ECO 3 anti static spray is a classic. Wiped along cables and onto the back of CDs it definitely does something good. The Zerostat pistol too, originally designed for dust control on records, also does useful things when you ‘zap’ CDs. Cleaning materials such as Deoxit and Kontak are definitely A Very Good Thing.
For us, though, the fun starts with system isolation. Generally this takes the form of replacement feet which are positioned under the hardware avoiding contact with the standard (usually stick-on rubber) ones. Dr Clive Day, Andy Heavens and myself have listened long and hard to a wide variety of both isolators and isolating strategies from air in tubes to balls on polished aluminium or even glass faced wooden dishes (did I really use the word ‘fun’ back there?!). The materials used proved very relevant. For instance with the ball-in-aluminum-dish device, tungsten carbide balls sounded dramatically better than steel. Carbon fibre has real qualities too and the RMS carbon / brass cones are a good value improvement for any system.
Aluminium is good and is used by Michell for their Tenderfeet and by Nordost for their basic Pulsar Points. Through all the listening (and there was plenty!) we acquired the glimmerings of an understanding of what was going on.
As I said, the material matters and seems to be even more important than engineering. The tall carbon blocks used on the 22mm RMS isolators are often very effective on their own and true isolation via air-filled tubes or ‘lossy’ material never gives the solidity and drive that hard supports allow. We found that wood cones sounded, well, wooden, and an experimental device using glass had the downside of being splashy and coloured. Glassy, in fact.
CD players and amplifiers are affected in a very similar way, albeit to a slightly different degree. In reality, isolation does not seem to be what these items are really about.
Energy management or, as Nordost put it, resonance control feel like much better descriptions.
All components, CD players, turntables, pre or power amplifiers and loudspeakers are influenced to a dramatic degree by what they sit on.
Getting these support arrangements right has effects eerily similar to using good (and by that I usually mean Nordost) interconnects, speaker cables, even mains leads. The things that change are similar: freedom of dynamics, opening up of spatial information, reduction of ‘glare’, increasing tonal colour, textures, and reduction of time smear.
It’s the last one at which Nordost’s own Pulsar Points excel. Hard to describe, easy to hear, each sound has its own envelope of bite and decay without interfering with another. In electronics it would be called a reduction in intermodulation distortion. For musical enjoyment it is pure liberation.
Used sparingly, they are at their most impressive under loudspeakers (they can be supplied to fit in lieu of either 6 or 8mm spikes). But used throughout a system, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Just as with Nordost’s cables, the effect of more is not just increased analysis but much greater musicality. An outbreak of sheer niceness!
It was the Pulsar Points’ remarkable similarity in behaviour and synergy with Nordost’s own cables that led us to appreciate the importance of a structured approach. Quite simply, the Nordost product wiped away time smear and colorations that other devices either left untouched of even emphasised.
It is embarrassing for me to admit that I have stocked, sold and liked Pulsar Points for many years but hadn't tried them under loudspeakers until about 2 years ago. I had figured that they would need to make contact with a hard surface, not carpet and underlay.
Wrong. The floor covering seems irrelevant. Regardless of substrate, they have made every loudspeaker we have tried them with sound cleaner, far more resolving, more colourful - just plain better!
