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EVS Music Purifiers - Amazed by how much improvement they make! Anyone else try them?

A few years ago I had Ric Schultz at EVS modify a VTV Class D amplifier for me.  As part of that mod I bought a pair of what he calls ‘Music Purifiers’.  Small black cylinders with + and -  wires to attach to binding posts of your speakers.  I put them on my Gallo Strada 2 speakers, but with the new amp and other streaming equipment I was adding at the time, I never did careful A/B listening tests to see if they improved my systems sound quality or not.

Fast forward to 2023, when I hooked my old VPI Scoutmaster back into my system for the first time in years.  I quickly fell in love again with the sound of well recorded records and set out to upgrade my analog gear.  Early this year I bought a Sutherland Little Loco phono stage, a Lyra MC cartridge and a Schiit Kara preamp to handle volume control.   The path I traveled to arrive at my current analog system involved many rounds of A/B testing to find what gear sounded best.  The new set of components is now more musically satisfying than my DAC or streamer and I’m spending more time each week listening to new records and old favorites.

One afternoon while fooling around with my speakers (with EVS Music Purifiers attached and Audience Au 24 SE speaker wires), I decided to
A/B test to see if the Purifiers improved the sound as EVS claimed.

So I played one of the tracks I’d been using frequently for my earlier A/B tests, to see if having the Purifiers attached improved the sound.   After I disconnected their positive leads from the speaker terminals, I played the title track from Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark.  I could tell immediately that something special in the sound was missing.  I quickly reconnected the Purifiers positive lead on both speakers and cued the track again.   Playing the track with the Purifiers reattached restored all of the SQ characteristics I’d come to love in Joni Mitchell’s iconic song.

The 3-D feel of the sound stage space, greater detail and so much more involvement in the music were all back.  I was blown away to find how important these inexpensive Purifiers were to hearing all the sound quality my new components were capable of producing!   Additional A/B tests with other tracks I love and know inside out confirmed the first test.  My experience so far makes me suspect that the better a given systems sound quality, the easier it is to hear the improvement these Music Purifiers make.  Using the Music Purifiers gives me so much added musical enjoyment there is no going back.  Listening without them is not an option.

The results of my listening tests with the Purifiers has been so surprising to me I’d like to hear from others on Audiogon who have tried them.  I’m curious to learn if you have found them as important to enhancing your systems sound as I have in mine.  If you do like what they do in your system, I’d love to hear what aspects of musical quality they improve and how much.

Thanks for any feedback!  If there is interest, I can post some further details about the tracks I used, and what things I noticed as improvements in each test.

bobfitz1
soix
9,620 posts
 

@llg98ljk They’re offered with a 30-day trial period so very little risk to just try them.  Ric has been around for decades and isn’t in the business of selling snake oil products so wouldn’t surprise me at all if there’s something significant to them. 

lak's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
lak
4,657 posts
 

After doing some research in the Audiogon Forums I see that they have been written about in the past and the over all comments were pretty much positive. I'm not sure how I have missed out on some of these interesting forums in the past.

ricevs
1,543 posts
 

Almost 8 decades......I am 76.

I did not invent this thang.....just tweaked the design for hours. Enacom made the first version of this thing in the 90s. Then Walker Audio made a version and then updated it later (later versions were something like $650 a pair), then Merlin made some that came with their $10K speakers. All the above no longer available. Stein Music makes the "Speaker Match" that sell for $700 and a super version that sells for $1800........and you see what mine sell for. By the way, a second set will cost you a big $100.....this includes a free pair of Ground Enhancers with each set. My versions use multiple tiny surface mount resistors in parallel and a modified small film cap. The end of the surface mount resistor pile is soldered directly to the modified caps tinned end. The ground wire is soldered directly to the cap body on the other side as well. Very delicate work....and the most transparent parts I know of. The wire itself is the connector......so the shortest signal path I can do. All constrain relieved in a hard thick paper tube (fireworks tube). Every single thing you do affects the sound. So, all resistors, capacitors, solder, wire, connectors, damping, etc. affect the sound of everything you do and these things are no exception.

So what the heck is it and how does it work? It is simply an RC filter. It is a single pole filter that operates above 200K (yes, it is measureable). So why would it matter if noise enters your speaker above that frequency? I am not an electron. I cannot tell you how much better it must feel when it does not have those nasty high frequencies along for the ride....he he. All I can do is describe what it does to the sound. There is only one person who returned these things stating he could not hear a difference. I returned his money along with the shipping charge. All he paid was the $8 to mail them back. And immediately I sent them to someone else who loves them.

I had a new experience with these things about 10 days ago. I very recently made a new open baffle speaker (to be described and shown on my website soon) and I am bi wiring it. I had a Music Purifier on the Planar mid/tweet but did not have one on the two 12 inch woofers. The woofers have a 2mh coil on them so they are starting to roll off the highs at around 300hz........so I did not expect much difference when adding a Music Purifier right before the coils. I put the second pair on the woofer wire and OMG.....I about fell off the chair. The purity and ambience went into another level. So, if you are bi wiring or bi amping you REALLY want two pairs.......and more if tri or quad amping.

What is so cool is that these are super cheap and super universal. They work on every kind of speaker and at any price point. So a $2k system will sound better and a two million dollar system will sound better. As long as you have speaker wire that act like antenna....then you have noise going into the speaker. If you have speaker cables that already have filters built in.....like some of the Transparent and MIT speaker cables do....or some ground/shield biased wires like the expensive Audioquest wires, then you might not get any benefit from these things. But that is about 1% of audiophiles have those wires......so that leaves at least 250,000 audiophiles worldwide that could benefit from these things and pretty much all of them can afford $125.

Happy listening! Loving and enjoying this very moment is the key to happiness.

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mitch2
4,021 posts
 

Zobel Network or Boucherot Cell

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