Miracles in Audio, by luck, by good choices,by design or by tweaking...

Beware the Last Tweak Syndrome! This ironic and paradoxical syndrome oft occurs when audiophiles believe they’ve discovered a secret pathway to the stars such as Dr. Ellie Arroway found with the alien transported that bypassed ordinary time-consuming space travel by utilizing the services of a wormhole. 

The Last Tweak Syndrome seems to occur for tweakers who, after a X number of tweaks believe they have suddenly arrived at Heaven’s pearly gate or have at least arrived at a good getting off place. This feeling of self-accomplishment and the feeling that all future attempts will prove fruitless 🍎 🍉 grows stronger with each successful tweak. Beware, gentle readers, this Is a trap! The Last Tweak Syndrome is akin to mountain sickness, preventing you from climbing higher and higher. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead! Remember the little train that could. I think I can, I think I can. Toot! Toot! 🚂

Lollll…. :)

Most of my tweaks effects are immediately audible, negative or positive, and with this feed-back of experimental process I create my audio system experience...

But sometimes the change are subtle, the negative one or the positive one, and I must really pinch myself and pause to consider its effect...But the negative effect almost always easily distinguished themselves at the end somewhere in the process of listening, subtles or not...


It is more difficult for the subtle positive one, I think this is more difficult to perceive them because of the placebo effect...The evidently very audible positive one pose no problem and are clearly not only placebos...The problem rest with the subtles one...


I say all that like a word of caution, for what I experience some thirty minutes ago...


I decide to put, at the other end (distance 1/2 inch) of my new USB BLACK UFEEL S.G. that is already modified with 2 H.D. +a "golden" plate, a little pyramidal tower of fluorite quartz...The effect was subtle but perceived by me (minus the placebo effect I think :) ) and added a more encompassing organic fluidity to the imaging, a more living perception... Perhaps the vibrating fluorite enhance the S.G. effect... This is what I think... Nevermind if it is only placebo the music listening is better than ever...

I say that because you must see that it is more fun to play with cheap product to reach some upgrading effect than to buy a thousand dollars cable for the same pleasure....


In this case, I am not sure if it is placebo... I will know with more experiments to come...Fluorite is not a particularly astounding stones to work with, the effect are always subtle with them ( I associate fluorite with a fluid effect or impression because of the wording association ?)...

But sometimes subtle effects are precious, because « all that is perveived is a wonder by itself»...This is the reason behind my post....


And yes Geoffkait you are right... :)

Ok after much listening.... No placebo effect here, the Fluorite crystal at the end of the S.G. enhanced nicely the S.G. effect, adding his own " fluid flavor" like with each of my other stones  with their own special effect ( difficult to describe the new musical fluid impression of the sound)… 

By the way there is no degradation of my previous naturalness  of instrumental timbre, then no trade-off...I said that for those who had opinions but no experiments experience at all because of their dogmas in general, some hard-core " Measure all" crowd and the crowd of passive consumers...


Then Geoffkait you were right, not about my placebo impression, but about the " last tweak syndrome" …. :)

Did you maybe mean the Last Placebo Syndrome? 😬  At this rate if you keep going you’ll have all the crystals in one Mikro Brilliant Pebbles. I bet you didn’t see that coming. 🤗