Your most indispensable "tweak"?

Mundorf/Sparkos-labs/Takman REY/F&T/Navships wiring/Telefunken
all vital and >>indispensable>>

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

@scothurwitz 

With regard to the isolation feet, which three brands did you try? 

I tried CMS and did exactly as you did and left them in for 2 weeks as my dealer said they would change over time and, as exactly as you said that they would get worse then better.  I heard no change at all over the two weeks. Nothing. I also tried Stillpoints and Ansuz.  I thought I heard something slightly better with the Stillpoint 6 under the CDP but  with some blind testing there was nothing. 

Funnily enough the conditioner I tested was the same as yours, Shunyata Denali v2 but as I say it did nothing but a little smoothing, which created a far less enjoyable sound.   I do have two Shunyata Alpha EF mains cables in my system on my amp and CDP and they are fantastic, a real game changing mains cable for me.  That and Townshend cabling in my system make a massive difference but I don’t count cabling as tweaking. 

Interesting... nobody has mentioned anything from Stein Music...

The Stein Music room in the Munich high-end show always soundS amazing.  But the do have some fantastic speakers.  I’d love to try their room treatments and 'harmonisers' one day. I did contact them and they were happy to supply things to try out.  I must get back on to that.