How come there is no thread on the RealityCheck?

Good work Kana813! And good timing. I tried to order a Cool Copy unit today from the link I posted and they're SOLD OUT! The sales guy said they've gone from selling one or two per week to 4-5 everyday the past 2 weeks! No more available until next week.

The Alesis website provided a link to several dealers in my neck of the woods (and for only $10 more, but I won't be paying for shipping).

The Cool Copy appears to be a re-badged Alesis 1 to 1.

Many thanks for the heads up!

Rhirsch, I finally got my CoolCopy. My first unit was destroyed by UPS. This one was double boxed.

I do not find the CoolCopy discs that I have done thus far to be the equal of the RealityCheck copies. In both cases I have used RC black cd-rs. I also used the Raw Copy choice on the CoolCopy. I can hear a slight difference with a somewhat smoother sound with the CoolCopy and a somewhat more realistic sound with the RealityCheck unit. From AA, it is apparent that I am not alone in preferring the RealityCheck, but I am not done with my comparisons as yet. Other cleaners, Nespaing the originals, other discs, and better isolating the CoolCopy all need to be checked. I will try Symposium Roller Blocks as you suggest even though my previous experiences with them have not been satisfying. I never do anything without plugging it into my IsoClean ac filtering setup.

I also got my Nespa. As noted above, I need to assess its benefits in all of this.

Norm - I suspect all of us with new Cool Copy units will need to break them in a bit before knowing how good they are. So far I'm much more impressed with the Nano. fluid than the cool copies and, in addition to break-in, I need to experiment more as well.

Jfz, you are probably right about breakin. I am just not accustomed to thinking about computer related equipment breaking in. We also need to focus on isolating it.

MikeLavigne - I was involved in the shootout at CES. The RC provides a real improvement, but so does my rewriting system, which I call the CD Tune-up. I am using a modified Yamaha writer that has low-jitter modified Superclock and battery power. I rip using EAC on the computer to insure a good read.

At least half of the improvement is by using the right treatment before writing the CD-R. I have tried a lot of them, and so has my partner, highdeftapetransfers.com. I have my own magic fluid now, Spectra and we both like it. The advantage is that these treatments benefit BOTH the write and the readback with these CD-R copies. I do not plan to offer modded writers like the RC and I have not added a rewriting service to my website yet, but I'm considering it. The media is extremely important and I have found that the Mitsui Audio Master is every bit as good as the black Melody disks, which vary a lot in quality, and the Mitsui's will last a LOT longer.

Another important feature of the writer is that it "stretch" or otherwise slow the writing speed in order to get well-defined pits. I write a 1X speed and my writer has a special algorithm to get well-formed pits.

As for the difference in the data, I found that the trailing info is different when using different writers and writing software. The beginnings are all the same. I conclude that the difference that you hear is the lower jitter.

I equate the magnitude of improvement to about $1K-1.5K in mods to a typical transport, so it is a really good value IMO. I performed a number of jitter demonstrations at CES that showed that the improvement was about the same magnitude as a typical digital/power/clock mod on a transport. Of course, if you mod the transport and ALSO rewrite properly treated disks, the results can be amazing, albeit not quite as good as a high-end computer-driven audio source. This will always be lowest in jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer/Modder