Accustic Arts

To Teajay,
I use the thicker one that measures 1mm thick.
I did not notice any sonic downside with the Boston CD Stabilizer and found the flow of music to be more natural. It is not a flimsy CD mat that can get crumpled like Marigo's etc. It forms a very airtight connection with the CD below and forms quite a rigid clamp with the Accustic Art magnetic CD puck on top

To Tbg
Sorry in my haste to reply, I accidentally kind of portrayed the Boston CD stabilizer as a replacement puck. It is not meant to be a replacement puck, but meant to be complementary to the existing magnetic puck in clamping the whole surface of the CD down. By extending the clamping area of the original CD puck, it should prevent flutter of the CD at the rim when it spins. The idea is not new actually, in Japan one can buy a similar CD stabilizer made of Carbon fibre (Boston uses graphite) that comes with various thickness too. Yet to get my hands on those for comparison. More info on the Japanese equivalent can be found at
http://www.phileweb.com/shop/begins/
(look for CDS-1, can use Babelfish Altavista to translate)

Take a look at
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/cec/cec.html
Now that's a big solid CD puck/clamp ;-)

Oracle 2000 is not so big as that but still bigger than Accustic Art.

Perhaps someone can feedback to Accustic Art to look into this engineering aspect, and come up with Mk3 transport, or just provide us a better CD puck upgrade option, like Electrocompaniet's Spider Clamp ;-)

The Marigo is a solid piece and can't be bent unless you step on it...like I did with the original version.

I would be concerned, perhaps unrightly, that added weight to the mechanism my be damaging in some way. I don't know if this is a legitimate concern, but it would be on my mind. I would love to improve beyond the already superb perfomance of the AA transport if it could be done as simply as using a mat or a new and improved AA puck that works on the current model.

Hotbird that puck reminds me of my Sony ES that I had but was just mostly weight with felt on the bottom side, I'm more impressed with Oracle's set-up.

The Oracle addresses these issues in other ways. One area being when you actually install your disc onto the platform the fit is very precise, when you go to take the actual disc back off a suction has been created holding the disc in place and then releases, this is without the actual puck in place. Now the puck it's self is special, it has a Urethane compound ring that acts as a vibration damping trap and adheres to the disc. You have to peel the disc off from the clamp when you change the disc. I have put many disc's on and there has been no loss of adhesion but if it occures Oracle recommends you clean it with methyated spirits.

Once you put your disc on and then the magnetic clamp you must then install the aluminum top cover which is a very precise fit. When you remove and replace this you can actually see the the whole unit move up and down. The suspension is very precise and they give you a calibration tool to assist in accurate measurement and calibration of each suspension tower located on all four corners. With every piece of music you actually push the disc reset button to initialize the selected disc.

At the beginning I found it a little strange but now I'm use to it.

The remote is all Aluminum, front and back ensuring quality and is very serious in weight and finish.

The unit even has a separate power supply that is connected via 15 pin DC input which to me is good design wise and well thought out.

Pictures don't do justice for this piece, it's art and a statement on it's own. Every person who has come over since I got it are very impressed, can't wait to hear it and then I pass them the remote and they comment saying they have never seen anything like this before, right down to the remote is screaming quality.