Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit

Styx: "Furor" hardly describes this product's following, with but a handful of online users/owners sharing notes. What was it that you actually meant to say? Please spit it out in a pattern that I can understand.

As previously mentioned, I have been experimenting with ferrite rings and cylinders on OTA this week. Apparatus and procedure: the full range of MFSC rings from MEC were acquired, and attached to different points in the cable infrastructure. Observations: a little extra speed, and resolution when attached to digital cables. A little less noise when attached to power cables and DC hook-ups. A little extra sparkle and purity when attached to all cables downstream from a filter-less DAC (without alias filtering) perhaps due to dampening of high-frequency modulation (which can have a damaging effect on some power amps and speakers/crossovers). Upon installing these ferrite rings there was an immediately rewarding combination of air and presence, of crisper and even less blurred transients, and increased detail, clarity, and definition. In many ways, I found this positive result surprising, given the failure of shielding to improve Stratos cables. However, since I have not tried out all combinations, I am still not so sure that some connections are not reacting adversely to this type of dampening treatment.

Slawney: Is there a website for MEC? I have not heard of them. I tried ferrite magnets a year or so ago with various cables (not the OTA) and found them to supress the HF's (less noise, but also less music). These were not high ticket magnets, but the ones used on wall warts, digital cameras and the like. I had an accident with the TT today which yanked the OTA IC's off of it and will be figuring out a better stress relief system tomorrow. I will also shorten the IC's, as much as possible, when doing the repair, but cannot swing the minute lengths that you are using. More urgency to the music would be nice with the budget Thorens/Grado combo that I am using. Hopefully shorter lengths will help to supply this. I can also cut the phono preamp to preamp leads down to 6" or so (might as well do it all @ one time). I have not tried IC's shorter than 24" before and this should be interesting.

"I tried ferrite magnets a year or so ago with various cables (not the OTA) and found them to supress the HF's (less noise, but also less music)."

Same here... I was trying various ferrites for years and never have gained results I was hoping for. I have them now attached to various appliances all over the place but none in my setup. YMMV.

Crap: I rewired the TT again today and am getting a low level hum in "both" channels (it was very silent before). I will completely redo it in a couple of weeks if I cannot trace it to a bad joint (hope that I did not screw up the tone arm cables, though it would be an excuse to replace them with something newer). Everything was the same this time (or so I thought) except that I shortened the length of both sets of analog IC's. I cannot hear the hum from a seated position @ normal listening volume, but the system was so quiet before that it should be again if things are done right.