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zanash
19-04-2011, 08:09
Well this is not really modding as such ...but could definately be described as severe tweaking. Following the after the lord mayors ...thread I was contacted by An AOS member from Nottingham just a couple of miles down the road from myself . Alfie2902 was intrugued enough to invite me over with my foo after a brief chat via email I also brough over a few other bits and peices ..including my dax decade. Alfie has just got hold of one of those relatively new young dacs ...the one with he big led number displays and grating on the front.

His kit is impressive living voice somethings with external crossovers ....integrated valve amp using kt66 [new I should have writen all these details down !] audio note cd transport ....and a big denon dirrect drive tt with an fr64[?] arm and denon cart .

So we had a listen to the system sans tweaks as it warmed up .....

first out the magic box came the lathed cd's [cut using the gass audio cd lathe] and its duplicate uncut ..

This is the renown cowboy junkies trinity session ..
the uncut disc was slipped into the An ...and tracks 2,3
and4 were played ...track four has an excruciating harmonica solo [if played loud enough] we adjusted the volume to the point of discomfort ....

then we swapped disc for the lathed version ..


I'm not going to tell you what happened ...as I'm rather hopping alfie will be along shortly with a synopsis of his thoughts and feelings ....

we then played a cd or two that alfie uses when hes been messin with his system ...john lee hooker healing ..and in particular tracks 3 and 9.

an aside ...if you have this album ..play track 9 and listen to the hiss ...its very strange somethings been done to the recoring of the guitar solo ..maybe remastered or rerecorded as the hiss vanishes and then comes back. Alfies not going to be able to listen to that track again without hearing the hiss come and go now that I pointed it out !

opening the magic box again and there sat my silver puck ..the raumanimator ..

essentially this was going to be my main event ...

with some trepidation I prepared the room the windows and doors were close to prevent any foo from escaping ...

the snake oil was carfully wiped of the base so as not to stain the carpet ....ad then I topped off the fairy dust just to be on the safe side ...

alfie found a three pronged receptcal and inserted the foo charger ....

I then set about inserting the electron injection pins ....the blue led came on and then went out ...WTF ?

so scrabling round behind his telly I notted that alfie had trapped the x box power cable under the foo charges wall wart ....once removed the blue led shone like a good un !

So after a shacky start all was well ...and within three minute the air in the room had become full "polarised"..

we listened to a number of cd's repeating track 3 and 9 from healing ...carried out a few experiments ....

which included listening to one track whilst I lay on the floor and pull the charging plug from the unit ..so that alfie could listen to what happened to the music as the foo field decayed .


all I'll say is that its effects were not as bad as those in effem's room ...but it did give me the jitters and alfie felt very slightly nausious but not enough to put us off using it ...as time went on we both agreed that the ill effect wore off or we got used to them.

More foo was called for ...so out the box came my phonosophie cd flux. this was duely sprayed onto the offending john lee hooker cd ... tracks 3 and 9 repeated ...


ok so I did smile in a rather satisfied cheshire cat sort of way ....

the way this was demonstrated was a close to the heathrow demo as I could remember ...one track was played ...the disc removed cleaned and reinserted ...and the same track was replayed ..after a minute I asked him to stop the disc and we chatted about what if anything he had heard ...then we played the track again ...

the weird sh*t that is the cd flux means that whatever effect it has ..continues post cleaning for the next six months gradually reaching a peak and then tailing off to the standard cd condition ..where upon your supposed to reapply the goop.

I have no answers to why or how but you can speculate ...so we did a bit of that ..

Just to be clear we kept the blue foo led switched on right throught the extended listening session ...

As I'm more well known for my cables alfie asked if he could try some .....Alfie asked what did I think of power cables ? Suppressing some smart alec remarks..I said ets see !

first we swapped his kettle lead that was supplying the cd transport ....ok so this was bravado on my part [my thinking was whats least likely to effect the final percived sound] ..and we fitted an experimental solid core silver power cord ..with good plugs both ends ...

well it was soon swaped out for my "normal " power cable...are you certain thats the same track playing !
such was the effect ....cheshire cat returns !

Following this [and keeping it in place ] we replaced the ic between dac and amp, this was labled "silver sonic" thats what it said on the heat shrink anyway...it looked like a domestic iron lead ..with its cotton style jacket ....
http://www.silversonic.com/docs/products/Revelation.html

it looked very much like the one shown in the pic at the above web site ...

this is a £200 plus cable ...if my research is correct
lets assume this was a pucker unit and not a chinese fake [as I first thought]

anyway we swapped in my basic ..a simple copper twisted pair ....

sufice to say that alfie was now no longer uncertain about listening to the effects ic have on the sound.

did we both reusing the silver sonic ....alfie summed it up by saying ..."shall I bin it now !"...

We then swaped the basic for the foo version ...this is damped with quartz ..... the grin notches several points higher !

out went that ic ....after the nth playing of track 9 [oh god not again]

inserted in its place was my silver/gold and older version thats done the rounds as a demo unit .....

Then finally we poped in an experimental verion of my platalloy ........which was just oh so smooth and a little too laid back for the system ...


We the got round to replacing the young dac with my dax decade .....

it was clear straight away the young dac good as it was was not in the same league ...maybe with a decent psu and not the nasty wall wart things might have been different.

We then had a quick bit of munford brothers on lp ....very nice ...but I expected to be blown away oh well can't have everything !

by this time I'd been there a short five hours ....and concious that my dearest need her tea on the table when she gets in from a hard day at the coal face ...I made my exit.


I've deliberately not said what we heard ...because I think it only fair that alfie describes that ....

thanks alfie for a very interesting day !

alfie2902
19-04-2011, 20:53
Firstly a big thanks to Pete (zanash) for bringing a big bag of Foo, cables & the Dax around! We had a very interesting day! Pete demo'd the Foo & his cables very well & as we chatted his large hifi knowledge became very apparent, tbh I didn't realise Pete had built so many cables, modded lots of gear & was the high wizard of Foo! ;) :lol:

My kit is in my sig at the bottom of the post, but just to clear things up the speakers are Living Voice OBX-R (early ones, not the R2 with the redisigned x-overs) the amp is a New Audio Frontiers KT66 'Legend', Audio Note transport & my Denon DP-6000 DD TT, Fidelity Research FR64s tonearm with an SPU bolted on! As Pete said the new piece of kit is a M2Tech Young Dac & a rathter nice bit of kit it is too! The idea of the day was to have a listen to the Phonosophie ARTKUSTIK Room-Animator!!, But during our brief emails Pete mentioned he uses a AS Dax Decade which I've enjoyed very much the couple of times I'd heard one before & thought it would be a good test for the Young which as seen off 6 or 7 Dac's I have had against it in the last 10 days or so.

We listened to a couple of tunes while we chatted a bit & let the system warm up a little & let Pete get accustomed to the sound.

The bag of Foo was then opened & the Cowboy Junkies 'Trinity Sessions' was soon spinning, After a couple of tracks Pete said to listen for the harmonica solo & switch it up a couple of notches, The harmonica is a little distorted & with the extra volume started to sound quite sharp & harsh! A 2nd copy was then produced from the foo box that had been treated with a CD lathe ( this may-be? http://www.audiodesksysteme.de/index.php?kat=10_17_6). I popped this in & hit play with no change to volume. After a few bars thinking the bass sounds a little tighter the harmonica plays a few bars & already it sounded to have taken some of the glare from the harmonica the female vocal sounded to have lost a little of it's edginess then after about 1.30 the harmonica kicks back in & that harsh edge was now much less harsh & agressive Alot easier to listen too. The whole track sounded smoother with some of the harsh glare gone which made the bass sound tighter & there seemed more air around the performers!

I do wonder if you start listening harder when doing things like this, but there was a noteable improvement!

Pete asked me to find a recording I knew quite well & John Lee Hooker's 'The Healer' is one of half a dozen recordings i always reach for when testing or listening to some thing knew. It's not the best recording but one I know well. Tracks 2 'I'm in the mood' with Bonnie Raitt & track 9 'My dream' got a few plays thereafter.

As Pete says he then closed the window etc & pointed out I didn't know how to use a 3 pin plug before switching on the event of the day. The ARTKUSTIK Room-Animator (http://www.phonosophie.de/International/eraumanimator.html)

I'm not sure what this thing does but after a very short spell of time I noticed I felt a little nauseous, a little trembly similar to a light hangover - very odd! :eek: This feeling did wear off over time or I just got used to it. I do wonder today if this feeling made me listen more intently even though I felt less relaxed due to this feeling, the sound quality seemed to take on that night time qualiity even though it was before midday!! :eyebrows:

There was again a percieved improvement to sound quality in that the sound stage seemed to open a little wider, again more air around instruments, the bass again seemed tighter & detail resolution was better but smoother too! I did feel a bit wierd at first though! When Pete unplugged the animator after a few seconds the soundstage seemed to collaspe in on itself somewhat & everything sounded a touch veiled!! :scratch:

Pete then got a bottle of pure snakeoil from his box of Foo & cleaned 'The Healer' CD both sides, seemed odd cleaning the label side, but that's magic for you!
The Snakeoil was Phonosophie CD-Flux (http://www.phonosophie.de/International/eCD-Flux.html)
This again seemed to improve sound quality!! Transients seemed quicker with a better snap to attack & better dymanics, again the bass sounded even tighter. Pete asked me to stop bloody track 9 as it was driving him mad, then after a few mins of chatting play it again & bloody hell the effects seemed better especially the snap of attack!! :scratch:

As we had been talking through the morning I now knew about Pete's cable building & had seen a good few pairs of I/Cs in his Foo box along with one or two mains cables . Well I thoiught it would be rude not to try a few! I've never had much success with mains cables may NAF amp & P10 phono stage seem to like my Music Works greay mains cables But others I've tried have seemed detrimental.

The first mains cable I tried into the AN Transport was a stiff springy silver conductor cable & as I've noticed before was detrimental, Pete passed me another, the one he uses for his Dax Decade now this did bring some nice improvements! It's difficult to remember which cables did what to the sound now, but this one stayed in the system & I will probably explore a couple of lengths of this cable.

We then systematically worked our way through the I/C replacing the DH Labs Silver Sonic Revelation in between my Dac & amp. The Revelation was, how bad the DH Labs sounded compared to Petes basic twisted pair copper cable! :( The damped version of this cable was then tried & again i felt further improvement! The pure silver I/C was too short so I next tried a Silver/gold I/C (that's stayed on trial) further improvement again. Then on to a paladium mix I/C which I think over smoothed things a little but may-be I should of listened longer to this one! The cables all seemed pretty impressive but I struggle with quick A-B testing & prefer to listen over a longer period & then swap back & I will still give the DH Labs another try but don't hold out much hope tbh.

Time had passed far to quickly by this point, I would of liked a little longer with the Dax Decade in the system but we only had time for two or three tracks. I've always been very impressed by the Dax when I've heard it before & I was again very impressed. The Dax has a more laid back, slightly darker sound than the Young, not that the Young is overly bright but it is brighter, or is the Dax overly dark just different presentions. I'm not so sure about the 'not in the same league' comment as I prefered the Youngs treble presention on a Chesky track we played a few times. This may just be that we're both used to the sound of our own Dacs or personal preferances, but I would like to compare them again tbh just to see how close the Young gets! Peter invited me over for a listen to his system so I may just see if it's OK to take the Young for another listen.

Well the TT was a bit of an after thought & the P10 was cold when we played a little of the Mumford & Sons, once warmed up & with a better recording it may just of lived up to Petes expectations. :eyebrows:

Back to the Foo though, I would grab a listen to these wierd Foo items while Pete's happy to take them on tour! It was quite an eye opener tbh!!

Thanks for a very interesting day Peter! :cool:

zanash
20-04-2011, 07:22
Cheers ...mate !

thanks for the minor corrections ....

and yes that pretty much how it was ...



so who else want there gasts flabered ?

alfie2902
22-04-2011, 12:41
No takers on Peters road trip!?

Go on it's a bit wierd that blue light, but good fun!