Soundstage!- Doug Blackburn - The Noisy Audiophile

November 1996

From Audiophile Beginner to Happy Owner to Audiophile Tweak

Feet, Racks, Tuning the Room, Component Isolation, Contact Cleaning
The Bright Future of Bright Star Audio

 You've read my (or others’) earlier articles about starting your adventure into high end audio (click on the Talkin Shop Archives at the top of the Talkin Shop section if not). You paid attention and did a lot of reading and listening to different systems before you spent any money. When you finally started shopping for real, you actually had some idea of what you were looking for in a high end audio system. When you finally laid out your cash and took your system home, it did pretty much what you expected. Over the first few weeks you noticed the system was sounding better and better. You were hooked. Your music never sounded so good.

Now that you’ve had your new stereo system for a while and the wonderful-ness of it’s musical sound is no longer the rush it was when the system was newer... how do you get another glimpse of that ooooooooo feeling you had when listening to all your favorite music on your new system for the first time or two?

You become what we call "a tweak"

Now this could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view. There is one school of thought that you buy the system, plug it in and enjoy it forever, forgetting that the equipment is there. You just enjoy the music it plays. There’s another school of thought that believes the system is never "complete" until it is fully tweaked-out to extract maximum performance (i.e. best sound quality) from each component. There are plenty of companies who will be happy to help you try to achieve the latter. The array of products is staggering. The rituals used by "tweaks" to optimize their systems can range from well conceived logical steps to bizarre rites.

Here are some of the tried and true tweaks you can do - especially ones that won’t cost a lot of money.

Clean the electrical connections - Over 6 months or so, the electrical connections at the end of every interconnect and speaker cable degrade enough to take the fine edge off the sound of your system. Simply unplugging each connector and plugging it back in will slightly freshen the sound of the system. Loosen speaker cables and tighten them up again. To get another slightly bigger improvement, clean the connections with "Cleaning Solvent" commonly sold in hardware and home improvement stores. It is trichloroethane and can usually be found in the paint department. It’s great stuff for removing latex paint (dry or wet) and other stains from carpet and other fabrics. It’s also great for cleaning up electrical contacts. Pipe cleaners help get inside RCA jacks and plugs (clean both sides of every connection). Trichloroethane is great buy for $3 or so for a quart. Some audiophiles pay up to $50 for 2 tiny bottles of cleaner that work no better. Follow safety instructions on the trichlor can!

If cleaning the connections every 6 months is too much like work (it is for me) you can do something to stretch the interval out to years, like 4 or 5 years. Get some electrical contact preservative spray. My favorite is Caig Labs ProGold for gold or rhodium plated connections and Caig Labs PreservIt for non-plated contacts (copper, solder tinned wire, etc.). Each one is available in a 5.5 oz spray can, around $17 US for ProGold and around $15 US for PreservIt. Badly oxidized connections (dirty, noisy volume controls, etc.) can be fixed with Caig Labs DeOxIt, also around $15 for the 5.5oz spray can. PreservIt and ProGold coat the connection to keep out air. No air, no corrosion. Connections stay "like new" for many years with no attention or regular cleaning needed. These preservatives can’t and won’t make connections sound better - they make cleaned connections sound clean for many years without having to clean them.

How you hold and support your components - This is important, big time. The little rubber or plastic feet on the bottom of your components are not doing anything good for the sound of your system. Your old kitchenette table is also not the most ideal support mechanism for your components. Speakers need to be very stable. Components need to be convenient and isolated from floor and room vibrations as much as possible.

Speakers

Everybody, but everybody agrees that spikes are the way to go under speakers. Whether the speakers are on stands or tall floor-standing models, spikes work. You get tighter, cleaner sound with better detail. There is less smearing and bass in particular becomes better focused. If you have hardwood floors you can protect them with the manufacturer-supplied "cups" which go between the cone or spike and the floor. Use a penny or two if cups are not available. Do not spike your speakers immediately. Leave the spikes off so you can move the speakers and/or stands easily for the first month or 2 until you are sure you have them in the best locations. Once they are in the best locations, put the spikes/cones in place. If your speakers did not come with spikes or cones, the aftermarket suppliers will have kits that handy people can install themselves. The less handy can enlist their dealer to install these essentials for them.

If you have smaller speakers putting them on a shelf is almost universally the worst place you could put them. Most small speakers sound leagues better on speaker stands and not too close to the walls beside or behind them. As far as the stands go... the better the stand, the better the speaker will sound. Solid, heavy, metal stands are the best but cost up to $800 per pair depending on manufacturer. When buying speakers, consider the cost of stands when trying to save money by purchasing smaller speakers. You will often find that the small speaker plus good stand is as expensive or more expensive than a larger floor-standing speaker. The bigger floor-standing speaker will likely have much better bass capability than the small speaker too.

Electronic Component Shelves/Racks & Feet

Here’s a rats nest if ever there was one. How the HECK do you decide which rack/shelf is best for you? Everybody has their price leader, their technology leader and their signature-ultra-expensive line. You can reduce the influence of the rack/shelf significantly if you isolate components rather than use soft rubber feet or hard metal or plastic cones. I’ve done so many experiments with feet and shelves I almost feel like an expert. In spite of what you can/will read (especially from manufacturers), isolation and damping of vibrations is the most effective thing you can do for your components, sound-wise. I tried soft rubber (squishy, sticky rubber) feet, a large number of hard cones (brass, steel, aluminum, plastic, metal & plastic, and ceramic). For quite a while I thought cones were pretty good, much better than the soft rubber feet. Then I heard THE BEST under-component devices I’d ever heard. The Bright Star Air Mass, Big Rock and Little Rock. These isolation & damping devices sound better than anything else I have ever done to my equipment including clamping the equipment in special racks.

The Air Mass is an mdf (particle board) box with an open bottom. An inner tube is glued to the top of the inside of the box. You put the Air Mass on your shelf first. You put the Big Rock on top of the Air Mass. The Big Rock is an mdf box you fill with sand. A top plate sits on the sand making this a nice isolation/damping device. Your component goes on top of the Big Rock. With this stack all balanced, you pump air into the Air Mass till it lifts up 1/8". This "floats" the component on air increasing the isolation of the device. The combination of floating on the air bag (inner tube) and massive damped platform is amazing at bringing out the best in components. The Little Rock goes on top of the component. It is a smaller piece, but metallic and heavy. It provides additional mass loading and blocks RF from entering or leaving the component. This stack-up is the most effective I’ve ever experienced at making components sound refined and detailed without sounding hard, harsh or zippy.

Interestingly, less expensive components improve, subjectively, MORE from this treatment than more expensive components with massive chassis. Don’t get me wrong, the expensive components are still improved substantially. But the less expensive ones will surprise the heck out of you after setting up with the full treatment.

How much for the full Bright Star setup? Well, it isn’t cheap, but it could be a lot worse. You can buy 1 piece at a time so it is easier to swallow, budget wise. The amazing Air Mass prices are $100US(CD player, DAC. preamp, etc) to $399 (big heavy components). This thing works better than more expensive air floatation devices because of attention to resonant frequencies and materials. The Big Rock bases are in the $129 to $299 price range, also depending on size needed. You supply the sand to fill the box. Be sure to get DRY sand (I thought I was getting dry sand but it was wet, a royal pain to dry it at home). The Little Rock is in the $129 to $249 price range depending on size.

"But you said these tweaks wouldn’t cost too much." Yeah, I know. How about something for around $5 that does quite a bit of what the Bright Star stuff does and works better than any cones or soft rubber feet I ever heard. Those cones and rubber feet cost between $30 and $400 per component! Imagine beating the sound quality you get from that kind of expenditure for $5. It’s true! Go to a hardware store or lawn mower shop and ask for a 4.00x8 inner tube. Take it home, pump it up with just a little air, it should be limp and squishy, not tight. Slide it under a CD player DAC or CD transport, preamp, laserdisc player or surround decoder. You will be amazed. Not only will the laserdisc player sound better, but you will get a picture that is a little better too. If you like the improvement from the inner tube, get a piece of mdf about the same size as the component and put this on the inner tube and put the component on top of that. Another slight improvement. Some home improvement centers have finished pre-cut book shelves that work well for this.

The poor-man’s version is not as amazing as the Bright Star setup, but it’s better than other options. If you already have Clamp Racks... do not clamp components floated on the Air Mass or inner tubes or other floatation/isolation devices. You get better sound when the component is left "free". What is cool about the inner tube or Bright Star setups is that they minimize the importance of the rack/shelves you use. You don’t really need a fancy expensive rack... spend the money on the isolation & damping devices. These isolation and damping devices do require some space in the rack. Some commercial racks do not have adjustable shelves and the shelves are too close together to permit using Air Mass and Big Rock devices or even inner tubes. So be very careful when buying a rack. Adjustable and removable shelves are better. Michael Green Justarack and Justarack Deluxe are pretty good... infinite shelf adjustment capability, but not real simple to setup and use for the less-handy among us.

When using an Air Mass or any floatation device on carpet, use a platform/shelf of some kind to get the Air Mass or inner tube up off the carpet. A low amp shelf works fine. The shelf should be the same size or larger than the Air Mass.

Room Tuning

This is well worth the modest cost and effort. Nothing else you do to your system will accomplish what room tuning will accomplish. There are many products at different (moderate to high) price points that do a fine job of tuning a room. But I’m going to recommend the least expensive way I know of to accomplish this. Get a RoomTunes Basic Room Tuning Kit (might be called a Tune Pack). This will include 4 Corner Tunes and 2 Echo Tunes. This inexpensive kit makes your room sound better. When your room sounds better, your system sounds better.

The Corner Tunes are triangular. Off-white cloth covers compressed fiberglass that is reflective to sound on one side and absorbs sound on the other side. You use push-pins to mount one of these triangles in each ceiling corner. They disrupt the "corner loading" that happens in every room corner. Sound actually travels along walls. When the ceiling, and 2 side walls form a corner, there are 3 surfaces that "load" this sound (think "project the sound") back into the room. Put a Corner Tune over the corner and you limit how much of this "loading" effect reaches the listening position.

The 2 Echo Tunes are meant to break up repeated reflections across unbroken expanses of ceiling. Simply find the center point of the front wall and one of the side walls and pin the Echo Tunes up right on the wall at the wall-ceiling corner at the center point. Some adjustment may be needed to make the echo elimination provided by these devices maximum at the listening position. The mid-point location on 2 walls is a good starting point.

What you hear will range from startling improvement to pleasant refinement. Rooms vary in how they sound because of dimensions, construction methods, furnishings, carpeting, etc. It would be hard to imagine a room in a house that would not be improved by these simple devices. RoomTunes also sells Tuning Strips, tall narrow strips you pin in vertical corners to eliminate even more of the corner loading of sound back towards the listening position. Your dealer or UltraSystems (800-724-3305) can help you determine whether you need these or not after you put in the Corner Tunes and Echo Tunes.

Web Sources (photos, mail order, prices)

* All thse links were working as of 10/28/96

The Great Beyond

Beyond these 3 tweaking basics is a huge and strange array of products using various combinations of science, voodoo, hype, and marketing. I won’t even mention them because they tend to make the less open minded in the audience go various degrees of crazy. My experience is that some are worthless do-nothing money wasters but others can help. Prices of these products is often completely arbitrary - something simple and cheap improves the sound of the system about as much as spending $200 on a new/better pair of interconnect cables so the $20 value item is priced at $150. I don’t get this pricing myself, I’d rather just see the lower price and let the market decide. But the high end audio market is not a huge place and people need to sell things for enough money to make it worth their time and trouble to get the product out there. Just beware... if a price seems strange it probably IS strange. Only you can decide if the price is worth the result.

...Doug Blackburn