Qualitative test of Auric Illuminator
I recently bought some Auric Illuminator on Audiogon and conducted a test with identical treated and untreated discs. Since it takes about 5 minutes to treat a disc, there's really no accurate way to compare the treated and untreated performance of your own discs. To get around this problem, a fellow audiophile friend of mine and I checked our collections and found we had about 6 or 7 duplicate discs. I treated all my discs and then went to his house for the shootout.
For those of you not familiar with this product, it includes a black permanent marker pen (nothing magic, you can buy the same one at Office Depot), a bottle of the "illuminator" fluid, some polishing clothes and a cardboard mask to help you black-out the center of the disc. I took the radical approach of actually following the directions. First blacking-out the inner and outer diameters of the disc with the pen, then the disc centers. This can be slightly messy, but it helps to know that common rubbing alcohol will clean the permanent marker off your hands and the disc if needed (this is left out of the instructions for some reason). Also, since the process of blacking out the disc centers can be a little messy- I took a spare jewel box and sacrificed it, rather than mess-up the centers of all my other jewel boxes by treating each disc in it's own box.
Once you've used the pen, you're ready to treat the disc. You apply two drops of the fluid to the disc and spread it around. It's just like waxing your car- it dries to a haze and then you buff it off. You treat both sides of the disc in this way.
For the test, we used my Wadia 301 and my buddy's Wadia 860-X CD players running CD direct into his Cary V-12 tube amp. The results were also confirmed on my system using my Wadia 301 and PS Audio HCA-2 hybrid digital amp and Soliloquy 6.5 speakers. The Auric Illuminator makes the CD's play at a slightly higher volume level, so you have to adjust for that (about 2 or 3 on the Wadia digital volume control, depending on the CD).
The easiest way to describe the difference in sound is that everything just sounds better and more natural with the treated discs. They have a more analog sound- fuller, more musical with greater presence and realism. Bass is tighter, treble clearer, vocals more natural. Since I listen to a lot of jazz, I immediately noticed that cymbals had a more natural ringing sound, and that brushes on the drum sounded like brushes rather than white noise in the background. As we went back and forth, we really coudln't find any areas where the untreated discs were better. In fact, I now find it hard to listen to the untreated discs.
You vinyl lovers will laugh, but it wasn't until I heard the treated discs that I finally understood what was wrong with CD's. It was only in it's absence that the shortcomings of digital were apparent to me. I'd just gotten used to the CD sound over the years. Now, when hear an untreated CD, they have a somewhat flat and lifeless sound, with more glare. The notes are being played but the music just doesn't seem to be quite right. The treated discs go a long way toward eliminating those weaknesses of the format.
The Auric Illuminator may not bring world peace, but if you have a revealing system, it could allow you to stop fighting with your equipment and start enjoying your CD collection. A high resolution player with treated discs makes you wonder whether you really need to be worrying about SACD. Just like you can never go back to stock power cords once you've experienced the upgrade, I don't think you can go back to untreated discs after you've heard what more is possible from your existing collection. It's really quite a bargain at the price ($39.95 retail), and no, I have no affiliation with any dealer, or manufacturer of any product. I just wanted to pass along the results of my test since I've benefitted so much from the knowledge of others in these forums.
