Thanks 2gskaizen, good to hear. To be honest, getting a lot of that lately and it is good to hear. The more people with great systems the more people hear great systems and the more people want to have their own great systems, is the way I look at it.
Coming from ss the Nighthawk must have been a real game changer. In one fell swoop you discover watts aren't watts, 20 good ones is plenty, tubes aren't colored after all, and you don't have to spend Statement money to get Statement sound!
The only problem if you keep going is with SG, HFT, ECT, Pods, Podiums, etc etc eventually your system winds up sounding better than the million dollar Statement stuff, and you're scratching your head wondering what is the problem with that? The problem is no one believes you! But you know what? Their problem not yours! 😂
I love that you resurrected this thread by the way. Because the last post was the man who started it all for me, David Pritchard. It was him writing about how great these are that got me trying all these crazy things in the first place. Respect! |
Blue Stick? Or Blu-Tack? Because there is a Blu-Tack, a slightly stiffer version of the White Tack Synergistic sends. I already have Blu-Tack.
So far with only the one Speaker Kit split between the two speakers, and 10 HFT's, already my system sounds so good I can hardly believe it. I mean the imaging is just freaking amazing! Gonna have to get the other Speaker Kit soon, which will get me the Wide Angles free, then stop and enjoy a while.
Put one on the other night I haven't heard in a while, Francis A and Edward K, and the palpable there-ness of the brass, room ambience, to say nothing of Sinatra, was just insane! Never realized before but it was like the sax was one speaker, horns the other, with Sinatra and Ellington in the middle. Now its like the whole friggen orchestra spread out clear across the room! Ellington's faint little tinkling of keys still soft and low but now clear as can be.
Seriously doubt there's any component on the market can do this, it has to be the room. What lies buried in crappy room acoustics people have no idea until they try this stuff!
And yeah I do want FEQ too. Subs first though....
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Uh, you're saying one Wide Angle will replace several HFTs?
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HFT Speaker Kit came yesterday. Two each HFT, HFT 2.0, HFTX. SR doesn't bother to label any of these things! Oh well you figure it out.
Like before they even came I figured out one HFT sounded best on the front about half way down. Tried it all over that was the one place it sounded best. Had no idea until I looked at the placement sheet that is where they tell you to put it. Seriously. Yet many still will not believe....
As usual put them on one at a time experimenting with placement. Started with just one HFTX on top in the middle, then towards the front, towards the back.... between the woofer and tweeter, a little higher between tweeter and super-tweeter. Or at least for a while I did. Tried really hard. By the time I had three on each speaker though it sounded so good I just gave up analyzing and started enjoying.
That was just one pack. You're supposed to use one per speaker. Will be ordering a second to get the March deal and a free set of Wide Angles. Can hardly imagine the sound then. Only thought my speakers had disappeared before. Now... wow.
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PS- scope around for posts by pritchard, sgordon and oregonpapa, plenty of good experience and info from them too. |
thyname- Good questions. I have tried ECT, PHT, HFT and Blue Quantum Fuses. They are all amazing in terms of what they do for what they cost. Maybe the biggest bang for the buck to me seemed to be the Blue Quantum Fuse. After I heard what one did for my amp I put them in everything.
After that its hard to say. In my case I did PHT then ECT then HFT. By the time I did the HFTs it seemed like they maybe made more improvement than the ECTs. But on the other hand the HFTs work by introducing dither to smooth out room resonances in much the same way noise is added to a video signal to remove color banding. So it may be that part of the reason they worked so well was the signal had already been improved by the ECTs. In any case they all work so well its hard to see you stopping with just one or the other.
A more practical consideration might be how easily you're able to use them in your room. With ECTs its easy, they work really consistently well everywhere I have tried them. I even opened up my amp thinking they should work better placed directly on the parts inside than on the case outside, but that turned out not to be the case. Too close to call. ECTs even work on my turntable motor, and arm mount.
PHT work great right on the cartridge, but also just about as good when placed on the arm. I tried various locations. Also they are additive, and don't seem to conflict at all with each other nor with ECTs. I have both a PHT Black Widow and Green Dream on my cartridge, and another Green Dream on the arm, and one ECT on the arm base and another ECT on the motor.
HFTs on the other hand are sensitive to placement. Please note I said sensitive not finicky. Stick them virtually anywhere in the general vicinity of their recommendations and you will be amazed. Then play around and you will find you are able to fine tune things to an impressive degree just by shifting their position an inch or two.
You can try them stuck directly on a panel but they seem to work better when firmly mounted to something solid. Also their placement recommendations are quite a bit different than what you would use for old-school acoustic panels.
They all come with a 30 day no-questions money back guarantee. The only ones I ever sent back were the Purple Haze and Blue Velvet PHT, and that is because those come in different, uh, flavors. Unlike HFT and ECT which seem to my ears to be very neutral and just make everything across-the-board better. |
I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob.
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Okay so I have figured out how these things work. In a word: dither. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DitherECT, PHT, HFT, all versions, all have the same cylindrical shape. The bottom third or so is filled with some loose material. Above that is an air space. Above that is a horn. Yes a horn. The whole thing is basically a speaker. Vibration causes the particles inside to bounce around, generating randomized noise that propagates out the horn. Dither. |
Every time I watch a movie now I have to remove the ECT from my turntable motor and put it on my laptop. The improvement in grain-free detail, depth, and overall realism is hard to live without. I'm talking about BOTH the video AND the audio!
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So FEQ, HFT Wide Angle and HFT 2.0 all about the same cost.
Which to do first? |
How right you are, David!
For what seemed like forever we were stuck in the rut of only measurements matter. Budding audiophiles had mostly Stereo Review with their Julian Hirsch constantly pushing his only measurements matter mantra. This was so thoroughly the mainstream view that when J Gordon Holt first started publishing Stereophile it was taken as apostasy. A newsletter mimeographed off and passed around by a handful of followers, hardly the glossy marketing colossus we know today, but then as ever promulgating the view that everything matters, nothing sounds the same, and its your ears- not a meter - your ears and what you hear that really matters most.
This idea is so revolutionary that even today and even on so-called audiophile discussion groups like this one people object to the "rabbit hole" of wire, the inability of anyone to hear, its all in your head, double-blind yadda-yadda.
Nevertheless, somehow the movement J Gordon Holt began rescued us from, first the hideous sounding low-distortion amps of the 1980's, and then the hideous sounding perfect sound forever CDs of the 1990's, followed quickly by (or concurrently with, but to stick with the decades theme) hideous sounding speaker wire and patch cords in the 2000's. And power cords. And power itself. And along the way the equipment rack, and shelf, and even the lowly feet the equipment rests on. The room! Everything!
The industry, slow and myopic, badly lagging, still pushes the big box gear of amps and speakers and "components" by which of course is meant everything except the components most capable of elevating a system from mediocrity to music: tweaks.
Or maybe they are just giving their customers what they want. For me at least it is a good 20 years since the do tweaks matter debate was well and truly settled. My sense from what I have seen though is this has sunk in to maybe a third of the people. Yes a lot more than a third are buying speaker cables, etc. I'm referring to the whole J Gordon Holt philosophy that the only meaningful measure is listening with your own ears.
Which is what I was doing last night. Rather than just throw up my last 4 HFTs I decided to spend a little time tweaking the locations of the 6 already deployed. These little buggers are so fascinatingly effective and responsive to placement I only managed to fool around with the two in the center.
You guys have been saying these things are so sensitive to placement that moving them even an inch makes a difference. Well, I didn't try one inch, but two to four, and yes it is definitely noticeable!
But for anyone considering these (which you should be!) its not like they are fussy and require endless fiddling to sound good. Anywhere even remotely close to where they "should" be and they will work great. But it is absolutely fascinating the degree to which you are able to tweak the sound with a little fine-tuning.
With the center ones, moving just one up or down by an inch or so I hear an effect very similar in character and magnitude to the difference I heard between my McCormack DNA-1 amp and the Aronov LS960-I that replaced it. For those who don't know, the McCormack is an exceptionally fine sounding SS amp and the Aronov is an exceptionally fine sounding 6550 (or KT88) tube amp. Both are superb, not a lot of difference between them, but the McCormack does sound a bit like SS and the Aronov does sound a bit like tubes. So in other words for $50 you can in a few minutes perform magic tweaking your system from tube to SS and back again simply by shifting one of these little marvels on the wall.
Only, its quite a bit better than that. Most if not all solid state has to some degree or other this artifact, a very fine high frequency shimmer some have called MOSFET mist. I'm not a fan but a lot of guys love it, many mistaking it for detail, air, whatever. Anyway the point is with HFT its possible to tweak placement enough to get that detailed SS top end detail and dynamics but without the unwanted mist. I didn't like it at first because I associated that sound with the mist. But then moving it lower listening to the warmer slightly tubey sound I went back and eventually realized the top end was there like SS but without the annoying mist.
I cannot think of a better tweak for anyone who loves their system but wishes it was just a little more this or a little less that. With a set of HFTs and a little trial and error you could easily tame and bring a degree of warmth to an overly aggressive analytical system, or conversely, liven up and bring out details in one that is overly warm. Still better of course to have bought stuff that put you where you wanted to be in the first place. But you run what you brung. Then later when you upgrade the offending piece, unlike everything else I can think of with HFTs you simply tweak placement again for the new gear and wala, you are back in business better than ever!
Would've made the most sense at this point to tweak the ones on the upper and lower left and right. Instead I got out the ladder and put one up on the ceiling. Same thing here. Same responsiveness to placement.
This stuff to a listener is like crack cocaine to an addict. Any time you find yourself wishing for a little more, or a little less ... make it so.
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Had a chance last night to try out the HFTs. Anyone coming in late may want to take a minute, scroll up, and read my OP. There's a whole lot compressed into that one early sentence, "within a year I had heard for myself what vibration control can do."
Way back then I was totally dismissive of pretty much any sort of tweak beyond wire gauge and speaker placement. Then, gradually, I tried a few things that were free and easy. To prove how bogus it all was. Left my amp on all the time just to prove it didn't sound any better. See? It doesn't! Until one day it got turned off and when I turned it back on again it sounded noticeably worse. Until it warmed up. Dang.
But surely pointy cones was all pinhead talk. Not about to waste time or money on any of that! Until someone said oh yeah even something like a phone book helps. WTF? But phone books back then were thick and everywhere so what've I got to lose? Sure enough. Wasn't much. Barely noticeable. But it was there.
Then the best component of any sort I had ever bought, the McCormack DNA-1 amp came with this one pointy little spike in the box. Oh no! Not him too! But it was there so... and sure enough, and a lot better than a phone book!
Next thing, as luck would have it, I stumbled onto this madman totally flipped out stark raving crazy in love with something called a Black Diamond Racing Cone. Nothing, anywhere, could touch any of the BDR stuff- a fact I personally proved by becoming a small-time dealer and taking the stuff to do demos in-home and at audio clubs using it under literally hundreds of different components in all kinds of systems.
One result, I became extremely adept at being able to hear all sorts of micro-details in all kinds of components in all kinds of systems and across an unbelievable range of listening conditions. Components stacked one atop the other? Birds nest of interconnects? Kitchen in listening room? Car in parking lot? Front door open? Barking dog? Crying kid? No problem!
This is all by way of the traditional review writing technique of telling (hopefully) interesting little anecdotal stories that stroke the writers ego while (again, hopefully) providing a little marginally useful information to the reader. Its a reference. There's a continuum. At the one end the phone book. At the other the Herron VTPH 2A. Something like that.
So last night I place just one of my 10 new HFTs as close to the recommended center front wall location as my home theater screen will allow. Which I had my doubts as it was pretty close to the overhanging and padded screen frame. So I was hardly surprised when the result was underwhelming. But in no time flat it was moved down a few inches and wow, what a difference that few inches made!
Just one of these things wiped away a layer of grain, softened some edges while at the same time revealing fine inner detail, and improved image focus with more air or space, vocals in particular becoming more believably present.
When you do something like that with just one, and it crosses your mind, "and I still have 9 more to go" let me tell you, it puts a smile on your face!
Even being a dedicated sound room there's still plenty of things preventing me from trying the exact SR recommended placements. I can't go quite as low or into the corners as they recommend. Can't go quite as high in the middle either. Even so....
The two mid-level corner HFTs provided another big improvement. Not quite as warm as the center one, but close. The two higher front wall side HFTs brought a surprising degree of shimmering life to cymbals, immediate touch to strings and incredible presence to vocals. And not by accenting highs or attacks like too many tweaks and components, but in a clean way like the way the air is clearer after a rain.
Think of it, this is all by way of removing room resonances. Not in the crude way of acoustic panels but very selectively and at much higher frequencies. Never in my life would I have imagined my system was actually doing this all along, only the room and the air within it were preventing me from hearing it!
Just amazing stuff. One unexpected outcome, I found myself enjoying tracks like Bonnie Raitt's Cry On My Shoulder and the beautiful Nobody's Girl at volume a fair bit higher than I usually would. It dawned on me that with so much hardness removed listener fatigue was lower and I was free to enjoy it better that way! Totally unexpected!
The lower center one upped the ante yet again. This time in a way that kept everything before and then added to it a lovely inner warmth. Inner, not softening details, warm yet also revealing. Two things we seldom find together. I pretty much gave up at that point and just spent the rest of my limited time basking in the best ever.
And there's still 4 in the box! |
I read somewhere that Benny Goodman performed live to more people than anyone else, ever. Or Duke Ellington. Not in monster stadiums like today but clubs with a few hundred to a few thousand at a time. Night after night, 6 nights a week, 50 weeks a year. Playing live instruments. Think of that. All those people listening to, not an amplifier. Not a speaker. A clarinet. A saxophone. Trumpet. String bass. What they couldn't hear live they heard on the radio, and from the mike to the radio it was tubes and point to point soldered wire all the way. What they played was records, many of them recorded with such a high regard for quality they are admired to this day. Even the archaic phonograph, have you ever heard one? I have. Mostly limited to midrange, but with a captivating quality of presence you have to hear to believe.
Today it takes a whole lot of time and effort and money just trying to get back to what they had in every nightclub and living room.
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Wow. USPS just delivered 10 HFTs. We will see how that goes. Frustrating, is my guess. Not because of positioning, but because doing crazy overtime while nice for being able to afford this stuff is absolute murder on my ability to find time to use it!
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Tawa, where on the TT? And where did you notice the biggest effect?
Gordon, SR claims the HFT Wide Angles "dramatically increase your sense of immersion in the soundfield while expanding the scale and dimension of your soundstage." Dramatically. Would you agree? And, "scale and dimension" would you say everything expands? What I mean, does everything seem to spread further apart? Or does the image stay where it was but with a much greater sense of your room disappearing with the soundstage expanding as in it sounds like you're in a bigger room? I would love to have an even greater sense of envelopment and the Wide Angles seem like the logical next step to get me there. Once I have dialed in the first sets of HFTs I mean. |
Don't feed the Codenamegeoff. |
I saw that story on the other thread Frank and its funny but that was one of the things convinced me these things are for real. Reminds me of the time I had a party and this one guy from work who thought it was all BS (I told him even 1/16" of speaker placement matters) moved the chair a fraction of an inch to one side. I just happened to listen before playing something for the next person and of course right away noticed it didn't sound right, fixed the chair, and the guy who thought it was all BS was done. Or the time this dealer friend had left me a Shakti Stone which it turned out only worked over the CD transport, barely. Even before he came in the house I told him it hardly does anything and without skipping a beat he says, "Did it work best over the transport?"
Haters gonna hate but odd little stories like this totally blow away all their in your head double-blind yadda yadda.
Fingers crossed and hoping my HFTs arrive by Friday. Should be fun. |
Hey David, Frank, thanks to you guys, not only your comments here but I also read through a lot you had to say on prior threads. Very helpful. Anyway I now have ten HFTs coming.
Obviously this is something I'll be able to figure out myself but I'm wondering how well these will work if I have to stick them on something soft like my screen frame vs being more solidly attached directly on sheet rock wall? It seems like you and others are saying once you find the location with Blue Tack then its better if you glue it. I was already thinking of the outer frame of my screen, just because of where it is, its as close as I can get to where SR says to place these. But that frame is covered in this sort of fuzzy velour fabric (beyond black, reflects almost no light, you have to see it to believe it!) which Blue Tack sounds like a mess, because of which my best idea so far is stick a tack (wood behind fabric, tack will be firm and you'll never see the hole) then Blue Tack the HFT to the tack. Or am I overthinking it, and a bit of double-sided tape will work just as well? How sensitive are these to being solidly mounted? |
My room is approximately 17x24 with a 9 ft ceiling, wall to wall carpeting, fabric over the lower 3 ft all the way around, 14" triangle tunes in the 4 ceiling corners where walls meet ceiling, with similar panels of Owens Corning fiberglass panels running most of the length of where the walls meet each other as well as running around where the ceiling meets the walls. The best way I know to tame reflections the most with the least material and the most effective treatment I knew of until now, but it gives you some idea where I'm starting.
The biggest thing I wonder about is while this room is two channel listening driven it also is my home theater with a nearly 9 ft wide projection screen on the back wall some 6 feet behind the speakers and extending down to 32" above the floor. It seems that gives me only a small vertical area to experiment with one or 2 HFT, all just below ear level from my sweet spot. But maybe that will turn out to be not all that much of a restriction anyway? |
Sounds like I need to get the HFTs. Five of the original and five of the warmer 2.0 I think? |
Late night listening is always better what with the lower noise floor and reduced grain and glare, presumably due to quieter cleaner power. I've noticed the same effect day or night simply by flipping a lot of breakers off. Which while it is a really nice improvement is also a big hassle what with all the stuff you wind up having to reset, hot water heater going cold, etc. But it does indeed clean up the power very noticeably, even in the daytime. Is that what you get treating the breakers? |
For those who don't know, the comment above is from the inventor of Teleportation, Flying Saucers and Codename (Yes, really, Codename) White Poppy. http://www.machinadynamica.com/index.htmlGood luck tawa finding someone credible who has tried all those. Two things you might want to consider in choosing where to spend your hard earned Federal Reserve Notes. All the Synergistic tweaks are super easy to try and then remove and send back if you don't like them. 30 day money back guarantee. And you will know right away, because with ECT and PHT there is zero break-in time. Even assuming Total Contact is as great as its many satisfied customers claim, they also are very clear in saying it takes quite a while to settle in. How long do you plan on enjoying music? Six months or a year or three from now when you may have sold or traded components you will still have your ECT or PHT to tweak the new gear. Meanwhile whatever you had left of your Total Contact will have long since gone bad even if you did try and carefully preserve it in the fridge. If it was me I'd start with the ECT. They are just so consistently effective and easy to use on so many components. Next would be a toss-up between PHT and HFT. Between those two the deciding factor for me would be which do I think is likely to be improved the most? My room is pretty well dialed in acoustically, and I am free to do more of whatever I want. But if I had a room with problems, and especially a room where I had to be discrete in treatments, then I would probably want to try HFT first. Either way I always go into it knowing it really doesn't matter what anyone else has said, it only matters what I hear in my system. And if what I hear sucks then I want to be able to send it back. Because, much more often than not, that is what happens. Can you do that with Total Contact? |
Yeah, and just to be clear as far as video is concerned, the improvement in picture quality is on par with going from 720p to 1080i, or 1080i to 4k. Its about as much or more compared to when I upgraded from standard HDMI to a very good $350 HDMI cable. Or plugging into a good power conditioner.
Its better than when I had my cables cryo'd.
Actually all of these to me still leave a kind of grainy look like you see a lot in stores where they turn everything up too high to catch your eye, while the result with just the one ECT is much more natural and film-like. Or like the way a good 70mm film looks compared to the usual 35mm, if anyone's familiar with that. Greater color saturation, contrast, and incredible detail without grain. This is, again, just from one.
Plus of course the audio improves as well. Considering how much greater this is from just one compared to the cost of alternatives like a power cord, conditioner, HDMI cable or interconnect, and you get 5, these things have got to be considered one of the great bargain tweaks. |
Okay so New Years Eve watching The Bird Box with the wife wasn't doing much for me so I decided to try something. The movie was a download playing from my MacBook Pro. Part way through I got up and stuck an ECT on the MacBook, upper right corner close to the sound and video outs.
Immediately- and I mean immediately, before I even had time to turn around- my wife says, "What did you do to the volume?"
I knew what she meant. Of course, the volume hadn't really changed. What had changed, there was noticeably less glare and grain, with a lot more space, depth and focus, and a lot better dynamics which of course actually means not only louder parts louder but quieter parts more quiet. Overall listener fatigue drops, it is just less hard on the ears, which sort of feels like less volume even though it probably measures the same. But that's way too much audiophile jargon for her. To her its just volume.
Since I hadn't touched the volume at all I did what all husbands would do in a situation like this.... nothing. Just sat back down. Actually sat there kind of amazed that this ECT had not only produced such a big improvement in the sound, but in the video as well.
Which had me curious. So I said, "Look at their faces. Notice the glint on the skin, the pores, hair, all the little details." That are missing from the androgenized botox passified mask Sandra Bullock tries to pass off as a face. But Malkovich, and the others. Human beings. Look at their faces. Chock full of all kinds of detail. Then I went and removed the ECT.
Boom. Everyone looked like Bullock. Well not really. No one this side of Michael Jackson, or the people in that one Twilight Zone episode. But you get the idea. I put it back again.
"Its like there's more contrast!"
Yup. Contrast, for those who don't know, is the #1 factor in assessing video quality. Not color saturation (which was also improved). Not image resolution or detail (again both a lot better, and in a beautifully natural film-like way). Contrast. Might not have a big vocabulary. Nailed it anyway.
So here we have one little old ECT stuck on a laptop, just one, and it makes such an obviously huge improvement its immediately apparent to.... my wife.
These things are just freaking amazing.
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A few points the idea of these working on the electromagnetic spectrum will need to contend with. In no particular order:
The radio frequency at a wavelength on the order of 10mm is around 30GHz. While harmonics at a few multiples of 20kHz exist, and a good case can be made for their influence on lower (audible) (in air) frequencies, thirty billion seems a bit of a stretch.
Then too we have the problem of knowing they work equally as well both directly on electronics as well as on the outside case of components. They also work on a tone arm- and not on the cartridge which would be electrical but on the tone arm rest far from any electromagnetic field.
A lot of this is conjecture. But one thing we know for certain, electromagnetic fields attenuate according to the inverse square law. Another thing we can know for certain, we can't have it both ways. Either its electromagnetic, therefore attenuates with distance, or its not. It does not attenuate with distance. Therefore its not electromagnetic.
Also if its electromagnetic then why would it be so necessary that they be securely fastened that SR includes both white tack and adhesive? Electromagnetic radiation goes right through clothing. They would work even in your pocket. (Or in the box!) Also in order to work electromagnetically they would need to be, you know, magnetic. Ferrous. At least a little. But they're not. Because then the last place you would ever want to use one is stuck right next to the delicate electromagnetic field of the phono cartridge. Which is exactly where they tell you to stick them!
One way to figure things out, rule out everything it cannot be, it must be what you're left with. Electromagnetic dog don't hunt.
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My understanding is these work by vibration control. They are shaped just like tiny little bass traps. Take the dimensions, work out the math, they are damping ultrasonic vibrations, frequencies on the order of 40kHz and above.
Exactly how this works is not nearly as obvious to me. But there’s a clue I think in something Keith Herron said about timing and the Fourier Transform. Being mathlexic I will for sure screw this up, but it was something like he has done measurements and listening tests that demonstrate people are exquisitely sensitive to timing, and that frequency is (where the Fourier Transform comes into it) a function of timing. Specifically, he found he could manipulate a listeners preference by changing frequency response as little as .03 dB. Three hundredths of a decibel! That is why his components are hand-assembled using individually tested parts. Three hundredths of one dB!
Clearly these tiny little things (PHT, ECT, HFT) are at best capable of doing next to nothing. Equally clearly, at least according to this finding, they only need to do next to nothing! Three hundredths of a dB!
Gonna get some PHT to try, and some more ECT. Let you know how it goes. |
Yes I'm surprised more people aren't able to realize the many advantages to tweaking what you have compared to buying a new component.
Not that there's anything wrong with component upgrades. I just brought home a game-changer, Herron VTPH-2A. Probably no amount of tweakery would be enough to elevate my old PH3-SE to this level. Or should I say realm. Universe? Whatever you want to call the place the rest cannot go.
But yeah, I now have two ECTs on my tone arm. One by the base, another way out near the arm rest. I really wanted to experiment with more locations. But the Herron sounded so good, even right out of the box, I lost all interest in doing anything but feeding it.
These things are worth the coin all by themselves, but with the free Quantum Fuse deal its an absolute no-brainer: Just keep going until you run out of fuses to replace! lol!
David since you seem to have a good pair of ears what can you tell me about the different PHTs you've tried? |
Working 12 hour days I won’t have time to listen at all until Saturday.
Why not try it yourself? Pull one off the wall, tack on the turntable, tone arm base, or right on the arm itself. Placed directly over the pivot point it won’t affect VTF at all. I will even bet you notice a bigger effect there than on the wall. |
Okay so check this out. Look real close at the ECT. Look down inside to where the horn ports into a chamber at the bottom. There's a very fine mesh screen. Just past the screen there's something. What? Then take a look at the lateral x-ray. What? You don't have x-ray? Good thing I do! The horn curves down to a port that opens into a cylindrical chamber. The chamber is partially filled with something. What, I don't know. X-ray only shows density. All I can say, whatever it is, is less dense than the surrounding material. The space above appears to be the same density as air. In other words, this thing looks EXACTLY like a horn speaker. Only with a chamber instead of a driver. In other words, it looks EXACTLY like a bass trap. Only, if you understand how bass traps work, one designed to work on very high frequencies. On the order of 40 kHz, I would say, http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-waves.htmHard not to notice the distinct similarity between the ECT, PHT and HFT. My hunch is they all work on essentially the same principle and are simply sized or tuned a bit for different applications. This would explain why the ECT works so well on my tone arm, even though to go by what SR says its for electronics. But it works great on my arm. One of the first things I will do when I get some time this weekend (after a good dose of time bathing in the splendor of amazing sound I'm experiencing lately!) is try the ECT on my cartridge. Then when I get PHT will try them on the arm, etc. Meantime for the guys with HFT, would be nice to know if they work on turntables, arms, components. As I think they will.... |
Yes, forgot to mention that, thanks for the reminder. Highend-electronics has a promotion through the end of the year, one free Blue Quantum Fuse with your ECT. Killer deal.
I also have something interesting to add to my review.
My first ECT placements, based on info from Synergistic Research as well as users, were near electrical components. Well they are after all SUPPOSED to be ELECTRONIC circuit transducers. But for various reasons I won't go into I was pretty sure they are in fact vibration control devices. Very, very amazingly effective vibration control devices!
That is why the first thing I tried, mounting one on my turntable motor, was a place no one had suggested they be used. The improvements I heard were at least as big as what I heard using them in the usual placements near tubes and transformers.
Well, last night I decided to try one on the base of my tone arm. The Origin Live Conqueror has an aluminum base that extends out to first the cueing lever and then the arm rest. Sticking out as it does this would seem to be a prime target for vibration control, as indeed OL seems to agree, as they put several curved cutouts in it. There really is no reason for these I can think of other than vibration control.
In fact, they cut out so much it was hard to find a place wider than the ECT!
Now being ELECTRICAL CT's nobody should ever think to try this. Nothing electrical about an arm board. But if they are, as I think, really doing vibration control then there may be no better place for them.
Which does indeed seem to be the case. Because when after sticking one on there I sat back down the results were staggering.
Everyone I'm sure is familiar with the sound, often at the end of a recording, or even sometimes during a piece, where the music suddenly stops and you're left with the reverberation of the recording venue. That sound that gives you a real impression of the space around the musicians. I always love that part.
Well, with the ECT on the Conqueror I wasn't just hearing that space at the end, I could SEE that space AROUND the singer DURING the song! Yes the noise floor dropped that dramatically. Dynamics, especially micro-dynamic shadings, took a big step up as well. All the little timbral signatures that contribute so much to the sense of a say a sax really being a sax, or a human voice an actual human being, they got so real I still can't believe it.
Okay, granted, this is on one mighty fine turntable. The Conqueror is a superb arm. Koetsu Black Goldline, PH-3 SE. You get the picture. Every single one of these components was chosen for its inherent ability to present fine detail naturally and effortlessly. But still. Never heard anything like this before. Not. Even. Close.
I'm ordering more.
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