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Kiwi Mad Science

When reading about the Mad Scientist‘s Black Discus products I became intrigued enough to order some from NZ.

madscientist-audio.com is a small outfit in New Zealand specialising in what you might call black matter. This material, of which there is no decription or recipe available is a hard resin with great RMI/EFI properties and, so it seems also addressing vibrational distortions.

Specifically I have experimented with the following:

Tube toppers: these go on top of small signal tubes (in my case WE435a on a Wavac EC300b amplifier) When they arrived I was already using EAT tube dampeners and the combination of the two resulted in a further tightening of the sound: incredible leading edge and reverb along with a holographic widening and deepening of the soundstage with cristal-clear height and localisation. Very worthwhile for little money.

Black Discus Nano Donuts: theses are meant to go on top of torroidal transformers, I used them with great effect on the Innuos Zenith Mk3 server as well as the Voltikus power supply on my Antelope Zodiac Platinum DAC.
The effect is not subtle: foremost a significant tightening of the bass with corresponding increase of blackness through lowered noise floor. In addition there is a heightening of micro detail (e.g. reed noises on clarinets, character of different sticks on xylophone and vibraphone, etc) They come in 3 different sizes, because of enclosure constraints I could only fit the smallest ones.

Black Discus Nano discs: 2 of these came as a sample gift in my package, which by the way because of Covid took 2 weeks to arrive in London. After some experimenting I ended up using them on my Wavac amp‘s positive speaker bindings as suggested by the Mad Scientist. To my surprise I got a reduction in sibbilance as well as greater clarity on vocals out of them. I am using Bybee Golden Goddess Speaker Bullets as well as Stein Speaker Match on my Duevel Bella Lunas, nevertheless there was a discernible improvement, albeit not on the same scale as with the previous 2 items.

This Black Magic is truly working and actually very intriguing. I wish there was a good explanation on the inner workings, that said the price of admission is modest and the efficacy well worth it.

antigrunge2
tablejockey
3,772 posts
 
Yup, there are members here who tried/use them.
 
I found the little sample he used to give out worthless. Power to anyone who "hears" all the claims. 

Maybe I needed to "buy" the discs to hear the virtues?
antigrunge2 OP
1,331 posts
 
Another shout-out for the Mad Scientist: his Graphene Contact Enhancer is magic sauce. Prior to trying it, I had moved from Caig Deoxit Gold to Acoustic Revive ECI-50 with clear improvements in both cases. Potency of the GCE is in a different league alltogether: Immediacy and transparency resulting are nothing short of astounding. The biggest impact appears to be on anything related to power supply. In particular mains cables (apply to each connector inside the plug as well as outside), fuses and their holders and to a lesser extent RCA connections and speaker cables, whether ended or bare wire show significant benefits. An all around class act again
allears4u
126 posts
 

Yes count me as another vote for Mad Scientist's tube toppers. Bought 6 to "crown" each preamp tubes. The effect isn't what I expected after buying the disks, cupcakes, and sticks. They all made a clarity difference that was transformative. (Even I'm getting tired of saying that) But seriously, the tube toppers calmed everything down. The music seems strangely more relaxed, deliberate, and a previously unrecognized sense of irritating "jitteriness" has evaporated. Made me feel like how vinyl sounds in its creamy consistency but without the other stuff. (Full disclosure I use both CD and Vinyl) You know how vinyl has that indescribable wholeness? Tube toppers gave CD playback that magic cohesiveness. Highly recommended for tube aficionados. 

 

 

 

tmhutch
2 posts
 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but I am astonished by what the free black discus nano's did in my system. When I received them as a free gift with my contact enhancer I looked at them and laughed. They sat on my desk for months. They are hard to take serious. One afternoon I thought "what the heck, it only takes a matter of seconds to try". So I placed them on the speaker cables as they exit the amp. Unbelievable improvement. Music was less garbled, less fuzzy, cleaner, more concise without losing musicality. I found it's best to experiment with placement. The best balance for my system was actually on the speaker cables where they connect at the speaker.

I'm looking forward to further experimentation.

 

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