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Well, yes…
This is a tweak report. Please, don’t sulk.
Before we drift into the prelims, let’s
review the term. In audio, a tweak is some
manner of non-critical embellishment of a
sound system’s essentials. Remove an
essential and the show’s left the room.
Remove a tweak and the show remains, if not,
perhaps, quite as you’d like.
Thanks to Uncle Clement’s urgings and
suggestions, much to my delight, mine has
become a tweak-infused system. (So let me
thank the dear man here.) Briefly, then:
four Acoustic Revive room-treatment panels;
on their stands, four Stein Music H2
Harmonizers; Stein Music Magic Stones, Magic
Diamonds, and Magic Blue Diamonds; two
Acoustic Revive RR-77 Schumann Resonance
generators; an Acoustic Revive disc
demagnetizer; two BlackNoise line
conditioners; Nordost Quasar Points under
the amps; Aurum Acoustics points under that
company’s Integris CDP; an Acoustic Revive
quartz-crystal board under the Integris.
It’s been
my experience that every tweak makes a
difference. The question is, how great a
difference? How profound the effect? Is it
always for the better? Not everything I’ve
had here for comment is part of the present
mix. Those items I most value are. I hear
their contributions as persisting for the
good.
And that raises the issue of necessity.
While one’s system can operate, for example,
without line conditioners, those of us who
use them regard them as important. Our
speakers are capable of producing sound in
the absence of tweaks, yet in their absence
we long for their presence.
Which
brings us to these fuses. In his heart of
hearts, Uncle Clement sees me as a skeptic.
No number of enthusiastic reviews can
dislodge him from this prejudice. Therefore
I see it as my mission to cover the tweak
here examined in a fashion Unc’s bound to
approve. It was he, after all, who described
these HiFi-Tuning fuses to me in the warmest
of terms.
What seemed
a good plan soon enough soured. I’ll
explain. I thought it prudent to have a look
at Moreno Mitchell’s May, 2011 HiFi-Tuning
Supreme fuse report. The more I read the
more furious I became. J’accuse, Moreno!
You’ve perpetrated an act of pre-emptive
plagiarism! Or something! Your observations
so exactly track my own that no other
interpretation is possible. Plagiarism! Or
something! And time-travel too!
What
strikes me as especially irksome is Moreno’s
observations regarding directionality. He
heard what I heard: with fuses first
installed, both of us detected an uptick in
clarity, which translates in audiospeak to
better everything: transients, soundstage,
musical timbres…. And, as did I, after some
time, Moreno was made a wee bit
uncomfortable by a less than endearing
top-end. In my case, I confirmed a lingering
sense of discomfort with what has become a
test CD, a Haydn string quartet on the Tacet
label. Producer Andreas Spreer records the
Auryn Quartet with old Neumann mics. They’re
justly famous devices with, in Spreer’s
hands, especially brilliant highs I’ve come
to rely on in detecting rough edges. The
Auryn’s violins were a tad edgy.
If a trace
of skepticism remains – with me, as well as
you, gentle reader – whence this twofold
perception of not-quite-right? When I
reversed the fuses, etched became silken.
Flawed became flawless. (Well, close enough
to….)
I delight
in arising an hour or so before first light
and playing something at a volume that won’t
disturb Lee. (It’s a big, two story house.
Our bedroom’s upstairs, and there are doors
to close.) Morton Feldman’s near-to-silent,
long-distance scores for various
combinations of traditional instruments have
provided moments of epiphanic joy. I’m a
Feldman fanatic. String Quartet 2, as
recorded by members of the Ives Ensemble
(hat[now]ART 4144, four CDs), runs for four
hours, 45 minutes. I’m usually good for one
disc per sitting. With this and other
recordings, one’s perceptions of luminosity,
space and detail, to which, unquestionably,
HiFi-Tuning Supreme fuses contribute, make
calling this a hobby seem almost insulting.
HiFi-Tuning
Supreme specifics include mention of ceramic
bodies, painstaking metallurgy,
gold-impregnated silver and – enter the MEGO
effect – Quantum Mechanics. Quantum
implementations have become quite the
fashion in Audiophilia. Given what one
hears, one can only suggest that there’s got
to be something going on that resists
explanation in conventional terms. Quantum
schmantum, I like what these tiny items do.
Moreover, HiFi-Tuning’s top-of-the-line
fuses are a screaming bargain. But remember,
you need to test for directionality. It’s
important.
***
A union of
imponderables
When
electrified trolley cars were new to the
world, a passenger asked how they worked.
The conductor answered thus: that pole at
the top there attaches to the overhead wire,
I turn this handle, it goes. This
approximates my understanding of two
especially effective tweaks (predecessors of
the fuses). I have it on the best authority,
i.e., the horse’s mouth, that Holger Stein’s
H2 Harmonizers, Magic Stones, Magic Diamonds
and Magic Blue Diamonds operate via aspects
of quantum mechanics. Another tweak I
revere, Ken Ishiguro’s RR-77, is said to
effect a domestic recreation of an outdoor
global beneficence called the Schumann
Resonance.
You can Google Schumann Resonance for an
understanding of what it is. But how this
aspect of earth’s magnetic field ameliorates
one’s RFI-infested listening room is, for me
at least, a tad less fathomable. But I
cherish what I hear. From what I understand
of quantum mechanics (a shade less than
nothing), objects in no way connected or
obviously related can exercise an influence
one to the other. Be that as it may, I’m
impressed beyond measure by Holger Stein’s
contributions to sweet-spot contentment. As
to measure, I’m guessing that few to no
members of the measurements-tell-the-story
school would regard my impressions as other
than imagined.
Go in peace. I’m here to report to those who
trust their ears that two properly elevated
RR-77s operate in gorgeous harmony with four
H2 Harmonizers. The mentioned tweaks –
fuses, Harmonizers, RR-77s – contribute
vibrant life to what, in their absence,
would still be judged pretty good sound.
***
Prima la musica…!
At $100, The Decca Sound, consisting of 50
CDs and a 198-page booklet handsomely boxed,
is too great an experience – and bargain! –
to ignore. The music ranges from ancient to
modern Western classical, with the bulk of
it occupying the 19thand 20th centuries. The
earliest music, a collection of dances,
dates from 1551. Berlin cabaret songs, a
Vienna New Year’s concert and the Three
Tenors fall to the collection’s lighter
side. The modernists include Edgard Varèse,
a personal favorite. The Romantic school in
all its aspects is well represented. The
booklet relates the Decca Sound’s history,
including a detailed discussion of the
“microphone tree,” with equally informative
production and track information. The
collection’s far too various to summarize
here. The reasonably well informed music
buff will recognize most everything.
More important, perhaps: for the less well
informed yet curious listener, I can think
of no better corrective than plunging fully
clothed into this sea of wealth. Decca
(which went in the US as London for a number
of years) is one of the great labels. The
recordings span the entirety of the stereo
era. While better performances exist here
and there, nothing in this collection is
shabby. For example, the first disc features
ravishing 1961 and ’62 performances of
Debussy’s Images for Orchestra and Manuel de
Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, with Ernest
Ansermet conducting l’Orchestre de la Suisse
Romande – a great ensemble in its day and a
great conductor. As for those recording
dates, my earliest experience of memorable
sound emerged fromLPs bearing Decca’s FFSS
and FFRR acronyms (Full-Frequency
Stereophonic Sound and Full-Frequency Range
Recording.)
I mentioned the first disc. The last, number
50, consists in the main of a 1995 recording
of William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast,
about which, as typical of the comments
praising these original releases, this
excerpt of a Gramophone review:
“The problems for the engineers must have
been daunting, for the reverberation time is
formidably long, yet thanks to brilliant
balancing there is ample detail and fine
focus in exceptionally incisive choral and
orchestral sound. The great benefit is that
this emerges as a performance on a bigger
scale than its rivals, with the contrasts
between full chorus and semi-chorus the more
sharply established. The vividly dramatic
soloist is Byrn Terfel, pointing the words
as no one else ever has done in my
experience.”
A bargain at twice the price.
***
HiFi Tuning Supreme fuses:
3AG, 1.25” (6.3 x 32mm), $85 USD
GMA, 0.75” (5 x 20 mm), $55 USD
www.HiFiTuning.com
US distributor: Ultra Systems
127 Union Square
New Hope, PA 18938
800-724-3305 or 215-862-6570
Fax 215-862-4871
www.ultrasystems.com
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