No kidding...This is the Ultimate Tweak!! The Audio Desk System

[Brandon_Ottawa]

I recently came across a few threads that mentioned a machine called the Audio Desk System. It's a belt driven lathe that bevels a 38 degree angle into the outer edge of a CD. I was very intrigued when a respected head-fier assigned the unit a 10+ tweaking value.

10+? Hmmm...Well, I took the bait and placed an order on Music Direct. I got the last one at $550 (immediately after placing my order they raised their price to $650). I know the price seems extreme, but I swear it's worth every penny. After cutting my discs and applying the supplied black marker the sonics improved 10% easily on some discs. I hear things that I've never heard before on fimilar recordings. I've listened to Nirvana - Unplugged in New York about 1000 times...but on the 1001st time I heard the clarity, detail, and transparency that I've never heard before. It seemed SACD-like.

I must mention that my discs have been 1. cut with the Audio Desk, 2. marked with the Audio Desk marker, 3. washed with dish washing solution, 4. treated with Mikro-Smooth, 5. treated Walker's Vivid, and then 6. spun in the Bedini. The Audio Desk with the marker offers the most significant improvement by far. 10+ for sure.

http://www.amusicdirect.com/products...p?sku=ADESKSYS

[meat01]

What does the 38 degree bevel do that enhances the sound?

[Welly Wu]

You ain't gettin' me to cut none of my discs...

[Brandon_Ottawa]

Originally Posted by meat01

What does the 38 degree bevel do that enhances the sound?

Sorry, It's actually 36.

http://www.audiodesksysteme.de/index.php?kat=10_16

Taken from Audio Desk...

"Light reflections disrupt the sound

Even high-end equipment for the highest of demands is powerless against light scatter in CDs. Laser beams are reflected numerous times and stray this way and that over the CD's surfaces. This audibly affects the reproduction. The sound loses its clarity and transparency. The beam diffusion cannot be avoided by error correction.

Does green or black work?
A hot tip in audio expert circles is the colouring of the CD's edge with a felt pen, to absorb the light scatter. The effect unfortunately doesn't deliver on its promise. Green as a complimentary colour to the red laser should bring better results, this is however often not the case as many lasers work with the infra-red spectrum.

Simple and effective: the 36° bevel

Turning round and absorption
In exhaustive tests biochemist Dr. Erich Schrott and engineer Wolfgang Schneider have looked for ways to eliminate the disruptive reflections. They found an amazingly simple, yet highly effective, tuning method. The CD's outer edge is bevelled and works as a trap for the light scatter. Black colouring absorbs additional misrouted laser light. An edge angle of 36° brings audibly the best results."

[grinch]

hahah sure seems like an interesting way to spend money. personally, for $550 i'd rather have more music.


nirvana's unplugged album sounds really impressive to me too, my copy hasn't been "trimmed" around the edges though.

[Wmcmanus]

Brandon sent a PM to me the other day asking some questions about his new Audio Desk, but this wasn't until after he made his purchase. Little did I know that my comments here at head-fi had influenced him! (I just did a quick search and found my 10+ rating in the archives... it seemed familiar but I wasn't 100% sure).

I'm always hesitant about these sorts of tweeks myself, especially the high priced ones because we have a tendency to want to justify our investment. I've been around long enough in high-end audio to know that nobody is really immune from this, and thus I am hesitant to recommend something that most other observers are likely to scoff at. In other words, the "I bought it so you must" arguments are really tiring. And to be honest, the main reason I bought my Audio Desk was that I got a dealer demo for $400 and I had a Audiogon friend who was willing to buy it from me for what I paid for it if I wasn't happy with it, so it was a no risk proposition. But once it was in my hands, that was the end of any thinking about flipping it!

In short, the bevelled edges provide audible improvements in nearly every aspect of sound. The player has a 'better' (more perfect) disc to read which reduces the effects of jitter. In particular, it tightens the bass just a tad, allows you to hear details that you've missed a thousand times before (as Brandon mentioned) and also reduces the tendency for older discs to have a digital glare in the upper frequencies. I've found that the improvements tend to be greater for older, more poorly recorded, discs. I'd agree that it can increase the sound quality by the equivalent of the difference between the redbook and SACD layers on a hybrid disc, but this is not necessarily so as it depends a lot on the recording.

Proof is in the pudding offer:

I've got a couple of dozen duplicate discs in my CD collection (accidents do happen), and will be happy to put together a sampler package that can be sent around for those who are interested in hearing the effects (or lack thereof) of the Audio Desk Systeme for themselves.

The package will go out to Doug (ServinginEcuador) first (he's in California at the moment) because I know that he has been interested. Each person can keep it for no more than a week and then send it on. No formal rules, just common courtesy would be expected (i.e., treat the discs as though they were your own).

Here are the discs that will be included (in each case, there would be an Audio Desk bevelled disc and unbevelled disc):

Acoustic Alchemy - Against the Grain
Caribbean Jazz Project - The Gathering
Charles Mingus - Mingus, Mingus, Mingus
Choral Concert - Verleih uns Frieden gnadiglich (binaural recording)
Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major - Midori, et. al. (SACD only)
Sinatra-Basie - An Historic Musical First
The Ultimate Tony Bennett (SACD only)
Joe Satriani - Engines of Creation (SACD only)
Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated - R&B from the Marquee (MFSL gold disc)
Magical Musicals - Eric Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (Telarc)

I'll also include The Beatles - Revolver, but both copies are scuffed up pretty badly from years of use and abuse.

I can also include a black marker as well as small bottles of Auric Illuminator and Walker's Audio Vivid along with pads and tissues that are used to apply these solutions. I'll treat a couple of the sample discs with the black marker and Vivid, but will leave the majority of them untreated. Each person who receives the package can then use these solutions on a couple of their own discs as they see fit. However, to best control for the effects caused by the Audio Desk trimmmer alone, it is important not to treat any of the discs that are included in the package.

If necessary, we can start a fresh thread to keep track of the whereabouts of the package, but in general we should coordinate via PM.

[Brandon_Ottawa]

Wow! This is a very generous offer!

Originally Posted by Wmcmanus

Brandon sent a PM to me the other day asking some questions about his new Audio Desk, but this wasn't until after he made his purchase. Little did I know that my comments here at head-fi had influenced him! (I just did a quick search and found my 10+ rating in the archives... it seemed familiar but I wasn't 100% sure).

I'm always hesitant about these sorts of tweeks myself, especially the high priced ones because we have a tendency to want to justify our investment. I've been around long enough in high-end audio to know that nobody is really immune from this, and thus I am hesitant to recommend something that most other observers are likely to scoff at. In other words, the "I bought it so you must" arguments are really tiring. And to be honest, the main reason I bought my Audio Desk was that I got a dealer demo for $400 and I had a Audiogon friend who was willing to buy it from me for what I paid for it if I wasn't happy with it, so it was a no risk proposition. But once it was in my hands, that was the end of any thinking about flipping it!

In short, the bevelled edges provide audible improvements in nearly every aspect of sound. The player has a 'better' (more perfect) disc to read which reduces the effects of jitter. In particular, it tightens the bass just a tad, allows you to hear details that you've missed a thousand times before (as Brandon mentioned) and also reduces the tendency for older discs to have a digital glare in the upper frequencies. I've found that the improvements tend to be greater for older, more poorly recorded, discs. I'd agree that it can increase the sound quality by the equivalent of the difference between the redbook and SACD layers on a hybrid disc, but this is not necessarily so as it depends a lot on the recording.

Proof is in the pudding offer:

I've got a couple of dozen duplicate discs in my CD collection (accidents do happen), and will be happy to put together a sampler package that can be sent around for those who are interested in hearing the effects (or lack thereof) of the Audio Desk Systeme for themselves.

The package will go out to Doug (ServinginEcuador) first (he's in California at the moment) because I know that he has been interested. Each person can keep it for no more than a week and then send it on. No formal rules, just common courtesy would be expected (i.e., treat the discs as though they were your own).

Here are the discs that will be included (in each case, there would be an Audio Desk bevelled disc and unbevelled disc):

Acoustic Alchemy - Against the Grain
Caribbean Jazz Project - The Gathering
Charles Mingus - Mingus, Mingus, Mingus
Choral Concert - Verleih uns Frieden gnadiglich (binaural recording)
Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major - Midori, et. al. (SACD only)
Sinatra-Basie - An Historic Musical First
The Ultimate Tony Bennett (SACD only)
Joe Satriani - Engines of Creation (SACD only)
Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated - R&B from the Marquee (MFSL gold disc)
Magical Musicals - Eric Kunzel & Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (Telarc)

I'll also include The Beatles - Revolver, but both copies are scuffed up pretty badly from years of use and abuse.

I can also include a black marker as well as small bottles of Auric Illuminator and Walker's Audio Vivid along with pads and tissues that are used to apply these solutions. I'll treat a couple of the sample discs with the black marker and Vivid, but will leave the majority of them untreated. Each person who receives the package can then use these solutions on a couple of their own discs as they see fit. However, to best control for the effects caused by the Audio Desk trimmmer alone, it is important not to treat any of the discs that are included in the package.

If necessary, we can start a fresh thread to keep track of the whereabouts of the package, but in general we should coordinate via PM.

[ampgalore]

Not another one. Wasn't there a thread about placing a rainbow sticker on CDs that made "dramatic" improvements in CD playback, heard things never heard before...

For $500 I would rather spend it on a new CD player or buy more CDs.

[gpalmer]

I'd be interested but I think I'll be out of the country by then. If it's still around when I get back, sign me up!

[Geise]

Why don't you charge people like $5 per CD (plus shipping) to cut their CDs for them? This way people can do comparisons on their own music and not have to buy an expensive gadget or use your CDs...

[Wmcmanus]

Originally Posted by Geise

Why don't you charge people like $5 per CD (plus shipping) to cut their CDs for them? This way people can do comparisons on their own music and not have to buy an expensive gadget or use your CDs...

This is a good suggestion, but I'm not in this hobby to make money, and I don't really want to be running to the post office every day. Maybe Brandon would be interested in doing this. For a couple of CD's here and there, no problem.

There will be a fairly wide variety of music in the package so everyone will at least have a chance to hear (or not hear) the effects that trimming the discs has, and then they can report back their findings. You don't have to listen to more than 30 second intervals to pick up which one has been trimmed.

[aeberbach]

Without hearing discs that have been cut all I can say is that if you cut carefully you probably won't hurt them.

But the price? If I took the Farnell or McMaster-Carr or Digikey or any of a numer of other catalogs and ordered everything I needed, including tools, to make one of these units - it would still be cheaper than $650. I could probably make one with an old CD drive or LP player and a clamp to hold a blade for nothing. There is no rocket science in setting a 36 degree cutting blade! P.T. Barnum chuckles in his grave...

[radrd]

Proving that audiophiles remain in the "some of the people some of the time" category.

[Tuberoller]

Count me in.

I'm gonna offer a bit of a reserved recommendation for the Audio Desk cutter. Todd Green and I talked about my experiences with the desk and I discussed this at length with one of the engineers(Kevin?) at Wadia Digital when I was there during the meet. My experiences have been much more inconsistent and I was never able to quantify real improvements. Granted, I never performed auditions under controlled conditions with duplicate discs so this sounds really interesting.

Most of my experiences came after being made the offer to try it on some of my discs from a friend at Music Direct. He offered to treat three discs and to replace those discs if I was'nt impressed. I never took him up on his offer but I do have all three discs still. I'm very interested to revist the Audio Desk treatment and do a more in-depth audition. So I'm in.

[tk_suki]

Not sure of the Patent rules, but seems would be more economical, rather than individuals forced to buy and have sit idle most of the time, simply have a CD processing service, cut/color for users. There are others already in existence for clean, repair, & copy.

Hint, so I can try it with a very modest investment. Though skeptical this could make the G08 sound much better than it already is.

Suggest folks invest their money in a G08 first, which will likely yield much better sound. But for those who can not afford or already have one, looking for a cheap way to trial this sucker.

I have seen in the stores, TEAC even lists on their Japan home page, so maybe will ask if I can test a couple of discs.

Like the DIY idea too. But first going to hold out for some other skeptics to be converted. But got my attention. Same with the Barry D. hip joints(like roller balls) and the enjoyyourshelf rack concepts.

p.s. Why didn`t the CD inventors take care of this from the get go? Ok might cost a fraction more, but if that good could pass along the few extra cents with a nice little markup.