Made my own 10+ kg brilliant pebble! Mass damping to the extreme! - Page 8

I did some testing and it seemed like the weight distribution on top of the chassis gave a different sound. The smaller the pressure point the heavier and more solid the bass was. The white stone had similar bass size as the books which were heavier, but it gave fake clarity and openness. The eggs sounded the brightest and cleanest, they gave a little more vocal information because of less bass emphasis.

I liked the sound of the white stone inside the plastic jar the most. Without the jar the bass was too solid.

Big plastic jar: 50 grams
Small plastic jar: 30 grams
7 egg stones: 1100 grams
White ball stone: 1250 grams
Books: 1800 grams


The position on top of the chassis matters also, but it's going to be impossible to get any consistency in the testing. The books had the most consistent sound but it sounded little dull. But with the stones, weird stuff happened, sometimes they sounded bright and sometimes little smoother, but they never sounded dull.


The longer I tested the smaller differences I heard, until I couldn't hear a difference because of fatigue. I need to do long-term testing to confirm...

Brilliant Pebbles - best of both worlds?

I did some more testing and weird stuff is going on with the eggs now! They sounded smooth now. It sounded like the best of both worlds. I got more low-level detail and it sounded smoother than the white ball (without plastic). It seems like the position of the eggs had shifted inside the plastic jar, it's not consistent.

So then I realized that if the stones are even smaller you can get both the open and smooth sound signature, and if the stones are of different shapes it should be even better. I just found out the design for Brilliant Pebbles! Is Brilliant Pebbles the Valhalla of stones?

The books seem to make everything dull, it reduces the resonances but it also seems to make something worse in the process, it reduces the brightness by making it darker and heavier, but it's choking the gear instead of letting it breathe.
But with the Brilliant Pebbles, it's so light that it lets the component breathe while reducing some of the internal resonances!

I did some testing with Brilliant Pebbles and the improvements are far from significant. But without the bottle it sounded harsh and fatiguing. With the bottle it sounded silkier, similar to changing from RCA to XLR connectors (night and day). But the difference wasn't night and day, it was almost inaudible.
Maybe a bigger bottle is better, or more of the small bottles! Then the weight distribution on top gets consistent. I want dozens of these bottles!

Or maybe I should buy (or hunt the beaches of Turkey) these stones myself and make my own enclosure. Or maybe I should put the stones inside the chassis? Or even better, a new chassis entirely made of stones!

Only my wife gets to listen to my system, we will do it on our honeymoon.