I want to thank you Mogimu .... This F.oq tape works marvel with my headphone Beyerdynamic Dt 150,( i will later treat my stax and he-400) works marvel with all my cables, even the battery cable of my dac,and the Panamax power station, it works also good with the amplifier, but not so if directly glued on the speakers because they are already heavily damped with a sandwich of sorbothane, bamboo,cork,and granite plate, with on top a heavy load of concrete ,hence using the tape glued on the speakers with all that kills some dynamic .... I think that damping is optimalized if not applied too much... Next i will try my new dac(french 2-r2 dac for 20 bucks on ebay,lucky i am) in the next week...With the dac i think this tape would do marvel also.... I now use with great success, sorbothane, and stones and crystals, and F.oq tape.... The tape seems to clean equally all frequencies,but especially higher frequencies,greatly enhancing imaging and the aura of each sound.... Anyway if your speakers are not damped like mine i suggest you try it with them ... This tape makes miraculous cure and complement greatly the sorb. and the crystals and stones... I recommend it to all people.... I am very pleased to have cross your road, Mogimu, thanks thousand times for your suggestion and ideas...
Without this Edstrelow thread of new ideas and experimental motivation i know that my audio system would never have satisfied me like it did now...Thanks to all of you...
P.s. Experiment gradually with some pieces one at a time, with small bands more than with bigger one in one swoop...This will optimalize cumulatively the damping effect exactly for your systems...However the action of the tape is clearly there, especially on the cables and interconnects, the action is cumulative, like a cleaning across all frequencies, but the tape is not a replacement for the sorbothane in the headphone or in the speakers, they dont act the same, nor a replacement for my powerful stones and crystals, sorb. and crystals are more powerful but more difficult to use, because stones and crystals act synergetically and if not choosen rightly can degrade the sound....But i cannot go on without this tape now, particularly on all my cables, that give me a clarity in the depth imaging that i dont have with other means...If you apply it on one cable at a time, you will hear a cumulative resulting effect...The greatest effect of this tape are on the cables of each element from the computer to the dac: the usb isolator and the spdif/usb convertor and the cable connection to the dac and the speakers cable...Astounding better atmospherical sound...i cannot put sorb. at these cables spots nor stones or crystals that produce this level of atmospherical cleanliness and definition...But for example deplacing only one stone around each of my speakers transform the
global form of my soundstage in a totally new immersive one, the tape does not do that by himself, but trust me, help greatly for that surprising final result... At the end for the amplifier or the central electrical panel the tape cannot tame all the flow of electrical and mechanical noise and vibrations, stones and crystals does already that and putting the tape directly on the amplifier is only a subtle plus, because it act way better on the many cables of the amplifier ...
In one simplistic word, the stones affect more the timbre and the soundstage, than the global cleanliness and clarity; the tape affect more the global clarity of the sound than the materiality of the timbre and the form of the soundstage...
For note my system use around 25 different species and varietes of crystals and stones, 3 are particularly extraordinary, the banded agate of madagascar, the tourmaline, and the shungite, but the shungite dont touch almost none of the elements of my system and act by his own field only, is very potent and difficult to use in the right manner...I know some will laugh but i dont give a damn.... I must say here what i experiment about....
Update:
Incredibly i just put at last 3 separated large bands of tape on the big electrical one inch cable(already treated by jasper stones) that goes from the central electrical panel (already treated with agate and crystals) in my basement to the second floor of my house, hence completely upstream of my system, and the results were way more cleanliness on top of the already very spectacular effect of the stones.... This is the most spectacular effect of this tape and the last application i implement... Lesson i learn already with the crystals and stones:
the more you act upstream the less noise there is ...Wow...
Second update :
To the one band of tape already there i added 2 more thin bands of tape around the isolator cable between the computer and the rest of my gear and that made large audible differences, a sort of 3-d liveliness that was not completely there before... This is my last application and seems to be, with the previous application on the big electrical cable of the central panel, the two best ones, like i have said it seems the more upstream app. has the more potent effect on the sound ...All my cables and interconnect are now with 2 or 3 bands of tape at either side....
Third Update:
If your headphone or speakers are already damped with sorbothane, go on very slowly with the F.oq tape... There can be too much damping and negative interaction if you use the tape to stick it directly on the headphone or the speakers already damped by the sorb. It is very remarkable that with ALL CABLES the tape do a very good job.... I cannot live without it now.... But if your headphones or speakers are already adequately damped use the tape only on cables...On my amplifier wich is already damped the effect was not particularly noticeable or even positive, without being negative for sure, hence this is my only reserve precaution about this tape....On
ALL cables this tape is remarkably efficient.... Things with enclosure and complex electronic content: headphone,speakers, amplifiers,etc, are prone to electro-magnetic interferences and mechanical resonant vibrations but all these mechanical vibrations of the enclosure are best deal first with sorbothane or other damping method combined and EMI by stones and crystals; but cables have no big enclosure containing many electronic source of electro-magnetic and mechanical noises like speakers or headphones cups, hence less negative resonance problems, but cable vibrates because of EMI also and for this adverse electrical noise
on cable location the tape do a job which is astounding,better there than stones and crystals, be it: electrical cable, audio cables, interconnect, speakers cables, headphone cables etc...
Buy it...
A final remark:
I think now that the astounding effect of stones and crystals is not only a damping effect but also a kind of
filtering effect, on a designed spot where they are put in place, of the global electro-magnetic interaction field of all pieces of interacting audio components...It is like my different stones, like tourmaline, lava beads,kyanite,jasper,labradorite, varieties of quartz,amethysts,agate,shungite etc acted like many complementary filters on a blended and mixed interactive fields,composed of all my gear system+ many interacting external fields... For this useful cleanliness function-job, nor sorb. neither the tape replace them in my experience....I must say in a final cautionary word that i am no scientist and my explanation are only words and metaphors that try to grasp my lived experience and experiments with no pretense whatsoever...Perhaps and certainly my so called "explanations" here are very "naive" but without using them it will not be possible for me to convey to you my experience at all, hence i apologize to any real scientist for my rant...Explanations or not, crystals and stones interact negatively or positively with the audio gear,
this is a fact waiting for a true and more thorough explanation,the rest is speculation indeed...
Conclusion:
I dont recognize any of my cd anymore, they sound suddenly so organically musical, and finally after all these years of search i know it is possible to have high level audio experience with a not too high cost system.Some company promise exactly that with for example a power supply in the thousand dollars level; it is possible to mimic that with stones and crystals and tape, finally for less, i cannot afford one thousand dollars power supply for a 100 bucks vintage amp after all, so good it is, and my Sansui is goddam good
... This tape was the
missing element necessary for that experience because
cables are not so easy to be rightly damped with sorb. or stones or crystals,unlike amp. or dac or power station or electrical panel or speakers or headphones which are themselves easily damped with sorb. + crystals and stones and with others complementary damping materials i also use, like cork,granite, bamboo,concrete, etc...The effect of the tape is finally an enhancement of all my stones and crystals tweaks that are now more audible in their stupendous action...
Remember that in the audio journey the more spectacular changes are paradoxically the more subtle ones because they occur at the end of the trials and give to you at last, after all that cumulative action, the most organic musicality...
Remarks about another subject :
I read on some other forum a thread about a new dac, it was no surprise to me that nobody experiment exactly the same impressions with the same dac....What surprise me is that people seems not to understand, and sometimes does not want to understand, that
room treatment,elimination of vibrations, and controls of EMI are more important for their system than buying a more expansive dac... (But i must remember that it was the same for me before i stumble on this thread and begin to experiment
). They have expansive and probably very good gear already but without adequate room treatment, and they are not using adequate damping method, they are not conscious about EMI interference, and they put all their audio hopes in the desesperate move to buy without end the newer plug-in and listen solution...I was like that, exactly like that in the beginning of my journey, before the new counciousness installed in me by the lecture of the Edstrelow experiments thread ... Now i know that hype and the price of gear are not the warrent of a satisfying audiophile experience...Thinking and experimenting after studying the ideas of others is the key to audio heaven.... I dont have much money to begins with, hence this road was my only possible road...And after all i only want to listen to music but with a good sound-carrier system ,and i have it now...
