stuartmc
500+ Head-Fier
Hello to the mastermind Mr. StuartMC
I'm planning to get the Gustard X12 soon. First, regarding your mod with the damping material feet.
* Are you confident that this actually improved the sound quality or do you think it could have been a placebo effect? And if you think you may be able to sell me a copy of your mod, then please PM me.
Next a question for you or anybody, about upgrades:
* Do you think a Schiit Wyrd (USB voltage stabilizer thing) would help to further improve the sound quality of the X12?
* Also do you think a USB cable upgrade, such as with the Wireworld Ultraviolet USB cable, or do you think the USB cable it comes with is already optimal?
Thanks everybody!
Howdy Levi. I think I explained fairly well in the original piece you quoted the reason why changing feet "may" change the sound characteristics for the better or for the worse. I have lots and lots of blocks/cones/ feet at my disposal and they are sorbathane, ceramic, carbon and I think even unobtainium. My past experiments have given me rather solid empirical evidence that they really do make the music sound different when the equipment is perched on them. In the case of the H10 and X12, the sorbathane was awful- much too much lower midrange bloat and a de-focusing of the soundstage. The ceramics went the opposite direction - rather thin sounding and an edginess in the treble that might have been confused for hyper-focus. The black diamond cones in the number "3" configuration sounded just right to me with the number "2's" being pretty much indistinguishable. In my setup, the cone tips are nestled into Golden Sound's DH Squares, which again will change the overall sound characteristics slightly. This is what it looks like -
As to whether there is for me a placebo effect..... I would have to say no. In some high resolution applications, I can plainly hear the differences. This setup happens to be one of them. Now, to see if you can hear the differences in your system, I would suggest a simple, expense free experiment. Take some wood blocks, marbles, or any other disparate materials, and place them under your H10, so that it is supported by them and not the stock plastic feet. If you can hear a difference, you can now confidently play with more serious alternative feet and know that you aren't completely wasting your money.
After hearing this difference many times, I came up with my own causative theory. Every substance on earth has a unique resonance frequency (vibration), heck even sub-atomic particles do. On the macro scale, we have all kinds of parts inside the amplifiers, interconnected, resonance-wise, by a metal case and pcb board. We have an electrical signal, corresponding to a frequency response (again a form of vibration), passing through all of this and if the collective resonant signature of all these interconnected parts can add to, subtract from, or cancel out, even a minute portion of that signal, we will have changed the corresponding frequency response.
If you still want to give this a go, send me a PM and we can talk about getting you some black diamond cones.