Mad Scientist BlackDiscus Nano Donuts
These new products from Mad Scientist, of New Zealand, are small-ish black half doughnuts (let's get the spelling right for the UK) made of a fairly hard black material, commonly and humorously known as 'unobtainium'!
The Donuts are designed to sit on top of small toroidal transformers. I bought two for the transformers inside my LKS DAC (for the analogue and digital power supplies). They come with a couple of blobs of Blu-Tack ready to stick on the top plate of the toroids. Lid off, attach Donuts, lid back on. That's the installation completed!
I can only guess that they are designed to interact with the transformer's electromagnetic field in some interesting way that improves their efficiency or removes external radiation by tightening the field boundary. Pure supposition, and Mad Scientist aren't saying. What I can say is that they most certainly do work.
They make my system sound smoooooooth but without losing any of the detail or dynamics! What they do for vocals is take away the edges and make multiple vocals much, much easier to differentiate. There is a little more tonality, too, as if someone has turned up the colour a little. In London Grammar's
Strong, there is deep continuo bass accompaniment and I can hear it better when Hannah Reid is giving it her all. Dire Straits’
Water of Love has some ensemble singing and the voices are much better differentiated.
Kiss the Cloud by Yello features Fifi Rong singing over some very deep bass lines and again clarity is foremost, making it easy to follow both. Holly Cole's
Trust in Me has a similar stark voice over piano and bass and the effect is quite striking.
Then there is the separation of instruments, for instance the three brass instruments vying with each other in Van Morrison's brilliant
Satisfaction.
Really complex material like Ozric Tentacles'
Magick Valley and Shpongle's
Brain in a Fish Tank are rendered less complex, easier to follow the different strands of the music.
Giving it highly dynamic material like John Pattitucci's
Messiaen's Gumbo is breathtaking, with huge air and detail in the snare drum and a very focussed sax to the fore.
Moving over to more difficult material, my favourite Mozart Requiem with Fruhbeck de Burgus conducting, the massed choirs in the
Dies Irae section are much easier to follow and better differentiated. Vivaldi's Gloria with Preston often hits the limiters which is a shame because the performance is utterly beguiling, especially in the second movement where the different choirs are positionally highly defined.
There is nothing in the frequency spectrum, tonality or dynamics of my system that have changed. This is not a ‘hi-fi’ upgrade, it's a music upgrade and I don't have any language to describe the overall effect. It has more colour and shape, if that's any help. I can listen inside the music and hear more of what's going on.
My feelings about the BlackDiscus Nano range are that they work by some kind of ‘magic’, a science we don’t really understand, remarkably similar to the way Black Ravioli works. It matters not to me as the effects are both positive and enjoyable and the cost is not exorbitant. Highly recommended, but make sure that your system is working well before investing in these mods.
