Chopping Board and Wooden Cones

[Northern Oak 0]

If you think nothing of cone tweaks and chopping board, I suggest you to stop at this point cos' reading on would make you think that I'm crazy.

 

Okay, so we have here some who believes/curious about in what cones and chopping boards can do.

 

Where I got my stuff:

Firstly, I got a piece of solid, heavy chopping board about an inch thick from Ikea last night. (Lucky you Mackie, Ikea no longer carry those 2 inch thick chopping board). Next,I drop by Adelphi and went to New Disc Village and got a set of Golden Sound ceramic cones from Uncle Ernest. Then, I got another set of wooden cones from Uncle Henry at Audio Industries.

 

Sonic Improvement:

First of all, I need to tell everyone that these tweaks are meant to refine certain sonic features, it doesn't bring something out of nothing, for instance, if your cans lack bass, the tweaks wouldn't suddenly give you all the tight, deep, controlled bass, instead, it just helps you to refine whatever sonic features you already possessed.

 

Step by Step Tweaks (Added each tweak one at a time)

1. Chopping Board

I must say Ikea does make pretty good chopping board. In choosing the chopping board, I had ensured that it must carry some weight, even weight distribution and must feel solid enough. As I placed the board under the CDP, the upper bass and lower midrange now carries more weight, more depth and detail. Overall, the imaging is more three-dimensional but the most significant bit is on the bass.

 

2. Golden Sound ceramic cones

These cones are a bit more troublesome as you would need to tune. There are alot of permutations to try out as well.

a. Mackie has first advised me to put 2 cones in front and 1 behind (all tips down)

b. Uncle Ernest advises me to put 2 cones behind (tip up) and one in front (tip down) and the front cone can be used to tune the bass.

 

Conclusion on ceramic cones tweak:

Uncle Ernest recommended that setting thinking that it's for speaker setup, thus when I tried his method, the bass sounds very dead. The upper midrange and treble are more detailed than before and the music flows smoother, however, I just can't get over the bass.

 

Mackie's setting however, gave the bass a very lively presentation, with even more detail and clarity and legato (new term leant from Rameish) yet the upper midrange and treble retain that clarity and detail and smoothness as before. One thing to note here is that just simply putting the cones wouldn't help. Yo got to first try out all the configurations, once you find one that you liked, the shift the cones slightly forward, backwards, or sideway to achieve that bit of refinement. For me, I had to shift the 2 front cones all the way forward to add that refinement to the bass. The presentation is also brought forward slightly. Thanks Mackie.

 

3.Wooden Cones tweak

Firstly, I used one of the cones and placed that right on top of the transformer. This brought a better focus of the bass and the positioning of instruments. This also pushes the vocals slightly back, giving slightly more air and room to the music. Then, I stick 2 cones, each on one side of my K501. This brought about a very focused vocals and this effect can be felt on string instruments as well. The Chinese gu-zhen (need to confirm) is a multiple string instrument and with the cones, I can acutally hear from my cans, the different positions of the strings being strummed/plucked. Without the cones, all this music would occupy the entire left phone, with the cones it brought the depth and focus, with the gu-zhen now occupying the upper and deeper left region.

 

Tips and Recommendations

You have to be very patient and focused on your music as you deal with your tweak as you may miss out some of the subtleties involved here. Use a wide range of music to fine-tune and use those that you are very very very familiar with, cos' it would be easier to note the difference. You got to play back the same portion over and over again to note the difference.

 

For most people that know me, my wife didn't like music any bit and never wants to accompany me to Adelphi. For her, she mentioned before that she will listen to music only if it comes cheap. Yesterday night, I let her try the music once and the first comments were: "Wow! It sounds so much like live performance!" - she's beginning to get hooked.

 

Last comment:

Don't write off anything that you haven't heard. Put some patience and focus. YOU"VE GOT TO HEAR IT TO BELIEVE IT !

Edited May 4, 2003 by Northern Oak

[fishball79 0]

Just a tiny small note,

 

Bringing something out of nothing is often when you hear when you tweak. Yes, it is possible to get better or more bass or more details by tweaking, especially with isolation devices. This is due to the lowering of the noise floor, bringing previously lost details into 'light'.

 

And yes, YOU MUST HEAR IT TO BELIEVE IT!

[N@Z 0]

You must really have a lot of time on you hands to try out all these tweaks... time which I don't have very much of nowadays... I'd really love to try them out but I need a proper listening session inorder to tell the difference to prevent the 'placebo effect'.

[Northern Oak 0]

Yes, you are right. Due to SARS, I seldom go out except to get some audio related accessories and such. Too much time at hand so why not tweak it ...

[Rameish 0]

Try putting th Golden Sound ceramic cones this way. put 2 somewhere in the middle of the CDP left and right tips down. The third put it somwhere near the drawer tray in the front. Then move the front ceramic come a bit to the left and a bit to the right. You'll find better seperation on the highs.

[Northern Oak 0]

Thanks Rameish. Will try out tonight.

[Mackie 0]

Northern Oak:

 

Congrats and welcome to the world of tweaks. Once U've a grasp of the law of resonance (no problems with your technical background), it's quite easy to position cones and locate the areas where greater sound improvement can be yielded.

 

Rule of thumb: Place these cones/spikes where sources of vibration are found, ie transformers and mechanical moving parts and then fine tune from there. Owing to variations of our gears, sonic preference and environment, system of application differ from one person to another eventually.

 

U might try the following now:

 

Tape four 1-cent coints on the 4 corners of the chopping board with double side tap and then a 5-cent coin right in the center. Tell me what U hear and if U like it.

 

Now that your cones are in position and to avoid moving them out of place, U can insert the 5-cent coin by using a ruler and push it under your cdp.

 

I will bring the rca plug for U to try when we meet again.

Edited May 5, 2003 by Mackie

[Northern Oak 0]

Sure thing. There's so many things to try out tonight. Cheers!!! Will get back tomorrow on the results, stay tuned...

[ting 0]

I read somewhere that you should find the center of gravity of your cdp, draw a circle a bit bigger than the base plate (no need to draw it physical) and put 3 cones on the circle with 120 degree angle to each other. I put my ebony pyramid acording to this and can manage one near the transport one near transformer (left side front and rear tip down), the other one at right side tip up.

[Northern Oak 0]

This would put the sweet spot right in the middle of the player, wouldn't it be better to place the sweet spot on the transport, since that's where it suffers most from mechanical vibration?

[Northern Oak 0]

I've tried to setup the balancing act but it's sure hard to follow. Spent quite some time and still did not manage to get the balance act correct.

 

However, I did try out Mackie's coins tweaks and the sound is now "full-er", carries more weight and rounder across the entire audio spectrum. This is much better sounding that before.

[ting 0]

You don't need to use very sharp object because it's hard to get the balance, I used a small vitamine bottle with a flat surface of a size of big coin on top, it's much easier, the idea is to balance the weight among the 3 cones, get rid of internal tense, center of player is not the center of gravity.

[Northern Oak 0]

thanks ting!!!