Heads or tails? It took me days to finally bet on tails and win. Rather than position discs at the head of the hifi chain aka source, I got best results at the very tail end. My first 'aha' moment came upstairs when on a lark—cue chirping bird—I decided on a disc sandwich. This placed the Dutchies atop and right beneath the aluminium cabs of MonAcoustics' micro monitors to 'irradiate' the drivers from two sides. The top plates of our white Q Acoustic stands size perfectly. Their curled-up side edges even follow the speakers' bevel. I simply had to marginally raise the lower discs to clear those edges. The same spike shoes which usually angle these cabs up now floated two discs on triplets each.
The insert shows how. This was stable and tidy then gave me a minor case of not vûdu but déjà vu – of LessLoss Firewalls for Loudspeakers. A single word to nail the effect is fruitier. This was about tone gaining frisson. Think of how tang and sweetness in tandem add flavor depth over a fruit that's just sour green or overripe so all sugar no acids. Eating berries right when they pack both aspects has their interplay create a quasi third favor. That tastes more exciting and complex. This with/out difference was about an aural equivalent. Whilst a fine not grave difference, within this context of high resolution it was a lovely little tweak. Armed with tails not heads, I'd next visit the speakers in the main system. First I'd enjoy a few rounds of slightly elevated frisson. If you find that concept strange, wait until Wikipedia defines it: "Frisson, also known as aesthetic chills or psychogenic shivers, is a psychophysiological response to rewarding stimuli that often induces a pleasurable or otherwise positively-valenced affective state and transient paresthesia, sometimes along with piloerection and mydriasis." Let's stick to simply frisson? In less fancy verbiage I'd add 'inner tension' to suggest that our nerves work at a higher pitch to respond more forcefully. But perhaps fruity already said it best? Let's go with that when I've never even heard of mydriasis.
From mydriasis to mystery. I still haven't the foggiest how these discs work. It simply didn't prevent me from noticing their effect once I sorted the tails not heads business. In the main rig the clustered array of the Qualio IQ speakers suggested an unmissable spot where to place them. It put all three drivers inside their immediate sphere of influence. That influence was just like upstairs. I'll again call it enhanced juiciness of tone. Does that make me a fruitcake? Downstairs the difference delta was simply larger; a bigger slice of fruitcake. I'd again suggest an aural kinship with the LessLoss Firewall for Loudspeakers passive noise filters. The Akiko action was similar so cut from the same cloth.
With all the passive/active noise filtering on our power lines plus copious very effective resonance attenuation and a rural location with low exposure to airborne noise, I found the Dutchies most effective at that final junction where electrical signal converts to mechanical motion. In a less treated far more exposed scenario—inner-city apartment block with many overlapping WiFi networks and bad AC?—my coin toss might well invert. Perhaps there my set of four would do the most good on a DAC or basic power strip? Perhaps heads would win? I'm inserting this just to not make my best-case location a fixed thing. With this type tweak, it's all about experimenting. The purely passive/proximity MO of the device is extra convenient. Nothing unplugs to shut down, reboot or reheat. A/Bs just ask us to hit 'pause', move the discs out of the area then resume 'play'. It could take a while to hear which audible aspect this treats. Once we know what to listen for, it's easy to recognize. Now it's merely a matter of chasing top potency. So we run through all our plausible placement options and pick the one/s most effective.
In a sector of €5'000 power cords, €149 for today's tweak feels like a breath of fresh air. Expense is relative of course but in our type setup—~€6K DAC, €4K amps, €5.5K/pr speakers—Akiko's tuning disc fits right in. It won't change sonic direction like going from tubes to transistors can do; or from a rich DSD to a crisp PCM DAC. But if my experience in two rooms is readily repeatable, it'll be a tonal tonic that gives timbres that certain maturation. You may feel hard-pressed to articulate what the difference is, exactly – but you'll soon notice its presence. And if you're like me, you'll wantz it to not go back to without!
My precious?
