Grow a set. How might this hairy advice to wuss men apply to my bigger set? Whilst no classic bi-wirers, Qualio's IQ offers user-selectable Mundorf resistors. Those adjust the padding of its dipole AMT to room and taste. Without its resistor that tweeter is out of the circuit. It makes no sound. Adding TTN to its terminals was rigorously de rigueur. It's why I had eight. Having literally grown my setup for grander deeper imaging than the adjacent office, the TTN effect scaled up. Predicated upon free placement, toe-in and dipole radiation to below 600Hz, this system has always staged like orchard thieves disappear from sight laden with ripe loot; and well above the translucent baffle cut-off. Yet once again something about the soundstage quality rather than its dimensions keened. The attribute of airiness already strong grew stronger. Playing stuff inherently blistery and metallic like the Spanish guitar of Rafael Cortés again showed how without blurring transients, HF content purified. Combined with the staging action, the effect was just a bit cabriolet: driving on a sunny day with the roof down. We feel connected to the sky, there's taller space above us and a sense of freedom flooding down.
If the TTN had a business card where one's name is followed by a terse description of the occupation one is in and hopes to get hired for, it might say HF & Space Cleaning Services. The first half would be perfectly accurate. This very demonstrably cleans up the treble. It's the difference in soundstaging which I didn't really hear as a cleaning job per se. Taking the Swiss/German nuts back out didn't revert to any dirt aka space junk. Then how to describe it better than spatial difference maker? Such a fuzzy job title won't get the TTN hired. It might as well say Handyman. Handy at what; seducing the wife and mowing her lawn? Chasing the perfect job title had me back at the cabrio effect and its top-down connection with light and lack of confinement. Illuminator has correct aspects but already embeds in HF cleaning services. It's redundant when the spatial quality is something else. HF Cleaner & Space Maximizer? This second half has parallels with a skilled interior decorator who makes over an existing room with all its present furnishings intact. The decorator just reworks the layout and with it improves flow, utility and appearance. It's not about getting new furniture or a bigger house. It's about maximizing what the client already owns. That correlates nicely with not hearing new things in the soundstage but still experiencing it made over to improve its Feng Shui if you will; organizing it more efficiently; sorting it out better. By this little verbal exercise you appreciate that whilst hearing the TTN action was easy, describing it crisply is far from; at least for me.
It thus wasn't the case that TTN takeout—the British call it takeaway—had the soundstage shrink or collapse. For that to happen would have mandated prior expansion to reset the outer stage markers. I didn't hear that. It wasn't about more space but better organized freer space. If that's still too fuzzy, blame my German insufficiency at the English language. Regardless of verbal fencing, the most important takeaway should be that in my systems, this improvement was easy to hear. My brain's calculator is broken. It can't spit out neat percentages. It won't do "20% better". So I default to "easily heard". It segues neatly to 218 Swiss being francly peanuts for these macadamia returns. 'He nutted one out of the park' is golf slang for a perfect shot that flies far yet aims true. Whilst Sven Boenicke doesn't strike me as the type who hobnobs with Basel's Bürgermeister at the golf course, with the TTN he has aimed true and shot far – for a surprisingly modest fee. And yes, the real sorcerer behind the club driver with its titanium head, carbon-fibre crown and graphite shaft is Aron Bernhard Heinrich as the man behind Green Harmonia.
Nuts. If the TTN have offended your rational mind, I dare say you'll be in happy company. Having tasted these nuts, I'll also say that you'd be in still happier company if you could suspend your gorgeously groomed scepticism—the opposite of a bad hair day—long enough to give them a try; curls 'n' all. Call me a mark after you've done so; and anything else you care to. Unlike tweaks that must burn in, be calibrated or correctly positioned, these screwy things simply screw on. Even granny could do it. Then it's like taking a shower. You get wet right away. You have zero doubts about it. You see no need to convince anyone of the pleasures of standing under hot running water.
The end? Just about. During a subsequent downstairs session, the word 'quickening' suggested itself relative to textures in the imaging quality. To be sure that the term suited intent, I confirmed its dictionary meanings: "becoming more stimulated or lively"; in the Bible, "to be made alive". I had cued up Michel Camilo & Tomatito's Spain Forever Again. Particularly the piano had enhanced verismo; a fancy word for realism. This instrument is very complex. Any extra even subliminal data retrieved from a recording help recreate it more completely thus believably. I couldn't even point at what made it so or why I reacted thus to flash on quickening. As it happened, that proved absolutely the right word. Some inner truth meter had risen a bit higher and pinged an alert. Message received. Whilst I can't explain the MO of these Terminal Tightening Nuts nor what they do, exactly, I've hinted at either with the best of my verbal chops. Then there's the old proverb of actions, words and judgments. On that score I'm getting 12 more. They will enhance these upstairs bi-wire monitors and the standard office lot. Full house. This return on investment is far too reliable and high to not act on. My amplifiers use different threads to remain stock but all of my speakers will shortly be TTN'd. That's short also for truly terrific novelties…
Sven Boenicke replies: "Thank you very much, excellent! Perhaps something to add that might also be interesting for you is that if we know what thread to produce, we can make TTN for any speaker or amp terminals like for example your Kinki monos. I am happy that you openly embraced these parts because such a thing is really not everybody's cuppa."
