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Delivered in a small Plywood box, two white Mina discs weren't the only things that spilled forth from my Spanish shipment. Due to a small leak in the black fabric retainer of one unit, some of its guts had spilled into the foam pad at the bottom of the wooden display box. Since the majority remained captive, it suggested against asking for a replacement. The innards consisted of a powder of black and translucent crystalline grains. This material tracked perfectly with personal expectations for this type device. From Caelin Gabriel's early FeSi compound in his Shunyata power products to various sealed EMI/RF traps where shaking them moves granular fill; from Samuel Furon's crushed crystal filler for his OCC cables to Joe Skubinski's powdered aluminium shields for his JPS cables... most if not all these solutions rely on powdered or granular substances. You just don't expect them to go walkabout. Cynics might claim that filling a plastic ZipLoc bag with semi-precious stone or crystal shop refuse collected from beneath various grinders, cutters and drills would do the same for mere pennies on the dollar. Perhaps so. It'd simply be true for the competition as well. For the Mina, an undisclosed mix of at least two different granular compounds sits inside a composite white clam shell with visible seam to dress up appearance if you're into caped crusaders and their emblems.
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Following intended usage, I glued one Mina to the inside cover of our home's central fuse box with shipping tape, then closed the door as much as possible for closest proximity to the power hub. The second Mina went atop the COS Engineering solid-state D1. By combining DAC and preamp with analog volume under one hood, this 2-in-1 source minimized box count to potentially maximize whatever effects the white discs of about the diameter of a halved grapefruit might have. And?...
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Hmm. Dropped into our system as is, I heard nothing different. Zero. That too was expected. After all, our rural setup is neither ground zero for HF pollution nor is our system unconscious on this particular front. So I dutifully removed from the whole room Verictum's cylindrical EMI/RF drain on the Vibex AC/DC filter of the source stack; the equivalent Verictum ground-plane drain on the Pass Labs XA30.8 amp; all three of Verictum's paperback-sized component cover traps; and all six of Artesania Audio's aluminium mass dampers and RF shields. In short, all competing such devices removed their proven influence to presumably duplicate Juan's own pre-Mina scenario which compelled him to investigate HF pollution in the first place. So?...
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With all resident RF/EMI traps still in place to overlay the Mina effects.
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Now I had audible traction. Minafication vs. none revisited familiar terrain. With these two discs in place—one at the point of incoming utility power, the other on the source component—the sound was calmer, smoother, rounder yet spatially more explicit. But was it the "outstanding improvement" Juan's cover email had promised? Such judgment always depends on a reference point. Two passive Verictum barrels, one plugged into the source stack's AC delivery, the other connected to the amp's ground post, performed the same action at higher potency. Perhaps that's because their wooden containers held wildly more powder than Juan's?
To keep it short if not sugary sweet, the Mina tweak took its place in quite the chorus line of similar competitors. All these tweaks do something, albeit at different effectiveness. I suspect that one can reach saturation beyond which adding more makes no difference. Depending on your status in this game, the Mina twins could be a fine little starter set though their not inconsiderable €900/pr ask should only be allocated once all the primary and secondary stuff mentioned earlier is sorted to one's complete satisfaction. Juan still needs to improve his execution to prevent leaks but the concept itself is sound if far from unique. |
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