tweaks- fact or fiction?

[NoFO]

OK, so audiophiles are always buying various "tweaks" to increase the quality of their recordings. sitting your various pieces on brass cone points, using maple platforms, putting heavy weights on top of equipment to dampen the nasty vibrations, etc. one of the brands I am more familiar with is from mapleshade records. (www.mapleshaderecords.com) I have not really seen many products positioned towards studios, even though Pierre Sprey from mapleshade uses all his tweaks in his studio, and with overall fantastic results. i am considering mounting my speakers on their cone points, maybe my adat and/or mixing console. they do have a 30 day satisfaction gaurantee, but has anyone tried these products or ones like them? are they for real? or can I get the same effect with some lead weights from Home Depot?

thanks in advance

chris

[jake-owa]

Hah??


Sorry...what?

[NoFO]

OK, here is an example of one of the products-

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/tweaks/cones.html

and here is a review of those products-

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/twe...ereotimes.html

I'm just wondering if anyone here has used them in studio use, rather than home use.

Capiche? :-)

[Light]

From the Mercenary Audio links page:

Audio Fools

Enough said?

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

[Track Rat]

I have my green magic marker. I'm armed to the teeth.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by Track Rat
I have my green magic marker. I'm armed to the teeth.

Me too - as a matter of fact, I'm going to cover ALL the studio walls in green marker, just to be sure I get the BEST sound possible!

[Track Rat]

I took my green magic marker and drew little arrows on my speaker cables so the electrons would know which way to flow.

[bullyhill]

By accident I sniffed mine, got dizzy, awoke in my undi's only to find the marker dried out.
Can I use blue then yelow, will I get the same effect?

[Track Rat]

Yes, the effect is the same except you wake up in your sisters undi's.

[NoFO]

OK, thanks for all the great information! I'll make sure I get myself a green marker!

Now.

If anyone has anything else to add other than links to silly quotes, or cute excerpts of their green markers (don't get me wrong, I appreciate the chuckles!) i would like to hear from them.

alot of us buy nice microphones, spend money on good cables, trade in our Micro-Verb III for a TC unit, don't knock tweaks until you try them. It is common practice to put a guitar cabs on a stand or on a chair, to get it off the ground to get a better tone, why not isolate your monitors so they can vibrate more freely?

Only time will tell....

[Track Rat]

In all seriousness, I have my nearfields sitting on 1 1/2" thick foam rubber pads to acousticly decouple them from the console.
I don't know if this qualifies as a tweak or not but adding a high quality external word clock (a Lucid GenX6) to my system tightened up the sound quite a bit.
There are a lot of common sense tweaks (like getting guitar cabs up off the floor so the floor doesn't become a giant folded horn) and there's voodoo like one way speaker wire.

[twist]

Originally posted by Track Rat

I don't know if this qualifies as a tweak or not but adding a high quality external word clock (a Lucid GenX6) to my system tightened up the sound quite a bit.

"Harmonic textures ebbed and flowed with startling dynamic nuances and the sort of liquidity and purity one only comes to associate with world-class audio products."



Sorry TR. Just teasing. I couldn't resist. I'm not going to say which tweaks are real and which are Bull, but that was some funny shit on that web site.

And Bullyhill - you owe me some new undies, cause I laughed so hard I peed in mine. But in response to your question, NO! Accept no substitutes. Only the original All Green marker will do. So if you want to feel like you just crawled into a warm and inviting sonic womb, save up and buy a new one

[Track Rat]

I must admit though, the music now flows with gusto and verve. It squeezes instrumental images into incredibly palpable outlines. It's mo betta.

[littledog]

You want your monitors at ear level. Even if you were a midget, you definitely don't want them on the floor. (Or up against a wall, the ceiling, or any other large flat surface).

This implies you need to put them on something to elevate them to the proper height, but you don't want them on anything that will resonate with the monitors thereby altering the sound.

That's why good monitor stands are often filled with sand or something to make them incredibly massive, and why it is common to use some insulating foam between monitors and wooden surfaces they may rest upon.

That being said, spending hundreds of dollars on a product that arguably may not work any better than a mouse pad seems a bit foolish. If you really are determined to throw your money into the ocean, either buy some of those $500/ft. cables or just buy a boat. Either way, you'll probably get more bang for your buck (especially if you opt for the boat...)

[bleyrad]

fact is, these things would probably work a whole lot WORSE than a mouse pad - they're made out of brass, not rubber.
apparently they "drain" vibrations out of equipment. great stuff! i love how some simple pieces of metal can somehow go completely against the laws of physics.

but wait, the best part was near the end, where he claimed that they made the image quality from VCR's and DVD players noticably better. i don't know about you guys, but i've never noticed my picture quality go down the tubes whenever there was an explosion loud enough to shake my VCR

[NoFO]

well, it's about $60 to conepoint both speakers, so i will try it out and let you all know if i hear a desireable difference. I do have decent speakers (Tannoy PBM 6.5s) good quality speaker stands, filled with pebbles, so we'll see if this helps at all...

[jake-owa]

I think I just heard a flush.....












but it's your money.

[NoFO]

hey, 30 day satisfaction gaurantee, and i live 15 minutes away from the place, so there is not shipping, so i might as well try! so keep your flushing to yourself