I have been extremely busy recently, sometimes so busy that I couldn’t even spare a few minutes to visit the washroom to do the essential leakages (Joe: Watch out Martin, this is not healthy). However, this has not dampened my hi-fi fever at all. Furthermore, I came to befriend a group of hi-fi crazes such as Joe Lee, Ben Lau, Joseph Luk, Oyster, KJ Teo, Steven Leong, SY Loh and Dr. Wong etc. and thus I have the chance to listen to many different systems ranging from the moderately cheap to the ultra expensive. From KJ’s extensively usage of wood in his system to Ben’s usage of crystal to tweak the sound, my hi-fi knowledge has been richly and deeper enhanced. After I got over the initial shock (because I never knew that hi-fi can be tweaked this way) when I first encountered these systems, I was amazed that these guys can be so innovative and full of imagination.

Compared to them, I felt ashamed. I knew next to nothing about resonance control and tweaking even though I claimed to be an audiophile for many years. I only discovered the power of resonance control recently when Joe Lee visited my home and used some Singapore one-cent and five-cent coins to tweak my system.

After that, on several occasions I also witnessed and heard the vast improvement in the tonality and performance of different set-ups by using different materials to control the resonance effect. The improvement was immediate and much more pronounced than changing equipment or cables or both combined!

I would like to share with you my recently discovered Hi-Fi Truth, that is “Room acoustic determines the fate of a hi-fi system”! Period.

As for equipment and cables, well, as long as they are reasonable (reasonably good, not reasonably bad of course) and they are compatible with each other that are good enough. The priority for all audiophiles should be room acoustic first, suitable tweaking second and then consider changing the equipment or the cables. Furthermore, when deciding whether to change or upgrade either the equipment or the cable first, my choice is always the cable. This is because cables are more economical and the degree of improvement is usually greater than changing the equipment (Joe: Hmm…).

As for resonance control, from my observation and experience, I classified the materials used into six main categories:

Wood has its unique characteristics. Normally the better the quality, the better it sounds (Joe: in a sense yes but not in every case. Different kind of timber has its own characteristics, for example, Maple is very musical but lack of weight, whereas ebony gives very solid imaging and good separation but beware, the high frequencies may roll off…).

But you can’t use too much wood in a system or else the sound will become dull and lifeless (Read Lawrence’s Home). Black or purple ebony is among all the best, but very difficult to source and thus very expensive. Not many people are like KJ who bought a lot of raw ebony worth tens of thousands of dollars and asked a carpenter to make them into different sizes and shapes especially for his system.

Recently, I placed two pieces of ebony wood on the speakers’ connectors and another two round pieces of ebony at the back of the television. By doing this, my whole system sound attained much better “elegancy”.

Crystal can open up the soundstage, enrich the ambience and enhance the analytical power. But you must use natural crystal not crystal glass unless they are of the highest quality.

Natural crystals all have their own “rainbow” (such as broken lines or cloud-like shape within the crystal). When I placed a 5mm diameter crystal ball on top of the television, the whole soundstage was lifted a bit too high and felt unnatural. To correct this symptom, I simply used a piece of ‘shun mook’ as the base of the crystal ball. The soundstage then returned to normal and became livelier. I placed another crystal near the contact of the power cord into the power amplifier and the analytical power of the whole system was improved significantly. Using blue-tac, I even stick a small piece of crystal in the cave-in area of the CD tray (the crystal must be flat and very thin such that it won’t touch the surface of the CD when it is spinning or else the CD would be scratched.). This further improved the focus and imaging.

These coins can change the soundstage and the analytical power of all frequencies.

As to how this is done and where to place the coins, please refer to the many articles by Joe and others.

These bearings can be used to increase the power of the system but must be used controllably. I used 7 nos. on my hi-fi rack and this has improved the dynamic of the whole system.

These are the vacuum tubes used in amplifiers. By placing them on top of the speakers can improve the ambience and add the desirable valve sound to the entire system, this is especially useful for those who are using transistor or mosfet amplifiers but would like a taste of valve.

However, make sure that you are using valves that are working properly (Joe: not all models can work beautifully, to me the best is 6DJ8 or 6922).

Besides hi-fi, a lot of audiophiles are also into AV and many people placed the television between the two main speakers, set right in the middle of the hi-fi system. The large screen of the television will harden the sound and mess up the soundstage. To avoid this, a lot of audiophiles covered up the screen with big blanket or towel when they listen to music. Although this is effective but very troublesome indeed.

Joe taught me to stick 4 small pieces of transparent rubber at the four corners of the television and they can reduce the interference from the television set and quietened the background at the same time. I really have no idea why he knows all these gimmicks…

As these rubber pieces were very cheap, why don’t you get some from the DIY shop and try them out now?

Please click here to read this article in Chinese.