Joe Lee says (8 Sept 2000) 
Can pigs really fly? Dear readers, If pigs can fly, anything is possible. Few weeks ago, Audience from California, one of the few hundred manufacturers who are supporting our site wrote me a mail asking whether I am interested to review one of their innovative products known as ‘Auric Illuminator’. What is that? A lamp or what? So, I checked out their web site and realized that it is a kind of gel that you can apply onto any optical disc (CD, DVD, VCD, LD or CD-ROM) surfaces. Excuse me, did you say ‘GEL’? They claimed that after the treatment the improvement of sound quality (and picture quality if apply on DVD, LD or VCD) is unbelievably vast. Well, another American trick? I don’t believe in this kind of gadgets or gimmicks, where got such thing in this world? What is the theory behind it? Gel? Is it sticky? Can I try my wife’s facial cream or my after-shave gel instead? It is too cheap! Furthermore, according to the information on their site one set can enhance up to maximum 400 CDs and only costs US$39.95 (excluding mail charges). First, I don’t have 400 CDs. Second, if the improvement is really as vast as claimed, the price does not reflect it at all. Perhaps selling at US$200 would sound more convincing! US$0.5 per treatment, cheap! The sample arrived after a week. It is a box that contained 20 sheets of thin clothes, one blue colour bottle that is the so-called ‘Gel’, and a black marker. What is the black marker for?  Anyway, I was so terribly busy that week and I left the box in the storeroom. Few days later I almost forgot this matter. Jon Wong – the Doctor Hi-Fi, took it out from the storeroom and go through the instruction. “Ha! Ha! Ha! It must be kidding!” That was his reaction! Anyway, the sample is free; why not give it a try? Believe me, we tried on one CD only, playback in one of our PC system. Both Jon and I couldn’t believe what we heard. Immediately I wrote to Audience and grabbed the agency! Pigs can fly! Black is black The application is a two-step process, so long you don’t clean your treated disc with water or isopropyl alcohol; the effect is permanent. You don’t have to treat it again unless you really have nothing else better to do. First step, use the marker, which is called Auric Illuminator absorbing pen to reduce ambient light and infrared light in the disc material by blackening the outer rim and the edge of the centre hole of the disc. Well, that sounds familiar. Many years ago I was taught by someone and tried playing around with green markers and the effects were noticeable. But why black colour? I asked Jon who claim to know almost everything about audio. “Black absorbs better!” said he. Clear and straightforward answer! This process, according to the manufacturer, shall improve the signal to noise ratio of the reflected signal, thus allowing for more accurate timing of the retrieved data. Do you understand? I don’t! But immediately I could see the advantage of this blackening process, you can tell which disc was being treated and which are not. Ingenious idea! But why black? Double happiness! The second step is even simpler. Squeeze out two tiny little drops of the Auric Illuminator Gel (Warning! Definitely NOT ‘The More the Merrier’ case, do not exceed the recommended quantity) onto the disc’s information side, use a piece of cloth to spread it by rubbing evenly on the entire disc surface. DONE! Wait…the process is not 100% completed yet. If you do not mind to have even better result, apply the same onto the label side. It is not compulsory! If you don’t mind to settle for 75% improvement, you can save cost! Listen to what the man said: “…I heard distinct improvements by treating only the information side of each CD. I was delighted with an even more improved sound when I had treated the label side also. This was definitely an unexpected surprise, since I didn’t think that putting the gel on the label side would show significant improvements…” (Jim Dowd – The Stereo Times) Is there an alternative? First, the pen may seem just a standard marker, but it smells exactly like the Auric Illuminator Gel. Therefore, it is not just plain black ink marker; it is called Auric Illuminator Pen. So, don’t just anyhow rush to a bookstore and get a black marker to spoil your discs. Second, you must remove any other CD treatments previously used before applying Auric Illuminator. According to Jim Dowd’s review, soundstage smearing can result if the treatment is applied over other existing treatments. Wow, that’s is strict! Seems that the only alternative is - ‘Refuse to try!” There must be some reasons behind it, right? Ah…don’t ask me any technical questions. I know you are curious about how it works, so I simply copy this from Audience’s web site: “Auric Illuminator improves the optics by allowing laser light to enter and leave the disc with less reflection or scattering. This allows the pickup to "see" a stronger more sharply defined signal resulting in fewer data retrieval errors.  Auric Illuminator Gel also lowers the disc surface electrical charge. The surface of an untreated disc will build up a static charge while spinning against the air. The static charge builds up until the voltage becomes quite high and then discharges into the air or surrounding surfaces. The charge/discharge cycle causes the disc to tilt or wobble. A wobbling disc is much more difficult to track accurately, thus causing audible timing errors or even lost data.
Although redundant codes can replace most of the missing data, the disruption of timing accuracy causes these errors to become audible. Buffering or re-clocking the data cannot totally correct timing errors or jitter. A vibrating disc is difficult to track accurately. This causes the pickup's servomotors to work much harder at maintaining focus. When the servomotors are constantly correcting the laser's position the power supply is pulsed more frequently. This causes excessive power supply fluctuations that affect the analog audio/video power supplies, degrading the overall system performance. By not allowing excessive static charge to build up the discs spin with less wobble making them easier to track. Auric Illuminator allows music to be more natural sounding and picture to be reproduced more accurately.” After reading this, I still don’t have a clue how it works! But trust me, it really works! They said everything already, do you still need my comments? I believe Ang Mo’s reviews are always more convincing than mine, so I abstracted all these: | 
