Chip off the old Quantum

[audiot servant]

Oh here we go... WA Quantum chips... Do I really want to write this???

Does anyone remember that episode of twilight zone where the guy looks out the window of the passenger plane and sees a yeti on the wing unscrewing bits off the engine cowling... Well I've just experienced the exact audio equivalent... So let's just throw it out there and see how horribly it crashes... WA Quantum chips from the makers of hifi supreme tuning fuses... If you were skeptical on the fuses then you are going to be utterly mortified by the madness of this particular tweak... I know i was.... I soo just didn't want this to do anything... At the most I was expecting to just hear a near undetectable shift that may have been just as bad as it could have been of benefit... Even better still, no change at all, just so I could hold my otherwise rational head up in the company of normal decent audio folk.

I come from the middle ground not flat earth nor space cadet and have sufficient supplies of faith and doubt to tackle difficult concepts but this one pushed my boundaries and a few of my warning buttons. So now I am just going to move forward, leave the path and crash the lunar buggy.



The things that delayed early dismissal is that these chips come through the makers of the Hifi Tuning Supreme Fuses (a product i have come to value and also respect) and that some writers from Stereo Times swear by them and also that Bill M. the Oz importer of Magnepan just knowingly smiled as he handed the little black spots over to me and just said "tell me what you think, you will hear them straight away and they are definitely worth trying on." so while I might not always like what Bill likes I can always hear what Bill hears... There is no missing that Bill has great audio analysis and hearing acuity. He loves music and Maggie's and he has a record of not making stuff up.

Because I'd recently bought seven Hifi supreme fuses they were a bonus with the fuses... Ah yes, the tweak that costs nothing but your credibility... So with nothin to lose :-) off into the valley of the shadows I blunder.

I started with a quantum chip on the Hifi supreme fuse on the shindo preamp just to get an initial feel... Hmmm go on ears... please please just hear nothing... Here is the unedited content of the text I sent Bill after putting just one of the confounded chips on.

"Just put one chip on the Shindo fuse only... That is really weird... Seriously weird... Not even subtle... That is just so ffn weird... Excuse the French but do you know what it really reminds me of... Bit like when the lampizator went in. Still six chips to go in but I am genuinely knocked flat and just a bit more than stunned... I wasn't expecting anything much... I don't think I could actually tell anyone... That is just so brilliant... Hmmm more separation around the instruments, more life sized stage, more real and more in time, more music, less grain and just more effect than I thought possible and all of it good that I can hear... That is freaky... My goodness wtf is in those chips??? That is just soo weird!!!! About to drop the f word again... Lucky I'm here on my own."

To quote the good bard and the not so good lady, out out black spot I say... Tis surely just witchcraft... Aaaaahhh darn the crazy dots... Now i have to try another :-(

So after the shock of the new I'm onto WA quantumizing the fuses for the Magtech... I've just poured myself a good sized reidel of cab sav to get my nerves together ... The scientific approach is getting more undone and ragged by the moment and I'm now seeking perhaps more than a little refuge in the drink... Both as salvation and defence... Audio dude I was clearly drinking when I heard the change.

So now on to the supreme fuses for the Magtech... Dots on and yes sounds different again... More finesse... subtler this time... Roger Sanders won't be happy tho, he doesn't even like expensive cables so he won't like this at all, definitely some additional control and focus, sweeter and more refined and a more crystal bell like purity to the treble and female vocals... if also sent a little more staged to the back, yes less upfront presentation quality than with the chip for the Shindo. But good, and better, all wine aside, yes better even if the sound is just a touch more back into its skin... But once again the sound had changed clearly and also changed for the musically good...

Now will just let it settle and listen to the music for a while before any further dots on... Still clearly a step more towards the music tho... I don't care how it works... I do like it and against all my original preconceptions I can see the sound being shaped for the better and for the real.

So some doubts how it will work overall if you use many more but the faith is shaping up. I believe they are partners as in all truth doubt keeps faith alive... I'll give it 24hrs and see how it settles in before putting the last four chips onto the speaker fuses.

So I started music that following morning and from cold the system sounded sweet like it had already been running a few hours... the extra presence, clarity and air was clearly still evident.

The effect was somewhere between thunder and a gentle wind, poised nicely between mountain and lake... (read books of Tao)

So taking another mini leap of faith and to put chips onto the four fuses on the back of the Magnepan 20.7s... Putting the chips on the fuses in the preamp and amp necessitated powering down the electronics but the fuses on the Maggie's could be done real time... And panels are dipoles so even from behind I could hear the effect as one by one the chips went on, yes, shift in the noise floor, less noise, more focus and as I sit down to listen more tunefulness to boot, subtle timing cues in the music sitting out a touch better in the mix, the extra new chips shaping the sound clearly more towards the music.

There action strikes me as more homeopathic in nature than surgical... It unfolds gently, the Taoist would be reminded of the utter power of small actions and movements.

After a few days of listening the musical benefit is clear and sustained although I must admit to a sense that just a slight balance tilting up with maybe a couple of hertz off the bottom mia... I remember something initially a bit similar when I put new jumpers in the speakers and this came back after some further settling in. Will keep an eye on it but basically the musicality and tunefulness that comes with the chips is a bit irresistible. Its new territory so will see how it goes - just might try a speaker chip next.



I have held onto a reasonable element of doubt throughout trialling but these chips are as convincing IME as the HiFi Supreme fuses themselves and so if you found these worked for your system then you may well like these weird little chips as well... I'd start with a chip for the preamp first as they really shone in the Shindo which is now even better at resolving both time and space and imo that is a critical element in the preamp's domain.

So if you've shelled out $$$ lately for the Hifi supremes maybe ask your dealer if they might consider giving you a trial fuse quantum dot to let you can check it out and also help them demonstrate there effectiveness to you. They are re-usable so surely a risk free trial is a sensible option for all.

This is the kind of idea that really needs a demonstration so you can experience for yourself in the context of your system. I've found a similar level change as swapping in the supreme fuse in the first place... it's just weird stuff for sure. I don't understand it at all but this is easy enough to demonstrate... And as the chips are reusable so you can pull them off and reapply them and hear your system drop out of focus and clarity and then cone back in to time again as you put the chip back on the gear.

... and yes, I know, they are stickers!

The Hifi Tuning Supremes and the WA Quantum chips both have me gobsmacked and also essentially believing they are worth exploring further... and even maybe a touch addicted to the stillness they bring to the background... Down the track I will check out what a couple more quantum chips can do as there are specific speaker, cable, capacitor and the transformer chips as well...

When they were initially offered to me this potential outcome along with the troubling discomfort with the arcane is maybe what I was avoiding in the first place... and now I at least partially surrender to the disquieting realization that I've just been successfully, thoroughly and if not just a little bit weirdly tweaked.

And so then when I look out the window of the plane again and there is that darned yeti still looking across and smiling as he pulls out the last screw on the engine mount... Ahhhh... damned to existence in the twilight zone by a darned dot... at least I may not be on my pat malone... http://www.kempelektroniks.com/Acces...Chips-(1).aspx

So I'll put it out there with a standard issue YMMV disclaimer carefully clearly stuck to its side... Try just one... especially if you can get a money back trial... you may be as beneficially horrified as I was... As lady Macbeth is misquoth to say... out out darned dot... And yeti I like it and yeti the music is sounding so nice now... and so the dots are here to stay like spots before the eyes. Oh well... I at least tried my darndest to avoid being heretical... bring on the pillory

Graham

[Still-One]

Graham


How about a photo of the "dots/chips" you are talking about.

Jim

[audiot servant]

Good idea Jim... will do and revise above

thanks
Graham

[dmnc02]

Reminds me of the Marigo Tuning Dots of yore.

[Kingsrule]

Originally Posted by dmnc02

Reminds me of the Marigo Tuning Dots of yore.

Exactly!

I still have a bunch of those in a box somewhere in the basement.....

[dmnc02]

Originally Posted by g997

I still have a bunch of those in a box somewhere in the basement.....

Me too!

[jfray]

Graham I dont know about this........ I truly think you are experiencing a placebo effect on these stickers. I have an open mind but...... This was a wonderful review......

[audiot servant]

Almost afraid to ask guys... Are the Marigo chips a bad thing?

Thanks Josh and yes I avoid overdosing on placebo but know this can happen , in my defence I wasnt looking for a positive result and it was l only one small (is there such a thing) reidel of red.

Once I was given a whole heap of green rings ( in the olden days all the best tweaks were green) to put around my CDs and the most lasting effect of these was to make my Meridian transport scrape... They went straight to the recycle.

Sent from my iPhone using A.Aficionado

[dmnc02]

Originally Posted by audiot servant

Almost afraid to ask guys... Are the Marigo chips a bad thing?

The Marigo dots were used for re-tuning vibrations in chassis, electronic components, tubes, or even walls and windows. They were quite effective at that, but they required quite a bit of listening to apply properly (always trying to keep in mind that re-tuning vibrations typically involves changes in the sonic signature that are not necessarily improvements).

The link in your original post states that the Quantum Chips "influence the transmission of signals on a sub-atomic level in accordance with the principles of quantum physics", which does not say much as what they are actually supposed to do. If vibration control is what they do, you might what to have a look at a Japanese product called fo.Q. TA-102, which is extremely effective (if you Google it, you will find a lot to read).

[bzr]

Graham, can you please try with Shiraz, not big on cab sav!