Stabilant 22

[brit]

As Sibert Instruments, the supplier of Stabilant 22, is not too far from me (less than 15 mins by car, I found out), I went over this morning to pick some up (5ml pack).

Have spent a couple of hours cleaning and coating all my Ethernet & digital connections on my Ethernet switch box, W4S Server and Wadia ipod dock, and all connections, including phono, on my D400 units (including digital interconnect between Master and Companion), with diluted Stabilant 22 (mixed with 99% Isopropyl Alcohol - roughly 1 part Stabilant 22 to 3 parts Isopropyl Alcohol) - inputs and outputs all treated. Have also applied some diluted Stabilant 22 to Digital output of CD Transport and to phono cartridge pins. Have not yet treated Tuner output (more difficult to reach in my hi-fi cupboard!) but will get around to it sometime.

Have had a brief listen to Music Server and CD player but, to be quite honest, I am not too sure what the difference is! I suppose that my problem is that I have great difficulty in remembering exactly what I was hearing before - I would like to be able to say that the highs were clearer, and more detailed, and that the lows were lower and had more definition, but I can not - they may be, but I am not conscious of it ! The sound of my system, at least to me, has always been detailed and transparent and since my Wilson-Benesch ACT1s have been "SAMed" the bass is more defined in relation to the rest of the frequency range. I did not experience any extra "initial brightness" in the sound, as per Guillaume in his system. I will be doing some more concentrated listening this evening, but now impossible to do a pre/post comparison, so I am happy to know that at least all my connections are clean and shiny, and at a relatively low cost!

Will report back on any relevant findings!


David

Well you'll certainly know about it if the sound goes all pear as mine did last night!   

Guillaume

Ah yes, here's hoping not - don't want any of that congestion ! Is everything OK now?

David

[GuillaumeB]

As Sibert Instruments, the supplier of Stabilant 22, is not too far from me (less than 15 mins by car, I found out), I went over this morning to pick some up (5ml pack).

Have spent a couple of hours cleaning and coating all my Ethernet & digital connections on my Ethernet switch box, W4S Server and Wadia ipod dock, and all connections, including phono, on my D400 units (including digital interconnect between Master and Companion), with diluted Stabilant 22 (mixed with 99% Isopropyl Alcohol - roughly 1 part Stabilant 22 to 3 parts Isopropyl Alcohol) - inputs and outputs all treated. Have also applied some diluted Stabilant 22 to Digital output of CD Transport and to phono cartridge pins. Have not yet treated Tuner output (more difficult to reach in my hi-fi cupboard!) but will get around to it sometime.

Have had a brief listen to Music Server and CD player but, to be quite honest, I am not too sure what the difference is! I suppose that my problem is that I have great difficulty in remembering exactly what I was hearing before - I would like to be able to say that the highs were clearer, and more detailed, and that the lows were lower and had more definition, but I can not - they may be, but I am not conscious of it ! The sound of my system, at least to me, has always been detailed and transparent and since my Wilson-Benesch ACT1s have been "SAMed" the bass is more defined in relation to the rest of the frequency range. I did not experience any extra "initial brightness" in the sound, as per Guillaume in his system. I will be doing some more concentrated listening this evening, but now impossible to do a pre/post comparison, so I am happy to know that at least all my connections are clean and shiny, and at a relatively low cost!

Will report back on any relevant findings!


David

Well you'll certainly know about it if the sound goes all pear as mine did last night!   

Guillaume

Ah yes, here's hoping not - don't want any of that congestion ! Is everything OK now?

David

Seems to be! 

Guillaume

[brit]

As Sibert Instruments, the supplier of Stabilant 22, is not too far from me (less than 15 mins by car, I found out), I went over this morning to pick some up (5ml pack).

Have spent a couple of hours cleaning and coating all my Ethernet & digital connections on my Ethernet switch box, W4S Server and Wadia ipod dock, and all connections, including phono, on my D400 units (including digital interconnect between Master and Companion), with diluted Stabilant 22 (mixed with 99% Isopropyl Alcohol - roughly 1 part Stabilant 22 to 3 parts Isopropyl Alcohol) - inputs and outputs all treated. Have also applied some diluted Stabilant 22 to Digital output of CD Transport and to phono cartridge pins. Have not yet treated Tuner output (more difficult to reach in my hi-fi cupboard!) but will get around to it sometime.

Have had a brief listen to Music Server and CD player but, to be quite honest, I am not too sure what the difference is! I suppose that my problem is that I have great difficulty in remembering exactly what I was hearing before - I would like to be able to say that the highs were clearer, and more detailed, and that the lows were lower and had more definition, but I can not - they may be, but I am not conscious of it ! The sound of my system, at least to me, has always been detailed and transparent and since my Wilson-Benesch ACT1s have been "SAMed" the bass is more defined in relation to the rest of the frequency range. I did not experience any extra "initial brightness" in the sound, as per Guillaume in his system. I will be doing some more concentrated listening this evening, but now impossible to do a pre/post comparison, so I am happy to know that at least all my connections are clean and shiny, and at a relatively low cost!

Will report back on any relevant findings!


David

Well you'll certainly know about it if the sound goes all pear as mine did last night!   

Guillaume

Ah yes, here's hoping not - don't want any of that congestion ! Is everything OK now?

David

Seems to be! 

Guillaume

Well not too sure whether you will believe this but, having cleaned and "Stabilanted" all my phono connections, including the cartridge pins, I thought that I would give some vinyl a "spin" for a change, just to see if I could hear a difference. So I queued up my tonearm on a Vivaldi Violin Concerto Album that hadn't seen light of day for years, and settled back to enjoy- oh those silky strings - it sounded great, then oops a "grungy noise", complete with very congested, distorted bass - well distorted all frequencies - so I though, ah Bug*** it, Guillaume's curse has struck  ! Anyway I jumped up to inspect, and what did I find - a great ball of fluff wrapped around the cartridge needle !! Cleaned it all up and restored complete harmony, and silky music . Anyway moral of story - it is not only connections that need cleaning, but vinyl records also!


David

[Kunter]

Hi...
As a long term user of stabilant 22, let me just chime in..
The instability in sound in first couple of days is my experience as well, less on interconnects, more and longer in speaker cables and almost none on ethernet. But bear with the sound and everything falls into  place eventually and I really like where it ends. 
No cable in my system goes without it. 
Cheers

[Hifi_swlon]

On the general subject of keeping contacts clean I thought that the following link might be of interest:

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread...ight-Stuff 

But note the section on "What does not work well" Tweek (aka Stabalint 22) does not get a favourable mention!

David

Having read this thread, and others referencing tweek, I decided to try one of the other suggestions in the link - the 'Caig deoxit Gold GH5'.  I noticed the guy writing the article didn't like the higher concentrate formulas as they left more residue, but I couldn't find both the ones he did recommend easily available in the uk. So I got the closest, the GH5.

I'll say now I'm a total sceptic here, but I have a science background so also like to keep an open mind and experiment. My thinkng is, anything that makes a better connection could make a difference.

I'm using Air Ethernet, so did the Ethernet patch cables between devialet, mac, switch, patch panel, and wall sockets. I did this primarily because I haven't got any other sources hooked up right now, so there's not much else I can try. I'm most sceptical of 'audiophile' things Ethernet, as I don't believe networking could really benefit from this sort of tweek, but did it anyway. Just sprayed a very small amount on, waited to dry, wiped excess from areas that aren't the contacts, and then reconnected. My Ethernet patch cables are all 'bog standard' cat 5e or cat 6 from proper networking suppliers.

I then did the gold bananas at the amp end of my speaker cables.

That was that. After a bit of drying time I played, and I felt the sound was 'brighter'. This could be bias as I'd read other comments, but that's what I heard.
Later that night I felt there was more detail and ease to the music, still slight brightness.

The following couple of days I kind of forgot I'd done it, and didnt really think about it, but I have found myself tapping my feet and thinking that the music just seems more enjoyable to listen to, and that has persisted. I also think there's better detail resolution. I don't think of anything as brighter than it used to be, and I faff with the treble tone control less (in my brighter than I'd like system)

Of course this could be total BS and imagined/expectation bias, but that's what I've ascertained so far even as a sceptic I think it's been positive. Of course, there's absolutely no way of even ABing or going back, so it's not worth worrying about trying to reflect on the change.

At some point I will do the other end of the speaker cables too, and the linking wires.

The can cost me £20 inc postage, and I could probably treat half of Londons connections with that single can. So at worst it's cleaned my connections (well I suppose at worst it could have coated them with something bad that I won't find out about for years but I'll assume this isn't the case), and at best it's made a positive difference. Seemed worth trying.

I have read that provided you allow adequate drying time - to be safe like a night or couple days even - it's ok to use on mains (isolating first obviously) but I didn't go there. I also use a bog standard power lead that came off something else - no idea how clean /dirty the connections are or how well shielded, I may try cleaning the pins with something.

Even if nothing's actually changing, it's fun trying to second guess what your brain's doing - keeps it on its toes.....

[Hifi_swlon]

Ended up finally doing the speaker end. Even though the facts are silver sockets and relatively new, a fair bit more gunk came off on the cotton buds using deoxit, whereas the d200 had been pretty clean. Same for the bananas. My linking wires are just inserted into the holes and the bindings tightened down on them so I should have done them too, but as it's bare wire and was a pain to get through the holes I wimped out. Im sure I'll go back as now I know how much dirt/tarnish came from the sockets it will bother me. I know silver is still meant to conduct but....

A few days later all is well.

There could well be an audible difference again, who knows.

The most noticeable thing is my listening volume seems to have come down to around -47 quiet and -35 general. Previously quiet was -40 or even -35.

I've got wbt bananas, so they get re-tightened each time, and I do set them pretty tight. I have no way of knowing if it's the same - maybe they're just tighter.

Anyway, certainly no negatives!

As a side note, the author of the article recommending deoxit (and not tweek) seems to have done a recent update in favour of tweek too - used very sparingly and thinly and allowed to cure for a few days.... Go figure.

[kenreau]

Can anyone comment if it is significantly different than Caig's line of Deoxit & ProGold?

I typically pull all electrical connections apart and use the contact cleaner and preservative on everything from my router, cable box, TV, computers, fuse box, automobile electronics, batteries, flash lights to the hifi kit.

Thx
Kenreau