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

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