for someone who has little patience, i have been experimenting patiently with the FE ceraballs for the past 3 days.
i am amazed as i dwelve deeper into them. maybe i am a tweak virgin, pardon me.
first things first - the ceraballs must be used in 4 pieces to derive the full benefits, not 3 as stated by my fellow bloggers here. when 3 pieces are used, the full (positive) impact of the ceraball is largely compromised.
it is darn difficult to balance your equipment on 4 pieces; there is bound to be one single piece which is "loose" and not in tight contact with your equipment's base. when this happens, the resultant sound is again hugely compromised!
here's the trick i found out: balance the two pieces (back or front, depending on whether your equipment is front-heavy or back-heavy) using two hands simultaneously. move the two ceraballs in opposite or random directions until such point where the tips of ceraballs are into tight contact with the equipment's base. when you reach this point, you normally cannot move the ceraball anymore. stop there!
also, as astutely observed by ck gnoh in his comment in "the power of titan" post, the positioning of the ceraballs is critical. it requires minute adjust! it is really a tricky balancing act as you move the ceraballs wider or closer apart, forward or backward. the moment you get the best highs, you get less focus; the better the focus is, the less highs. you have to experiment until you get the best bass and best stereo imaging and the least compromised highs. as i have said, these are the pluses and minuses of the ceraballs.
after many trials, i managed to somehow maximize the ceraball's positive impact and minimize its negative impact. my highs are (arbitrarily) 3-5% less than what i used to get but i gained more in terms of imaging, focus and soundstaging. could the 3-5% loss be considered as excess highs/energies? i need to mull over this in the next few days.
there is still much to experiment with these balls of fire but this tweak virgin is definitely having fun!
infrequent updates
7 years ago
2 comments:
ML,
You are sure having a ball with the ceras!!
I also agree that 4 ceraballs are better than 3. I have 4 under my cdp and Hydra 8 now, but 3 under my pre-amp as I am yet to find the position for the 4th one to stick, I suspect an uneven rack platform.
gck uses 3 under his Nagra preamp, I suspect that it will be difficult for him to get 4 ceraballs to fully in contact with the Nagra as it's of a smaller size than normal equipment.
I also like to share my personal method of placing 4 ceraballs under an equipment. Place 3 ceraballs under the equipment, say 2 front 1 back. Move the one at the back towards the right or left edge of the equipment (of course you have to lift up the eq lightly to so this), stop when the equipment is out of balance sitting on 3 ceraballs. Place the 4th at the corner not supported by a ceraball. I'll most of the time find that all 4 are now 'tightly' sitting under the equipment. The bigger the footprint of the equipment, the easier to get this right. Do the fine adjustment from this point on.
I would bet that if you take away the ceraballs now, you'd be surprised at the kind of sound you were listening to before, that is certainly my experiece with my system. :-)
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