JCAT SATA cables. This was a random punt (I had no expectations) and I play my audio decoded from ram, so it shouldn’t have much, if any impact and they didn’t.

Townshend super tweeters - I bought them second hand but they had so little impact on audio that I sent them back for a check over / recondition from the manufacturer. They came back with a clean bill of health but alas, still no joy, so off they went. I really wanted these to work as well.

Dac straight into power amp - not a purchase, rather an experiment. The logic made sense in my mind, following the logic less equipment in the signal path should help to preserve the signal. Nope, weedy, dry and uninvolving sound.

Various coupling / decoupling devices (pucks, feet etc). This is t me bashing the idea as it’s a complex subject and every room, component and how they interact presents their own problems to solve. It’s just a lot of them really didn’t make any appreciable difference to the sound, so out they came. For the record:I use RDC spikes, footers and combi bases now and they work very well.

Squidgy things such as sorbothane under things like speakers and amps and CD players etc to absorb all of those nasty vibrations.
Always suck the life out of the music for me.

Supertweeters. Yup, see previous responders. Same for me.

SLIC interconnects. The demo prototypes sounded very good, beating the TQ Blacks I was using at the time. Unfortunately, the production ones were nowhere near as good and I had to return them.

Ball bearings under the power amplifier after reading this was big in Japan added more bass but also harshness

Agreed!  Horrible things and took me a while to swap them all out for gold ones.

Squidgy things for me too. I wrote up an experiment on different materials on AoS which was universally ignored! Not sexy enough I suspect!

Here it is just in case anyone is interested (he says with a sigh!  ) - I did play with some seismometers at one point and I have moved to Townshend Seismic platforms and podiums in the systems. Still haven't built the new cabinet, but it's getting close now!

"Experiments with Wood, Glass and Rubber

Hi All,

I thought you might be interested in the outcome of a series of experiments that a friend and I performed the other evening. As I mentioned in my 'Hello" post, my system has just come back out of storage and been added to somewhat. The house in the UK is a 17th century cottage and nothing is straight and level and the living room presents some problems to ideal placement. To fit the system in requires a custom-made stand / cabinet and the purpose of the experiments was to start looking at what materials to employ that would suit it. At present the unit is housed in an off-the-shelf 'Hi-Fi' cabinet made of Ash bought just to get things off the floor and tidied away (the pictures of this are in the gallery). It's not big enough but is does for now for CD play-back.

I know that many of you will have done similar experiments and, based on what I have read elsewhere, will have come to similar conclusions. My friend is an ex-BBC broadcast engineer and is (was) a tweak sceptic! All of the experiments were confined to amplification stages. We were using the opening 2 tracks of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter by Joni Mitchell and a variety of tracks from Leave Your Sleep by Nathalie Merchant (especially Peppery Man) plus some Paul Simon (50 ways...) as test tracks. The objective originally was in part to look to extend the bass slightly and the 'speed' of instruments such as kick drums (pending new mains cables - on order) as well as to explore materials for use in the cabinet.

First experiment involved Sorbothane pads (20 mm thick x 40 x 40 mm) under the power amplifiers (Meridian 205's). Massive increase in bass. Nothing subtle here and the reason that my friend is an ex sceptic (from the first notes played). However, staging and detail were highly compromised. Second experiment placed the Sorbothane under the pre-amplifier (Onix OA31 - using OA 401 as PS). Smaller bass lift than with power amplifiers but the same loss of focus and detail (the same occurred when we popped them under the speakers at the end of the evening). The effect of putting them under the PS was minimal but I would assume that this would be quite different if we were using it as a power amplifier. Sorbothane had no impact at all either under the Isotek Sigmas or when placed between the top of a piece of equipment and a heavy, heat-treated sheet of glass (we were using these to add compression to the Sorbothane as this is reputedly important to getting it to perform well - either is isn't or we did not apply enough load, or the material was too thick to load to a significant degree). So Sorbothane looks like it is out of the design unless it exhibits remarkable properties under source equipment (I used to use them under my Meridian 206B in the past) although I might revisit thinner sheet material with and without compression. One interesting side-effect of the pre-amplifier experiment was that detailing was improved by stacking the OA 401 on top of the OA 31 (we ended up stacking them at one point to save room and improve access). No effect resulted when their positions were reversed. My guess is that this is something to do with physical damping and I will explore this with weighted materials in the future - I see Onix-Addict has used a similar approach.

The next experiments were concerned with the material on which the pre and power amplifier were standing. We looked at either wood (25 mm thick Ash and 10 mm thick heat treated-glass). The sound from each was quite different with the glass producing a much drier sound that the wood. Musically, the wood suited the test tracks much better. A brief switch to rock suggested that the glass may have suited it better but the impact was markedly reduced. It seems a review I once read where they concluded (in an embarrassed tone) that kit supported on glass sounded glassier and on wood sounded woodier (and I would add that when on rubber it sounded more rubbery!!).

The next experiments will be confined to isolation spikes (wood and metal - hopefully of several designs) and acrylic isolation platforms in combination with wood (the final cabinet will almost certainly contain wood to fit the aesthetics of the room). I will start them once the new mains cables for amplifiers have arrived and have 'bedded in".

It is possible that I may have access to some highly sensitive micro-seimometers in the next few months. That would be interesting as I may be able to actually measure what it is that is causing the changes that can be heard.

Well, I hope you find this interesting and look forward to hearing any comments and suggestions."

I've written about it before, but the Helius Aureus tonearm was the single biggest disaster in all of my purchasing history. Absolutely appalling build quality. Impossible to align and keep its alignment. Utter piece of cack.

The PS Audio GCPH phono stage I bought was disappointing. Too much hiss and hum at high gains with an MC cartridge.

OK, thanks for all of the replies so far.
However, what I really want to get at is peoples experiences with...

It's the things you stick on the wall, the bits that you connect between the main components that just...well, they just sit there.  The things you balance on top of the speakers.  The little gadgets you clip onto cables or powders you sprinkle on your cds.
Like the thread title says: the inexplicable.

Any thoughts?

I wouldn't be without the thick layer of 'acoustic dust' I keep in my living room!