Woohoo!!I own some Nordost...

...Pulsar Points At long last the HFC freebie has arrived thru the post. I had no idea that it was them; they came in a small brown padded envelope and were very light-gave it a good shake and it felt like a box of chocolates I was shocked by how small they were when i opened the packet up. Also, for 8bits of metal with a £55 price tag, the packaging is rather poor....

The actual pulsar points are quite nice tho, solid and shiny The fact that the base is only the size of a 50p coin is gonna make whatever i put on them look abit silly. I havent decided wether to put em under the cdp or amp yet.

What sonic differences do hard and soft isolation make? I found with soft isolation which i currently use for both amp and cdp(atacama statistage which use 4 squidgy focul pods) i heard a bigger improvement when i added 1 to the cd player but the bass actually softened up a lil when i got 1 for the amp The cd player is pretty much vibration-free even at very high volumes but i can still feel the amp chassis vibrate a lil bit when playin at medium levels so should i

A: Remove the statistage from cd player and use it with the amp so there is double isolation and just use the pulsar points with the cd player

B: Add the pulsar points to amp and then put it on top of the statistage

C:Add the pulsar points to the cd player as well as keeping the statistage underneath it.

Also, the instructions say that i simply place them under the equipments standard feet but surely it'll be more stable if i unscrewed the standard 1s and replace em with the pulsar points?? Ive never dismantelled any of my kit before so can sum1 please reassure me that when i unscrew all the feet off either my amp or cdp the whole thing wouldnt fall apart

Cheers

Ultra

 

You're wasting your time. Mana's what you need.

 

D) Test all of the combinations you mentioned plus others and find what works best for you.

 

Oh dear, oh dear....... what have you done!

Ultra, forget about this thread mate, I have the feeling it will soon descend into lunacy!!

 

Take care! Some brands of equipment can indeed fall apart fi you remove the feet screws. Check first!

 

i use three pulsar points under my CD player. not a night and day difference, i'll admit that, but certainly audible

 

Why? Take a look at your attitude.

 

I wouldn't unscrew anything. As Rory says, try 3 under the CDP in a large triangle. I have never seen them used under the feet of a component - only with the top part of the pulsar point in contact with the base plate of the CDP (assuming it is flat).

 

I would go with C personally. Can't see the point in anything under the amp and I hate to have spares unused.

I have a staticstage under my CDP and it does make a difference so presumably in your case it would be twice as good??

Andrew

 

i use 3 rdc cones under my dac - not sure of the difference it makes but it doesn;t do any harm and fools me into thinking i've upgraded something - job done.
cheers


julian

 

It's certainly worth a try. At one point the part of my system I found most improved with some Mitchell Tenderfeet was my pre-amp.

As for taking taking the units original feet off I wouldn't bother, and you may actually find it's really difficult to do. Certainly in some pieces of kit I've seen you'd need to remove large amounts of the electronics inside the case to be able to do this. Provided the base of the item in question is flat, and the puslar points are taller than the original feet, I'm sure you can just use them without the the other feet being an issue. I certainly wouldn't try balancing the old feet on the pular points though; that sounds like an accident waiting to happen to me.

 

Right guys, had abit of a play with them this afternoon...

1st of all i removed 1 of the feet off my cdp only to find that the screw hole is waaay too small for the pulsar points' screw so that was that idea down the drain. Had a brief go at placing them under the feet but it was very unstable and looked mega stupid. So using my common sense i just placed them dirrectly under the cdp's base plate, 1 on each corner. They were a bugger to get right tho as you have to balnce the top part to the bottom point if that makes sense and when you only have 1 pair of hands its a pain in the arse!

This is when i began listening to familiar tracks. I wasnt expecting much but it did change the tonal character of the whole sound, some bits good, some bad: Low level treble came to life but to the extent where it was abit too obvious for my liking. Also voices became abit recessed and bass lost alot of its oomph. The presentation was alot leaner than before. I was quite surprised at how audible the changes were to be honest and to make sure i wernt "imagining things" i removed the pulsar points after listening to the same 2 tracks over and over again with them in place and done the same without them. The sound without was certainly better overall without the PP's.I think its due the gruntier bass on offer without the PP's which evens out the frequency spectrum and makes the top end more restrained which is how i prefer it. The clearer top end with the PP's wasnt bright or harsh, just dominated the sound too much for my liking, i prefer fuller bass The tannoys are extremely detailed speakers so combined with another detail boost from the PP's it got abit too much.

Next i tried the PP's under the amp. It wasnt as immedietely obvious how they affected the sound this time round, however after extended listening with some bassier tracks like Trick Me by Kelis, it certainly gave me a Huge grin dug out more R n B tracks and the improvements in the deep bass regions were consistent. It dug that little bit deeper which is always nice and did so in an extremely clean and hump free manner. A very welcome improvement in my books. The best bit is the midrange and top end remained the same. So no surprise then, the Pulsar points are staying under the amp. I also noticed that when i put my hand on top of the amp to test for vibrations there was none I dont know what the PP's are like without the extra isolation from the statistages but together they give some small but worthwhile improvements in my system.


Ultra

 

Hey Ultra

I've had exactly the same experience of the PP's as yourself. Very lean under the CDP, lovely under the amp!

 

Hey Soundz,

did u get urs free with HFC subscription too? Yeh im lovin the improvements they bought when placed under my amp. Another plus point it when music is bein played at 11/12 o clock, its soooo much more controlled! My hifi's been playing non stop tonight and still going....gettin late tho....


Ultra

 

:lol:

 

Wow! By some strange miracle I received my Pulsar Points today, too, having subscribed to Hifi Choice quite recently (and thus I thought there was no chance there would be any left for me to get my grubby mitts on).

Had a brief play with them under the preamp and they do seem to make a difference. Don't think I like it though. Brings the treble out too much. Makes minor details a bit more obvious and makes individual instruments a bit easier to follow, but doesn't sound nearly as convincing or easy to listen to. A bit "too much" with some music especially.

Also thought I noticed more pronounced and controlled bass, though the tracks i listened to weren't especially basstastic, so I'll have to try something a little more grunty next to make sure.

Anyway, the excess treble has put me off using them on the preamp (even if the bass is better). Next I'll try them under the CD player.

Dunc

 

Dunkyboy,

i wont recomend using them under your cdp if you dont like the extra pronounced treble effect coz it does that times ten! Ive got mine under my amp and it has injected oodles more control and cleaness to the bass without effecting the mid or treble? Although the bass was sooo clean it sounded abit dry and cold. The finishing touch was the sub which injected more warmth to the wholesound and lots of top quality deep bass

I should really stop raving about the strata III but its just too awesome!

Ultra

 

I once attended a Nordost demo at a hi-fi show.

The guy doing the demo was very enthusiastic about the effects of the pulsar points.

 

What effect would isolation have on my Rotel amp do you think? I have a statistage under the CDP and it did make a difference but have never been sure how it would work under an amp (not sure enough to spend £30 anyway)

My TnT Flexy rack isn't isolated at all if that makes any difference.

Andrew

 

I think vibration control works with amplifiers. If you can stop the potentiometers, leads, etc, shaking about, that's got to be good.