Degritter Ultrasonic LP Cleaner

In practice, the Degritter delivers all the incontrovertible benefits of ultrasonic cleaning. I pulled out a copy of Joni Mitchell’s classic Court and Spark that I bought more than 40 years ago (and have since replaced with a remastered version), and listened to it before and after cleaning. I also compared the sound before and after cleaning with another record I’ve had for decades, Bill Evans’ You Must Believe in Spring. I also tried a couple of recent used acquisitions, Linda Ronstadt’s For Sentimental Reasons (a spectacular recording, by the way), and Dexter Gordon’s The Monmartre Collection, Volume Two (that was sent to me in a Montmarte Collection Volume One jacket). This record, not available in any digital format, captures Gordon in his prime (1967) with a terrific band. With all these LPs, a cycle through the Degritter didn’t just reduce surface noise, as you’d expect; it also presented a startlingly blacker background that made the music seem to exist independently of the physical medium. The effect is a more believable presentation and a heightened sense of contemporaneous music-making. I really heard this on the Dexter Gordon record; the feeling of hearing a four-piece group play in a jazz club was more pronounced after cleaning. Ultrasonic cleaning also seems to make it easier to hear individual instruments, as though each exists as its own entity rather than being fused into a single fabric.

https://www.monoandstereo.com/2021/10/new-rx-reels-carbon-fibre-studio-reel.html

Each 10.5-inch, ¼-inch reel is handmade in the Pacific Northwest, USA and is laser-etched with an individual serial number. A laser-etched RX Reels logo on one side can easily be replaced on request with a studio, band or client logo. Delivery includes a durable custom-made storage box with foam insert to protect the reel for years.

Has Root been surprised by how well his reels have taken off? “A little,” he admits. “The reel-to-reel revival, while very real, is never going see demand as great as that for vinyl, so we always knew it would be a niche market,” he says. “But reviews and sales of our reels have been very strong, and of course it’s terrific to hear industry experts saying that we’re creating the world’s best tape reels! Then again, that’s exactly what we set out to do, and we’ve invested a lot in getting it right.” 

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/thx-onyx-dac-headphone-amplifier-review

Competition? I had an AudioQuest Dragonfly Red, another $199 portable DAC/amp with MQA support, on hand. After running my playlist using all available DAC/headphone combinations, I concluded both were capable of clean playback at loud levels and could easily handle dynamic musical passages such as the drums-heavy final 30 seconds of Anouar Brahem’s jazz/world-music jam “Bahia.” Where the Onyx differed was in its slightly wider, more layered spatial presentation—something that bodes well for the portable gaming and movie-viewing THX touts for its DAC.

https://stereo-magazine.com/review/audes-st3000-review

In conjunction with the setup found in our small STEREO listening room, using the Audes „Isolator“ paid off immediately. While a stoic silence was being built up in the background, the actual sound stage seemed bigger, more spacious, more open and airy. Quite interestingly – and I had not necessarily expected this – it was also more dynamic, even in the bass! This even stayed true when a very powerful amp like the Musical Fidelity M8xi was in play; or even a 2 x 1000 watt THX power amp like the QSC USA 1310, sitting in the editor‘s home theater. Here, I would have expected overdamping, but Audes is actually even equipped for such an extreme task. While being ideal for sources, it is thus also suitable for larger voltage-consumers. Mastering very large Class A mono power amplifiers – or two QSC mono in a bridged setup (2620 watts sine into 8 ohms) – is something I would not have necessarily expect of it, but that also applies to other “power conditioners”.

This toroidal, balanced isolation transformer thus seems to be the uncompromising one-way solution that can help a system have more legroom thanks to interference decoupling. Taking it away from your setup is even more severe than the sonic progress achieved when implementing it; because you actually don‘t want to do without the Audes anymore – and the step back really hurts. It‘s not a cheap device, but should absolutely be recommended for excellent hi-fi chains!