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$4.6k for a brand new set of 4 Cerabases, can’t believe it! I must not say thanks because I was going to sell mine…
Only kidding :loveliness:
So glad to find out that Hi End has the capacity to offer hifi bargains, it’s great news for all of us, thank you! 
I’m a jargon person and so I should give a quick overview before telling the full story. {:5_99:}
Quick Cerabase Overview:
1. 密度
2. 分隔度
3. 空氣感
4. 低頻量(comparing to ceraballs, alto extreme fat boy and taoc RS50)
5. 力水 (人聲, 音牆, 通通聽得出力水)
6. 音樂感
7. 低頻伸延
8. 低頻散佈
9. 靜
10. 分析力
11. No high-low extension roll-offs
12. 即使是輕設備都有大改善, my pre-amp is only 9.5kg
13. 可調節高度 Adjustable height comes in handy, it’s nearly impossible to use four Ceraballs under equipment because devices and (cabinet) surfaces are usually not perfectly flat. With the adjustable height, 4 Cerabases can easily fit under any device.
Isolators
It’s much easier to understand the characters of cables (PC’s and IC’s’) than isolators. Other than the burn-in process, cables rarely change (or there’s nothing to exert changes on them, surely except for the expert DIY techniques such as sand-filling and braiding) and one may at most swap around cables for use at different parts of the system. Once settled, there need not be changes.
Conversely, isolators allow some level of tuning and are required to be moved around under devices to find the best spots for positioning them. I was aware of the effects since some time ago as I read many posts about the need to do so. It’s a bit like moving the speakers around to work out the best positioning that suits one’s listening area and taste. Nonetheless, living in HK, there’s hardly room to try many speaker placements. In my home, I’ve practically no room to move the speakers sideway, neither closer or furtherer. There’re two inches of freedom for me to move the speakers forward and backward, and some minor toe-in adjustments. For the reason, I’m only able to move my speakers to align vocal to the center after each upgrade. I don’t do this that often, only when resolution increases, noticing the vocal sounds slightly off-centered, then I’d do it.
Anyway, due to environment limitations, I don’t have a lot of experience on speaker placement to give advice. I just want to bring out that if you’re unsatisfied by the sound in yoru system, it’s worth to move the isolators around to experiment. I’m telling this because I didn’t and I had myself misled for quite some time.
Ceraballs, cutting bass?
I loved FE Ceraballs since the first time I placed them under my cdp. It improved depth and resolution quite a bit.
I also tried it on the pre-amp, and instantly, it improved <<<<power>>>> and sound stage became more standup (erection :). Basically, without Ceraballs on my pre-amp, music was boring.
Back then, I didn’t know so much about the other characters, I was still learning.
I loved the resolution improvement and so I got two sets for each of the cdp and pre-amp.
Though I knew repositioning isolators changed sound, I didn’t know there were trade offs.
Under my cdp, I placed two on the front and one at the back. (there’s no way for the cdp to sit on four ceraballs securely due to the non-flat cabinet surface, and since ceraballs do not offer height adjustment). Since vocal (noise) was the weakest part of my system, I figured out placing the two front ceraballs on the front could reduce vocal noise to the lowest and had left them there since. What I didn’t notice was that placing them there would substantially reduced bass, in fact, I only figured out not long ago. This gave me the wrong impression that ceraballs cut bass a lot.
In the other aspects, I noticed that placing the ceraballs closer to the edge (Orange positions), sound stage would be wider, overall sound is more relaxed and transparent, except cutting off quite a bit of bass. I tried also Alto Extremo Fat Boy and Cerabases under these positions, results concur.
How I started with Cerabase
If you follow my story about the two AET SIN’s in my system, here is the second part…
So not long ago, I settled with the SIN pc’s not long ago (search in AVF) and then I realized my system was still unacceptable after all the PC upgrades. After breaking in with the SIN pcs, my system was sounding thin again. Below were my evaluation of the system,
SIN: Yes, SCR EVO could reduce noise and made listening more comfortable but I liked SIN better for the its neutrality and improvements. I knew the thin sound wasn’t coming from the SIN for sure and so went on the other parts.
Epilogue: It might have been the Epilogue IC’s because sounds can be smoother with one of the two pairs being replaced by Gotham 11001. Nonetheless, I simply cannot live without Epilogue for its high-low extension and supremacy in bringing resolution to my system. I don’t want to spend more money on IC’s for now.
Kaptovator: I knew Kaptovator cannot be noisy and I did already neutralize its slight high-freq bias by the warm CSE power bar. I also love it for connecting the power bar and I’m simply too lazy to find a substitute at the same price range.
I came down to a conclusion that it was either (1) the UK-US plug I use from wall to Kaptovator (connecting wall plug to pb), (2) my cdp OR (3) the TV cabinet itself.
For (1), I thought of changing the wall plug US-based outlets to 381 or FT-D20A but it was too much trouble.
For (2), the cdp, you know…
So I took my last guess and thought of changing to a hifi rack. Changing to a hifi rack is too much of a compromise to me, I’ve too much stuffs resting on the TV cabinet, TV, STB’s, headphone amp, DVDp, power bars and CD’s in the drawer I simply had not the luxury/space to own a hifi rack.
In the end, I got a set of Cerabases. At first, I thought of using them under my TV cabinet [2m(L)x50cm(D)x80cm(H)], I thought supporting the whole TV cabinet with Cerabases would have been an economical upgrade since I cannot just throw away my TV cabinet. : (
Since it’s a lot of work to place them under the cabinet, I was to do it in the weekend. I couldn’t wait testing them and thus took the chance to place them under the pre-amp (replacing Ceraballs).
I did so because 前輩 told me it’s best on amps. I thought if signals were coming into the pre-amp and leaving the pre-amp, it’s double-blade sword to place them under the pre-amp as to improve both incoming and outgoing signals. And so I did…. : )
Stunning effects, as soon as I start to play music, I noticed I didn’t have to perform any kind of critical listening like I used to for all accessory upgrades. I simply felt the difference in the overall atmosphere from the fullness of bass filling the sound stage. It’s not the kind of experience which you’ve to pick up sounds here and there to realize the rise in resolution, simply feeling it without even paying much attention. Very different kind of experience. (I was listening to “This used to be my playground” at that time, yes, I think the song does have slightly too much bass but the rise in bass magnitude had nothing to do with this improvement) I started to wonder why my pre-amp never had this kind of capability even with the good PC? I used four Cerabases at that time.
Then down to the critical listening part, ok, it improved density (density is always a term I use to describe the density of sound in space, it has nothing to do with the frequency response), deeper bass and more bass in magnitude. These were all good to the “thin” sound the system had after upgrading to SIN.
I got another sets of four and three very soon and tried also replacing the Ceraballs under the cdp also. It did improve in some ways but somehow the sound became quite thick, heavy and damping some details. I thought I needed to run in. I got a third set and gave up on the run in the two sets on cdp and pre-amp. Because back then, I didn’t know about the placement tricks
I was so impressed by the improvement that I thought I must try them under my speaker stands. So I replaced the PTS-A originally under the speaker stands by the Cerabases. It did have the same character as when placed under the pre-amp and cdp. For me, there’s slightly too much bass using two sets under the speaker stands, I didn’t spend time to fine tune the sound because I noticed the improvement was not so huge for the price. May (1) my speakers are not good enough to bring out the full goodness of the cerabases, (2) the FD2 speaker stands are already sufficient as good speaker foundations or (3) limitation in my listening environment. Regardless, the cost for the 8 bases did not justify. I tried ceraballs under the speaker stands also, not bad, certainly not as good as cerabases. The stock screws from the ceraball set are too short for FD2 stands, I had to use the cerabase screws! And now, I’m using the new FE plates, quite similar to ceraballs but not as 靜. Since they’re so affordable for their quality and occupy so little space, they’ll stay for now. Cerabases occupy so much space for me.
My next activity is to retry two sets of cerabases under my pre-amp and cdp.
For the time being, I use 3x cerabases under cdp and RS50 under pre-amp. The RS50 is good to very clean, every sound is brought out very clearly but I’m not sure if it’s the taoc style, it’s a bit like PTS-A that it lowers density slightly (for my system only may be). Yet, RS50 is better than PTS-A by quite a bit in my opinion. Moreover, RS50 takes away less bass.
Alto extreme fat boy is also a fairly good component under cdp for me. It’s more powerful, brings out more separation and has better 高低伸延 than ceraballs. For 靜 and 音樂感, ceraballs and fat boy are about the same, may be ceraballs has a little bit better 音樂感 than fat boy. Yet the fat boy character is quite 狠 for my cdp. My be if I change to a better cdp, it’s a feasible candidate. I currently use them under my power bar, it’s more 靜 and makes the frequency response more flat overall. Fat boy is definitely good for AV purpose.
Oh, nearly forgot, in my tests, all isolators need to run-in for at least a day to settle. |
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發表於 2010-8-5 10:57:19
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