Brown Discus?

The following picture was passed to me by a concerned customer. I was expecting efforts to copy BlackDiscus, but I was amazed at the speed - BlackDiscus has only been available one month, and already there are copies!

These so-called "brown discus" are no threat to BlackDiscus - in tests, the black version trounced the brown one when attached to speaker outputs, headphone jacks and power cords. In addition, the brown version has handling problems, leaving unsightly smears on equipment.

The durability of the brown version is also dubious - the chocolate-colored outer layer appears to be made from, well, chocolate. And not decent audiophile grade high-altitude single-farm stuff either - just simple commercial grade milk chocolate. And there's worse to come - analysis of the inside showed that it contains Arachis hypogaea, a potent allergen, as well as butter, which is implicated in all sorts of things. They even admit this, apparently, when they dub these devices "Reeces Peanut Butter Cups" - not exactly a catchy name!

Furthermore, in blind taste tests, 10 out of 10 dentists preferred BlackDiscus, handily besting the chocolate covered device. 

Suggestions :

• don't use these brown discs on your audio system
• don't use brown discs if you are allergic to "pea" nuts.
• use BlackDiscus on your audio system - much better results all around
• do not eat BlackDiscus (unless you want to pursue a closer financial relationship with a dentist)

Stacking Black Discus

This is the first post of this new Mad Scientist Audio blog. I'll post here from time to time with news, tips and other things.

OK so the first subject is Stacking. Someone suggested to me that it's possible to stack two (or more) Black Discus. I found that a small amount of Blu Tack in between the discs worked to hold them together.

You can then use this as a single device, something like this:

I was impressed how well this worked with two discs. (Not going to bore you with any descriptions, as it will perform very differently on different systems.)
So I wondered how many you can stack. I'd just finished a batch that included 14 Mini BlackDiscus. I made a large stack with all 14 of them. It was somewhat precariously balanced on my headphone's jack plug.

How did it sound. Well, not very much different to a stack of two. Maybe a little - perhaps like a stack of three.

But note the lesson - stacking works, but best limit it to two. Or three if you are seriously mental ;)