First, a belated thanks to Mike Lavigne for your reply to my first message to this thread.
This message is about my experience so far with Daizas. It has only been with my BAT CD player, but I should have some feedback on vinyl in a few weeks when my Aesthetix Io Eclipse is broken in.
A bit of background would likely be helpful:
My listening room is on a second story, and while it was built for this purpose, it is still a (reinforced) wood floor.
I have a couple of 20 year old PolyCrystal racks. These have composite shelves made with a mixture of some kind of ground-up rock or minerals and a resin base. The shelves are heavy. I have BDR cones and pucks under the wooden rack legs on the wood floor.
I previously had replaced the two top shelves with Symposium Ultra shelves for the CD player and Io control unit. These chassis were sitting on Symposium RollerBlocks. The two CJ ART chassis and the two Io Signature power supplies were on the lower shelves on BDR cones and pucks.
I have Herbie’s tube dampers and love what they do for my ART and Io. I’m certain that they have an effect on all this.
My vinyl sound has been wonderful from the beginning. The CD sound was ok, but two-dimensional.
I have four Daizas now and am planning for two more. Three of these are under the BAT and the ART. All of the rack shelves are now PolyCrystal (The BAT was overdamped with the Daiza on top of the Symposium shelf). The BAT is on RollerBlocks and the ART is on BDR cones fastened to the chassis. BDR pucks or pits do not work for me on top of Daizas. The ART with BDR cones was slightly on the bright side on the Daiza; I tried several options and ended up with a hard rubber faucet washer, modified by countersinking the center hole, under the tip of one of the three cones on each ART chassis.
My CD sound is now terrific! On good discs it is involving, detailed, three-dimensional, and well balanced. I love it.
I tried stacking two Daizas under the BAT. I read that it might take three weeks to break-in. Both of the Daizas I used had been playing separately in my system. The stacked sound was thin. I tried BDR cones instead of RollerBlocks. Ditto. I removed the stock feet (which were not being used) and tried the Daiza Panzerholz footers that Mike Lavigne is now using. The results were promising. Night two, the sound was worse. It lost everything.
I am not a patient person; I accept break-in if there is continuous improvement or if I don’t have a fall-back option. I could not get the stacked Daizas or the Panzerholz footers to work for me.
I’m back to single Daizas and RollerBlocks and am happy as a clam!
I want to mention my amplifiers. They are Wavelength Mercury SET amps with silver wire transformers. The OEM feet are acetal (I think) with a sharp, shallow angle, cone tip. I use them with the thicker BDR pits (now NLA). The pits sit directly on a granite slab that weighs about 300 pounds, and which is supported above the floor by BDR cones and pucks. At 4 watts, they sound wonderful with my Trios. I tried one large Daiza on top of the granite, two separate Daizas, different cones, etc. Nothing worked as well as my original setup.
My experience so far: For me, Daizas are terrific, but not on everything. Perhaps I’ll try again when the dust settles.
Hopefully I will have similar results with my phono amp, since I have probably 20 times more vinyl than CDs, and my system priority is analogue!
I hope that this story is helpful to some who may be considering Daizas. I highly recommend them. Some of the options that have not worked for me seem to have worked well for others, including Mike, and I cannot challenge that!
For those who have feedback or questions, please don’t hesitate.
And yes, Emile is a great guy to work with.
Best,
Don