
The Stillpoints Journey
Considerations for your system
Paul Wakeen takes you through his recommendations when starting your Stillpoints journey.
The first component we’d recommend to receive the addition of Stillpoints are your loudspeakers. The Ultra SS V2, Ultra 5 V2 and the Ultra 7 (which has the V2 technology from its inception) are designed for this purpose.
Next, isolate the AC line conditioner as it filters the AC to all of your components. Then look at the component that has the largest power supply. An amplifier or a preamplifier that has a separated power supply.
Read: The Audio Beat, October 3, 2012 by Roy Gregory, The Audio Beat’s System Setup and Optimization Seminar.
Now work through your entire system until every component is isolated.
It is at this point that the sound will transcend some of the incremental improvements to a much more life-like, natural presentation. The artefacts of mechanical reproduction disappear and the presentation of the recorded event come to life.
Stillpoints for electronics
The Ultra II, which has the V2 technology from its inception and Ultra 6 V2 are the best Stillpoints for electronics. The Ultra Mini is our Circuit Board Isolator assembled with a Body and a height adjustable Base. The Ultra Mini will provide the same dynamics, air, transparency, immediacy and presence as all our other Stillpoints in the most compact and cost-effective package.
Next steps
Once you have isolated everything in your system on your normal rack, it’s then time to consider elevating your listening experience to newer heights by setting up your components on an ESS rack.
With the Stillpoints you already have you can now experience the dynamic and profound change of going from an ordinary rack to a rack that excels in everything Stillpoints excel in.
We have replaced Newport Technologies air bearing research tables (we still have one at our factory if anyone is interested) with our ESS racks to many customer’s delight and amazement.
Acoustic treatment
I have been told by many of our Stillpoints customers that our Aperture II’s are the best product we make.
Nowhere else will you find a better acoustic treatment. Aperture II’s will increase focus, depth, presence, air, micro detail and dynamics. Stillpoints Aperture II’s are in a league of their own, being the only product that combines an absorber, a diffuser and a resonator, all in one panel – and a small attractive panel at that.
Customers tell me if they were forced to make a choice between buying Stillpoints or Apertures they would buy Apertures. The funny thing is, they had already purchased Stillpoints when they added the Apertures. Having Stillpoints in the system allows Apertures to bring out the most exciting aspects of the listening experience. The converse is also true. Stillpoints Ultras, the ESS Racks and Apertures have a symbiotic relationship.
“Last night I went back in time, to February 1978, and “watched” Leonard Bernstein conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in Beethovens’s Symphony 3, from a superb reissue on vinyl of his final cycle of the symphonies, recorded live in Vienna (9 LP’s Deutsche Grammophon 479 8721). My room dropped away. I was in Vienna’s Musikverein. Stillpoints’ Aperture II panels made suspending disbelief in time travel and teleportation far easier, and that late – evening excursion affirmed why I got involved in the crazy hobby in the first place.”
Stereophile’s Analog Corner, The Sound of Nothing by Michael Fremer, June 2019