Living With, & Without QSA: What I've learned & What You Need To Maximize Your Investment

As many of you know, it's been a bit of a love-hate relationship between QSA and Tweek Geek. Not because of their sonic quality or workmanship, but the delivery times. I even stopped carrying them for a few months because of production timelines causing order backlogs. Well I am happy to report that we have both agreed to do better.

As a result of my hiatus from QSA, I was able to listen to the effect of removing each QSA product from my system.

There was no doubt in my mind that their products had an overall positive, and in some cases transformative, impact on my system. But they were not equally impactful, some products were more effective than others. As a result, I have come up with some ideas on which products are foundational, and which products are icing on the cake. My goal is to help the person interested in trying QSA products use their budget to the greatest sonic effect.

Additionally, I also discovered that placement of certain QSA products can be critical, and also that one can overdo it with QSA if one is not careful. 

I will try to articulate that for you with the following information:

 Foundational QSA Products

To my ears, these are the products that were solidly positive. They worked every time, and were also powerful in terms of effect.

QSA AC Receptacle

• AC Receptacles -  These offer a huge benefit, not quite that of a fuse, but there is zero risk of your outlet failing unless something more worrisome than a failed outlet is happening. That is why they get my #1 vote. These are solid, put 'em in your wall, not your power conditioner. There is something about placing tweaks as close to the breaker box as possible. The closer you get, the more pronounced the impact. That is why I will very soon be offering QSA treated US circuit breakers. This is as close as one can get to the source of power, and I have a good intuition that they will prove to be amazing. Additionally. Spend some money here. Don't be tempted to dabble. I have gone from Yellow all the way to Gold, and know a thing or two about this. The sweet spot is from Violet to Black/Red. The Yellow is too minimal by comparison to really let you in on the potential of QSA.
  

  

  QSA Fuses

  
  
  
  
• Fuses - I didn't want this to be true, because selling fuses is an unbelievable pain in the ass. But, the sonic impact is undeniable in terms of effect. My reservation, and logic for naming them as #2 on my list, is the very fact that fuses are designed to fail. Yes QSA will give you up to 2 replacements. But their logic is, if you blow a fuse twice, the problem ain't the fuse... The sweet spot here too is Violet to Black/Red. The gap between levels however is more pronounced than with the AC receptacles of similar color. If you can afford Black/Red, get Black/Red. If not, get the violet or Red and never think about it again.

Next Level QSA Products

QSA Silver Switch

• Router & Network Switch - Depending on your Network Needs either one of these will be a transformative upgrade for your streaming audio system. These only come third in my list of favorites because they don't affect your entire system. If you have a vinyl rig you will not benefit from a QSA router or switch. The effects are similar to the fuse and AC receptacle, a pronounced increase in resolution, dimensionality and naturalness. One has to spend a lot more money on components to get this level of sonic performance.
  

  

  QSA Jitter AC Adapter

  
  
  
  
• Jitter AC adapters - These are fantastic as well on most power cords. I have specifically had reports of them not making much difference on Audioquest Dragon power cords, but the person who mentioned this also hated the looks of the adapters. Still, really high end cords may benefit less. On the other hand, a tonally well balanced, but less expensive/revealing power cable can be transformed into something much better with the addition of QSA Jitter AC Adapters.
  
  

Fine Tuning QSA Products

QSA Crystals

• Crystals - QSA Crystals can work wonders on a finely tuned system. Our favorites are the Black, and Red. Below is a description of what each color of QSA Crystal does sonically.
  
  
• Black Crystals - Soundstage. That is what I think of whenever I implement the Black Crystals. They don't have an affect on any certain frequency band, they just add dimensionality and space. Musical decay trails off more holographically, and the tone is more natural.
  
  
• Red Crystals - Warmth and body are what the Red Crystals appear to enhance. If a component or your system lacks warmth, these are my go to tweaks.
  
  
• Blue Crystals - Openness of the midrange frequencies. If your midrange is dull, lifeless or recessed, the Blue Crystals can resurrect midrange openness and presence. 
  
  
• Clear Crystals  - Middle high frequencies are affected by the Clear Crystals. These can give a sense of air and space, and bring up the higher frequencies. For example, I feel like the KEF wireless speakers with their Meta drivers are a bit closed in and dull sounding. A Black and a Clear crystal on either side of the AC input seems to resolve this issue. Giving more of a 3 dimensional presentation with more air, space with longer reverberant decay.

Forthcoming products

Tweek Geek will be offering some QSA treated products in the coming months. Below are just a few items we will be offering "QSA'd" versions of:

Circuit breakers: This is as far up the AC chain as you can go, and should provide a huge bang for the buck. 

Bybee AC Purifiers: Why not combine 2 great products to see what the possibilities are?

There is much, much more to come, but we have to leave the rest as a surprise for now.

Thanks for reading!