Cardas Releases 99-cent "Clarifier" App

Cardas Audio, one of the longest-established boutique audio-cable and accessories innovators, has brought George Cardas' frequency-sweep system-enhancement tweak, previously available on LP for more than 25 years from Cardas Audio and on CD from Ayre Acoustics, into the world of smartphone applications with the "Clarifier" app, available from iTunes' App Store for 99 cents. The app is for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) only; we don't know if an Android version is planned.

With its price tag obviously benefiting from both economies of scale and the lack of physical-delivery costs, Cardas' 99-cent "Clarifier" app consists of short (21 second) and long (71s) frequency-sweep tones, a 1kHz calibration tone, and instructions.

It should be pointed out that the short and long app sweeps are respectively 33% and 23% of the comparable times on the Ayre Irrational, But Efficacious! CD (MSRP $20). Regardless, the efficacy of such sweeps will continue to be a bone of controversy, especially among those who have not actually heard them demonstrated. But for 99 cents, there is now no reason for skeptics not to try it for themselves.

Editor John Atkinson heard the Ayre CD in action in my listening room, and promptly resolved to leave the shrinkwrap on his own copy of the CD. John Marks, with all due respect to Messrs. Cardas and Hansen (of Ayre), believes that rather than degaussing the system's electrical components, the sweep works by discharging the residual charge of not only all the capacitors in the system, but also of all components that have capacitance, thereby lowering the system's noise floor.

COMMENTS
dalethorn's picture

Now that I can relate to. I eagerly await confirmation from other users.

corrective_unconscious's picture

If this were a REAL tweak of the sort we know and love it would do it's purported magic just by being played back via the iProduct's internal speaker in the vicinity of the audio system that is to be tweaked, rather than by the iProduct being used as the source to play the tones back through the audio system that is to be tweaked.

 

Or, God help me, is the former how it's used?

X