General Asylum: REVIEW: TDS - True Dimensional Sound Passive Audiophile Other by J Lo

One tip for those who have the TDS unit. The unit's L and R RCA plugs
are spaced a pretty standard 3/4 inch, and fortunately, my CD player's
RCA's are spaced the same, which allows me to directly connect the TDS to my CD player with female-to-female plugs without needing another set of
interconnects. Actually, I have SCE HRS in between the CD player and the
TDS, and the HRS also has similarly spaced RCA jacks. So my CD player, HRS, and TDS are connected to each other without a single interconnect.
Both HRS and TDS have to be sitting on their sides, but the sonic improvements are tremendous. My CD player also has digital volume control, so I don't even use a preamp. Any interconnect (however praised
elsewhere) used to connect them degrade the sound noticeably, one exception being Nordost Quattro Fil, which costs about 3 times the HRS and
TDS combined.
Anyway, I think the reviews of TDS on Planethifi or Soundstage are pretty
accurate. One possible downside pointed out is that there might be a slight loss of transparency with TDS. Well, I guess that depends on what
you mean by transparent. If you mean transparency and truthfulness to the
compact disc, it is true that TDS probably alters the sound. However, if you mean truthfulness to the actual music before it was put on the disc, TDS is absolutely transparent! On an intellectual level, I noticed that
TDS diminishes upper midrange energy ever so slightly, increases bass energy and weight without making it slow, doesn't change the amount of
energy in the treble but changes the quality so the high frequencies
become somehow richer and airier without changing energy output.
The best for last, the midrange is where the TDS is indispensable. Human voices and intruments gain that "gestalt" and palpability that speaks to
you more directly. It's like a difference between a light kiss on the lips and a real deep kiss, if you would pardon such an analogy.
At first my intellectual side was unhappy with what I perceived as deviations from "neutrality," but when I tried to listen to my system
without the TDS, I simply couldn't. How do you justify such a unit?
I suppose one way to think about it is that even though TDS is not "neutral" because it adds something to the signal, since what it adds
is that musical essence that somehow got lost in the recording process, it
actually is more faithful to the actual musical event. Also, what I
conceived as loss of energy in upper midrange may also be thought of this way: Without the TDS, there is a bleaching of midrange, bass, etc, making
the upper midrange stand out; with TDS, you add back the rest of the range, making upper midrange less prominent in comparison.
All this may be just rationalization for liking what is obviously a non-purist approach to music reproduction, but at the price they are asking for this unit, how can you justify not trying this unit when you know
you spent much more on wooden discs, power conditioners that don't work
as advertised, or cables that double as graphic equalizers?

REVIEW: TDS - True Dimensional Sound Passive Audiophile Other Review by J Lo at Audio Asylum