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REVIEW: Walker Audio Black Diamond Room Treatment Crystals Accessory

Model:	Black Diamond Room Treatment Crystals
Category:	Accessory
Suggested Retail Price:	$470.00
Description:	Room treatment
Manufacturer URL:	Walker Audio
Model Picture:	View

Review by Frank_Locke on February 13, 2019 at 10:20:18 IP Address: 74.73.4.74

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For Christmas 2016 I asked my wife for 1 gift, the Walker Audio Black Diamond Room Treatments. I had been looking at them on the Walker website for some time while looking around for reviews, beyond those on Walker's own site. I'm a long time fan of the brand, having had a Walker motor controller running my VPI Scout turntable for more than 10 years.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting them to be, but on Christmas morning when I opened the present, I was definitely a bit annoyed. I understood that they were "room treatments" but I thought that would mean you put them, I don't know, in a corner or something. Reading the instructions, it became clear that you have to attach them, permanently for best results!, to the walls and ceiling of your listening room. Well, maybe for some audiophiles with a dedicated room that wouldn't be a problem. But for me, it was kind of a nightmare. You see, I live in a New York City apartment and my "listening room" is the family living room!

The room treatments are available in sets of 4, 6 or 8. I had gotten 6. They come in a nice box with a few pages of instructions. Each room treatment is about the size of a bullet casing, weighing a few grams. They appear to be made of brass, but it doesn't say what they actually are. Inside each is a small black crystal. I'll assume this is the namesake black diamond. Following the instructions, or guidelines, you stick them up on the walls of your room relative to your speakers. One is supposed to go on the ceiling. If you get the set of 8, the last 2 treatments go on top of your speakers, presuming you have box speakers and not electrostats. As with a lot of room treatment tweaks I've encountered, the instructions caution the listener to keep the treatments closed up in the box and in another room when not in use because anywhere around your stereo they are likely to impact the sound. I've always thought these types of cautions are kind of ridiculous, though so is much of the audiophile game, I've come to feel.

Anyway, over the next day or two I followed the guidelines and placed 5 of my 6 treatments around my living room. In order to get them in the proper positions, 2 had to get bluetacked to mirrors, 1 had to go smack dab in the middle of a framed Picasso print and the other 2 got stuck on the wall. The ceiling of my living room is about 15 feet high, so I never got to the one that's supposed to go up there. I knew, of course, that this would have to be temporary because leaving them up like this in the shared family space would be ridiculous.

I then went about playing music in the living room and, as I recall, it sounded incredible! I loved the way the room treatments made my music sound. More on that in a moment. But after a week or so my wife said ok, times up with these things, we have guests coming over, take them down. She was, of course, right. So back into the special little box they went, to be kept far, far away from my stereo. I thought about returning them or selling them, but I decided to keep them, because, hey, you never know, maybe one day I'll have a dedicated listening room after I win the lottery and move into a $10 million townhouse, or something entirely likely like that.

Recently, now 2 years later, after pouting over the whole situation from time to time, I had a big idea. Since the treatments are so small and can easily be put up and taken down, except for that one on the ceiling!, why not quickly put them up when my family is out for the day without me, or in the evening when everyone goes off to their rooms? So that's what I did.

Before getting into how amazing the Walker room treatments are, let me describe what led me to wanting them in the first place. My stereo system is actually quite nice, incredible in fact, and I've had the basic components for 16 or 17 years. (I have my system listed in the Asylum.) I listen to several hours of music every day and enjoy myself thoroughly, as does the family. The problem is this: every record or CD I play sounds basically the same. Now that's not a terrible thing, but over the years I've always had this nagging feeling that the sound is not "right" and that it should be better somehow based on the lovely gear I have. This nagging feeling has led to a lot of tweaking, which is fun and has added to the sound, but the not-quite-right feeling has never really gone away. Now I know why. Apparently, my room, which is huge and full of all the normal living room stuff like couches, bookshelves and a TV, has been robbing me of the real meat of the music, those rich details that distinguish audiophile sound from mere consumer-grade sound.

So, following the guidelines, the other night I quickly got the five treatments up and settled in for a evening of listening. I started off with a few jazz CDs I've had for years and know well, Paul Desmond Quartet "Edmonton Festival '76" and Keith Jarrett "At The Deer Head Inn," both live recordings. In both cases the impact of the Walker room treatments was immediately obvious and really enjoyable. What I heard most, which I'd never heard before, was the overwhelming sense of the venue in which the musicians were playing, due to a massive leap in resolution.

The kind of space you hear, the reverb available, on live recordings is patently different than on studio recordings, obviously. It can sort-of be faked with studio reverb and overdubbed crowd noises, but in this case I know it wasn't. As this aspect of the sound was so intoxicating, I was listening much, much more deeply than I had in years. This, of course, pays its own dividends, because I then was able to hear much more interplay between the musicians, much more reaction from the audience and the sense that the audience was really tuned in, and much more inner detail, like the subtle differences between the drummer's cymbals and the sound of the bass during a solo. Also, the 2 recordings themselves sounded quite different, which seems like an obvious comments, but again, my system has had kind of a graying effect on music, making everything sound about the same amount "good."

With the Walker room treatments in place, every record or CD I put on creates this wonderful anticipation, like, what will it now sound like? Everything I've played has sounded nothing like I remember it. I find this incredibly exciting, regardless of whether the "new" sound is better or worse than I remember it having been. Two examples: first, my rather mediocre Mozart flue quartets album, featuring Rampal, Stern and Leonard Rose, which I've owned for 35 years and played hundreds of times, blew me away. In a good way. I heard much more detail in terms of real, visceral bow on string action. The soundstage was much clearer; this record never seemed to have much of soundstage at all, as I recall. There were any number of passages where I was never sure who was playing what or what was supposed to be happening. Now they were easily decoded and I understood completely what was going on and had a new appreciation for the subtlety and complexity of those moments. And the sense of the studio environment, with its subtle reverb laid on, had never been more obvious.

But when it came to another Rampal LP I own, "Music for Flute and Guitar, An 18th Century Serenade," the sound was startlingly bad. I always had this record pegged as kind of a mellow affair, very chilled out. In fact, Rampal sounds like he was recorded in a stairwell and his flute has that brutal echo effect, like clapping your hands loudly in a low-ceilinged, empty corridor. On high notes it's not pleasant. But I'm excited by this, because though it was tough to listen to at times, I feel like I now know what this record actually sounds like, rather than it sounding basically like every other record I own.

So here's my recommendation: the next time you're frustrated with the sound of your stereo and thinking of a new set of interconnects or a power chord, gold plated fuses or audiophile outlet covers, spend your money on a set of the Walker Black Diamond Room Treatments. Like me, I would be very surprised if you were not genuinely delighted by how great what you already have sounds. I feel like I will be riding the buzz from these, happily digging into my collection of records and CDs for a good while before I want to start fiddling with my stereo again. Now I've just got to figure out how to get that last one up on the damn ceiling!

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Product Weakness:	You have to stick them on the walls and ceiling of your listening space.
Product Strengths:	Extremely revealing tweak, which increases system resolution, soundstage and overall enjoyment of your music.

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Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier:	McCormack DNA 125
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Conrad Johnson PV10b
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	VPI Scout/JMW9, Creek CD53
Speakers:	Epos M12
Cables/Interconnects:	Various
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Classical, jazz
Room Size (LxWxH):	24 x 20 x 15
Time Period/Length of Audition:	2 years
Other (Power Conditioner etc.):	2 PS Audio Untimate Outlet
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner

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