Heartsound Holostage
Room Treatment Tweak
After the Munich High-End Show in May 2024, we had the good fortune of visiting our good friends Rhapsody Audio in the Netherlands for a few days of R&R and immersion into all things music & hi-fi. Harry and Michael are very well known in Europe for having an ability to create immensely satisfying sound systems, as their long list of sophisticated satisfied clients can attest. Their reputation and abilities are a result of have a great ear, immense musical knowledge, experience in recording studio environments and decades of experience with high-end audio. During this time, after playing a mesmerising Sarah Vaughn track (Lost records label – Live at Laren Jazz Festival 1975), Harry pulled out this box of non-descript little boxes and said with a wry smile ‘guys, you have to hear what these little babies can do”.
What’s in the box Harry?
George, I’m not sure exactly but have a listen.
At this stage, I’m feeling a bit strange. You see, the high-end world is filled with tweaks, enhancement and optimization devices that are to be very frank… crap. During the many years of my involvement with the hobby, I have been shown, tried, tested & auditioned literally hundreds of these devices and I have found only a handful to have serious scientific and sound quality demonstratable value. In fact, I get upset when I witness the way the audiophile community gets taken for a ride by scrupulous unethical operators selling their latest version of ‘snake oil’.
So imagine our surprise when Harry (a man I deeply respect) pulled out these boxes. Well, you have probably guessed what happened next which is why I’m telling you about them. We simply kept playing the same track, beginning to end while adding more of these boxes to different parts of the room and listening for their effects. I can say that the Nirvana team was very impressed and immediately made contact with Heartsound Audio in the USA.
Founded in 2021 by Krissy Tetrault, Heartsound Audio is a US based company that manufactures a device called the ‘Holostage’. There is a real science behind this product with many chemists and academics collaborating and contributing to the technology over many years.
Place these little black boxes in your listening space and enjoy an expansion of your soundstage, increased dynamics and perceived lower noise floor. Many describe them as creating an ‘ease’ in the music, removing the ‘tension between the notes’ which results in a more fluid, flowing, less-mechanical presentation of the music. In some ways, Holostages bring fun and wonder back into the hobby – tweaks to customise and improve your emotional engagement. They are available to try with a money back guarantee and if you like what they do they are not an expensive upgrade.
No clumsy wires, batteries, or chargers necessary. These devices are ready to enjoy out of the box!
When we play music, the sound waves necessarily set the whole room and everything in it vibrating. We all know this, and do all kinds of things to alleviate it, with absorptive panels, diffusion panels, and so on. We also use springs, pointy spikes & cones, granite slabs, sorbothane and other materials to deal with these resonant energies. Holostages perform sound field isolation by working electrostatically in a way that allows the sound field to vibrate with greater isolation from the rooms own acoustic environment.
Sceptical? Just try them and in our experience, they will probably stay in your system!
Many who are discovering this new technology are describing the Holostage as the most effective and satisfying tweak they’ve ever experienced.
How Do They Work?
The exact content inside each Holostage is proprietary however we do know that the device operates using the principle of piezoelectricity, which is the electric charge or ion discharge that accumulates in certain solid materials such as crystals & ceramics in response to applied mechanical stress. The piezoelectric effect is utilised in a few applications that you may be familiar with. Let’s consider a type of cigarette lighter for example. By pressing the button you place stress on a piezoelectric crystal that charges a capacitor, that when fully charged suddenly discharges the spark that ignites the butane.
There are some materials which exhibit this piezoelectric ability. This means that when subjected to a mechanical stress, they can produce an electrical current or release ions. Krissy Tetrault studied the documents and white papers that resulted from many years of research on the topic of piezoelectric ion proposition and simply selected a mix of materials that have these properties. The contents of the Holostages include a complex matrix of piezoelectrically active crystals and Graphine nanotubes which generate an electric current and discharge ions when a stress force is applied to them.
What is the stress force you may be wondering? It’s the sound wave energy moving through your room! When the sound waves interact with the Holostage boxes, the forces trigger the release of ions into the surrounding space. The presence of the ions has an effect on how the sound energy moves through the air. The electrostatic relationship between the sound waves, which are effectively vibrating air molecules and the ions within the air molecules has this effect where the sound travels with a greater ease and seems to be more isolated from the effects of the room.
Ions Affect the Speed of Sound
Cations are positively-charged ions (atoms or groups of atoms that have more protons than electrons due to having lost one or more electrons). Anions are negatively-charged ions (meaning they have more electrons than protons due to having gained one or more electrons). Cations are also called positive ions, and anions are also called negative ions.
Identifying the composition of a solution using acoustics remains a challenge. It is known that for low salt concentrations the speed of sound in water increases linearly with the concentration of the electrolyte, but the contribution of individual cations and anions is relatively unknown. However, experiments have been completed where the concept of intrinsic sound speed Ai was introduced to quantify the contribution of ions to the speed of sound. The results proved that cations increase the speed of sound in water whereas anions decrease the speed of sound. Hydration layers around the ions play a major role. Because cations have a hydration layer thicker than that of anions, their contribution to the speed of sound is larger than that of anions.
Experimental data on salts not used to determine the contribution of individual ions are in quantitative agreement with the predicted values. This method has also been applied to various systems containing small quantities of ions, molecules, or particles in air, also verifying that cations increase the speed of sound, and previously unexplained data in the literature has now been explained by these experiments. From the perspective of listening to an audio system, we can also now claim with certainty, based on these experiments that the presence of ions in your listening space influences the way the sound energy travels through and behaves within the medium.
Suggestions For Placement
Begin by placing Holostages in each corner at approximately four foot in height.
The devices can and should be moved around the listening room until optimal performance is achieved.
Clients have made the following observations:
- Place around the room for a larger sound stage and greater ‘ease’ of sound.
- Place on speakers for an increase in speed and accuracy.
- Place near/on components for an audible reduction of noise and improvement of dynamics.
- Place on power supplies for an overall improvement of dynamics and a drop in the noise floor.
Reviews
Millercarbon’s The Audio Files, 2023
Spoiler alert: Holostage sound field isolators are the craziest, coolest, most mesmerizingly effective tweak I have tried yet. And I have tried a lot of tweaks! Small, versatile, and highly effective, Tetrault Audio’s Holostages are a revelation, and highly recommended.
Testimonials
“I used to be a power cable and interconnect sceptic. Now, it’s a ‘must have’ to realise the potential of your system. It took me a long while to figure that out. But I’m SO glad I did!
Now, here’s a product that had me thinking, total snake oil. Voodoo witchcraft!
Even my cynical audio buddies and I thought, ‘No way’, not possible. Snake oil.
Enter, the passive Heartsound Audio Holostage blocks. If your system is high resolution, putting 4 blocks in the corners of your room, will transform the sonics.
It’s immediate, and obvious. Johny Cash lp – Live at Austin Texas 1986. The vocals become more real. More 3d and more like him singing in the room. And that wasn’t all. I heard guitar strings resonate with more air and treble extension than ever before. What the???
The effect is immediate. Take them completely out of the room. Listen. What you thought was great, isn’t anymore! It’s back to 2d.
My friends and I couldn’t believe what we were hearing. This isn’t voodoo witchcraft. There’s science behind it.
Over the years we have all heard a lot of hifi accessories that claim to work. Some do. Some don’t. Some just alter the tone. They aren’t better just different.
The Hollostage blocks are the biggest secret in audio today. Totally ground-breaking. If you’ve got a high-end system, this is the biggest bang for your buck that I have *ever* heard!“
Eugene, 2024
Product Specifications
Type:
Room Optimization Device
Technology:
Graphene Nanotube / Piezoelectric Crystal
Ion Release:
Yes
Dimensions:
76 × 76 × 38 mm (W × L × D)
Choose options