I just received an Everest, sigma xc, two alpha v2 NRs, and a v14 digital two days ago. I think the Everest needs some burn in time. I saw an old thread saying run a high current fan on power conditioners to help break them in. I also saw you can daisy chain new cables together, and assumedly run the fan at the end. I also also saw non-shunyata burn-in devices are frowned upon so I haven’t done this yet. If anyone knows any reason to not to break in the fan and cables I’d love to hear it.
Now for my very initial findings:
Starting from 0) Niagara 5000 with Tornado 20A, the rest stock power cables. This was purchased last month… I did demo a few hurricane cables, which are better than the tornado. It does sound good but I really dislike the stiff unruly AQ cables and managing them in my particular setup was an eyesore. Unfortunately the return policy for the 5000 is 7 days, which I didn’t read close enough. Anyway, I decided to try nearby Shunyata and I’m glad I did.
1) swapped in the Sigma XC to the 5000 first and Venom digital v14 for the DCS Vivaldi upsampler. Good step up.
2) one alpha v2 NR from Niagara to Preamp: modest improvement. Remember stock cables are still on the dac and amps.
3) moved that alpha plus the other alpha for 2x McIntosh 2301s straight to wall… good lord. Stock cords on DAC and preamp. I never did compare wall vs Niagara 5000 and its current reserve with the Alphas.
4) moved upsampler, dac (stock cable), and preamp(stock cable) from the 5000 to the Everest. Kind of clouded things up a bit. Maybe digitized? Less analog than before.
5) moved amp alpha cords to Everest. I think a little cloudier, but marginally so.
That was the first day’s notes. I think the Everest has opened up a great deal but I haven’t subbed in the 5000 again to compare. I will again next week. Those power cords though, amazing out of the box. I’ve occasionally swapped the alpha cables to the preamp and dac with stock cables back to the amps. Still sounds good but a step backwards, so I’m leaning towards equal or better cords on the amps. The piecemeal approach is to see if the monoblocks pair better with the wall or the Everest, which would require longer cables and are non-refundable had I gone all in from the jump. The end goal is two more alphas, or maybe maybe sigmas for the monoblocks with the alphas on dac and preamp duty. I could in theory do deltas on the dac and preamp and have that extra cash for sigmas on the amps but I bet two levels of difference cancels out some of the sigma gains. The DCS upsampler’s v14 digital should be good enough for digital to digital, but of course tempted for maybe a delta NR to check. Another v14 digital for the ether regen seems like a good idea too.
Pardon the rambling. Other questions in my head are if monoblock power cables must be the same length (was thinking standard 1.75 plus a 2.25) and if AES and clock cables must be the same length. 1.5M seems to be the minimum to prevent reflections on 44.1, but if upsampled I think that is shortened? Anyway, what a hobby.
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