Late Monday afternoon, UPS delivered a 1.75-meter C15-terminated Shunyata Venom NR v10 power cord to connect the bedroom-system Teac UD-501 DAC to my Corian-encased Hydra:
The Venom NR replaced an upgraded-connector 2-meter Wireworld 7 Electra which had previously supplied Hydra-conditioned AC to the DAC—and which I’d raved about a little over a year ago in another AA thread. I considered any listening comparison of the two as an apples-to-apples affair inasmuch as only $50 separates the list prices of the two power cords as configured for my system.
For the initial test of the new power cord, I fed the DAC the final two hair-raising movements of Hector Berlioz’ “Symphonie Fantastique” conducted by Leonard Bernstein (Sony SBM’d 16/44 rip). With the cold-start, yet-to-settle Venom NR in place, the bedroom system delivered a larger and more space-palpable soundstage, a heftier and better-defined low end, and more discernible dynamic contrast, all of which are additive to what I’d noted a couple of weeks earlier when I connected the Hydra to the wall with its own Venom NR.
Some 35+ playback hours of varying vocal and instrumental program later with the new Venom NR in place, I hear not only greater scale, heft, and dynamic punch imparted to reproduced music than before, but also increased clarity and transparency across the frequency spectrum (triangles, chimes, and their stratospheric relatives are guilty-aural-pleasure delights) and better lateral and front-to-back layering of vocal and/or instrumental choirs. The overall impression with mixed-to-replicate-the-performing-venue recordings—whether of large instrumental ensembles, massed choral, or guitar solos--is what I call “visceral immediacy”, or the sense of sharing the listening space with and breathing the same air as the performers (what I think
Stephen [Puma Cat] means, at least in part, by his invocation of “engagement” in another thread) to a much greater degree than with any prior system configuration.
Whatever noise-reduction magic is embedded in the Venom NR renders the background—yeah, I know you’re expecting “blacker” or some reasonable facsimile thereof, but I prefer “Windex transparent”, given the airily uncluttered environment into which voice and instrument project at any level from
ppp to
fff. It’s dead quiet out there, folks. And that means, among a host of other things, a more discernible perception of microdynamic nuance written into the musical score.
Saint Mrs. is equally impressed. She appreciates the marked perceptual improvement in vocal articulation (whether in massed choir or solo or duet arias [such as sung by Mirella Freni and Christa Ludwig in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”]), the layering, definition, and spatial rightness of accompanying orchestral placement in opera settings (for example, von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic in the aforementioned “Butterfly”), and the individual woody resonances of the acoustic guitars picked and strummed by Carlos Barbosa-Lima and Sharon Isbin in Jobim’s “Luiza”.
Love it. Thanks, Caelin and crew.