A Delta NR v2 arrived last Friday...

[jimtranr]

Background: In early June, the Shunyata Delta XC power cord I’d acquired a few weeks earlier to feed the bedroom audio system’s Delta D6 power distributor shed what must have been its last vestige of “settling” at about 140 playback hours and stripped away another by-no-means-thin layer of veil between the listener and the digital-file-fed musical program emanating from the system’s stand-mounted two-way speakers.

A week-and-a-half later, I managed to snag a near-mint 20-year-old Audio Research LS16 line stage (the 6922-based original iteration) to replace the system’s solid-state, captive-corded c-j Sonographe preamp. Even with the detachable generic AC cord supplied with the new arrival, the change effected another audible improvement that rendered the music less electronic-sounding. After listening for a few days to this “stock” configuration, I borrowed a Shunyata Venom NR v10 from my living-room audio-video system and mated it to the LS16. The result was a noticeable improvement in every area that gets audiophiles all hot and bothered, transporting the listener even more palpably into whatever tonal, textural, dynamic, and spatial soundscape recording producers, engineers, and artists opt to convey with a given release. The improvement was significant enough to make me wonder whether a next-level power cord upgrade could achieve more than a nominally incremental bump in system performance, given my hardware’s age (the power amp is also 20 years old, the DAC seven), its batting-order niche in the respective manufacturers’ product lineups, and the limitations, despite extensive acoustic treatment, of the furnished-as-a-bedroom 11’x13’x7’8” listening space.

Based on my experience with the Delta XC, I’d already begun reloading my discretionary penny jar for the purchase of a Delta NR v2 power cord prior to acquiring the LS16. The v2 was intended originally to replace the Delta NR v1 feeding the system’s USB DAC. But the arrival of a detachable-cord line stage, its performance with the Venom NR v10, and curiosity about how much more—if anything--I could squeeze out of it with a new, next-level-up power cord reoriented my game plan. The LS16 would get the new Delta NR, the v1 would remain with the DAC, and the Venom would return to its rightful slot in the living-room system. Since the power amp is captive-corded, it couldn’t share in any new-power-cord fun and games except as the downstream beneficiary of a less-noise-polluted signal fed to its inputs.

Initial Listening Impression: After letting the Delta NR v2 burn calories ingested on a rich diet of densely-scored ripped and downloaded orchestral, choral, operatic, and film-music fare for about 25 hours, I sat down for my first “serious” listen, knowing that at such an early stage of cable settling any performance assessment would be preliminary at best. Preliminary, yes, but it yielded a significant conclusion early on: The noise floor had plummeted well below the already-impressive “basement” level established with the Venom NR v10 feeding AC to the LS16.

If you’ve followed any of my power-cord or -distributor threads in this forum over the last year-and-a-half, you know that they constitute a litany of, in part, the progressive expansion of a given recording’s perceived performing space, of the air that fills it, and of the palpability of both that space and the voices and instruments that populate it. I’ve used expressions such as “being there”, “reach in and touch someone”, and “speakers disappearing” to characterize the successive improvements I’ve heard with each new Shunyata power cable upgrade, with the recent installation of the D6-feeding Delta XC providing the most significant bump upward in three-dimensional touchy-feely audio performance.

Enter the Delta NR v2 (at only around 25 hours, remember), and it’s a whole new perceptual ballgame replete with unmasked spatial and ambient cues that breathe significantly more “being-there” and room-boundary-disregarding life into the recordings I’ve listened to thus far. Nothing subtle, and sure as heck nothing "simply incremental" about it. I’ve never felt as engaged with (or “drawn into”, if you prefer) the recordings in my collection—and that’s by a wide margin.

I intend to share follow-up posts with details about specific recordings and the usual audio-performance parameters we junkies salivate over once the Delta NR v2 has had more time to settle in. In the meantime, color my first impression mind-blown.

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by jimtranr

Background: In early June, the Shunyata Delta XC power cord I’d acquired a few weeks earlier to feed the bedroom audio system’s Delta D6 power distributor shed what must have been its last vestige of “settling” at about 140 playback hours and stripped away another by-no-means-thin layer of veil between the listener and the digital-file-fed musical program emanating from the system’s stand-mounted two-way speakers.

A week-and-a-half later, I managed to snag a near-mint 20-year-old Audio Research LS16 line stage (the 6922-based original iteration) to replace the system’s solid-state, captive-corded c-j Sonographe preamp. Even with the detachable generic AC cord supplied with the new arrival, the change effected another audible improvement that rendered the music less electronic-sounding. After listening for a few days to this “stock” configuration, I borrowed a Shunyata Venom NR v10 from my living-room audio-video system and mated it to the LS16. The result was a noticeable improvement in every area that gets audiophiles all hot and bothered, transporting the listener even more palpably into whatever tonal, textural, dynamic, and spatial soundscape recording producers, engineers, and artists opt to convey with a given release. The improvement was significant enough to make me wonder whether a next-level power cord upgrade could achieve more than a nominally incremental bump in system performance, given my hardware’s age (the power amp is also 20 years old, the DAC seven), its batting-order niche in the respective manufacturers’ product lineups, and the limitations, despite extensive acoustic treatment, of the furnished-as-a-bedroom 11’x13’x7’8” listening space.

Based on my experience with the Delta XC, I’d already begun reloading my discretionary penny jar for the purchase of a Delta NR v2 power cord prior to acquiring the LS16. The v2 was intended originally to replace the Delta NR v1 feeding the system’s USB DAC. But the arrival of a detachable-cord line stage, its performance with the Venom NR v10, and curiosity about how much more—if anything--I could squeeze out of it with a new, next-level-up power cord reoriented my game plan. The LS16 would get the new Delta NR, the v1 would remain with the DAC, and the Venom would return to its rightful slot in the living-room system. Since the power amp is captive-corded, it couldn’t share in any new-power-cord fun and games except as the downstream beneficiary of a less-noise-polluted signal fed to its inputs.

Initial Listening Impression: After letting the Delta NR v2 burn calories ingested on a rich diet of densely-scored ripped and downloaded orchestral, choral, operatic, and film-music fare for about 25 hours, I sat down for my first “serious” listen, knowing that at such an early stage of cable settling any performance assessment would be preliminary at best. Preliminary, yes, but it yielded a significant conclusion early on: The noise floor had plummeted well below the already-impressive “basement” level established with the Venom NR v10 feeding AC to the LS16.

If you’ve followed any of my power-cord or -distributor threads in this forum over the last year-and-a-half, you know that they constitute a litany of, in part, the progressive expansion of a given recording’s perceived performing space, of the air that fills it, and of the palpability of both that space and the voices and instruments that populate it. I’ve used expressions such as “being there”, “reach in and touch someone”, and “speakers disappearing” to characterize the successive improvements I’ve heard with each new Shunyata power cable upgrade, with the recent installation of the D6-feeding Delta XC providing the most significant bump upward in three-dimensional touchy-feely audio performance.

Enter the Delta NR v2 (at only around 25 hours, remember), and it’s a whole new perceptual ballgame replete with unmasked spatial and ambient cues that breathe significantly more “being-there” and room-boundary-disregarding life into the recordings I’ve listened to thus far. Nothing subtle, and sure as heck nothing "simply incremental" about it. I’ve never felt as engaged with (or “drawn into”, if you prefer) the recordings in my collection—and that’s by a wide margin. To paraphrase Christopher Lloyd: "Walls? Who needs walls?"

I intend to share follow-up posts with details about specific recordings and the usual audio-performance parameters we junkies salivate over once the Delta NR v2 has had more time to settle in. In the meantime, color my first impression mind-blown.

Another outstanding review, Jim.

With respect to your observation and experience listening to the Delta NRv2 and comparing and contrasting it to the already excellent Venom NR-V10, your review is both accurate and consistent with my own experiences. Its a BIG step up. Some friends have mentioned to me that the new Delta NR v10 is superior to the previous gen Alpha NR v1 and based on its performance, I'd believe it.

[Masterlu]

Jim... Excellent, so glad you are pleased once again with your new Shunyata cable.

[jimtranr]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Another outstanding review, Jim.

With respect to your observation and experience listening to the Delta NRv2 and comparing and contrasting it to the already excellent Venom NR-V10, your review is both accurate and consistent with my own experiences. Its a BIG step up. Some friends have mentioned to me that the new Delta NR v10 is superior to the previous gen Alpha NR v1 and based on its performance, I'd believe it.

Thanks, Stephen.

"BIG step" puts it mildly. I noticed the precipitous noise-level nosedive immediately following installation. Looking forward to what 100-plus hours will bring.

[jimtranr]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

Jim... Excellent, so glad you are pleased once again with your new Shunyata cable.

Thanks for making it possible, Ivan.

Of course, what I've noticed in the midst of all of this is that my depleted penny jar--knowing full well that there's an IEC-socketed DAC in the system--is now giving me the sideeye...and murmuring something that sounds like "Oh, no, not again."

[jimtranr]

After considering my recent settling-time experience with a Delta XC v2 feeding a Delta D6, I decided to hold off on posting a follow-up to my original post on the Delta NR v2 until the new power cord had logged a reasonably significant number of playback hours linking the D6 to my tubed line stage. As I write this, the NR v2 has just put around 120 real-work hours under its NR-buckled VTX-Ag belt. And to my ears the wait has been well worth it.

Cutting right to the performance-assessment chase, if, as has been asserted frequently in this forum, the Alpha-level cables constitute the “sweet spot” of the Shunyata product line, then I believe the Delta family merits, at bare minimum, the designation “sleeper”--in the best sense of the word, as it punches well above its price point in the product lineup in terms of precision, agility, dynamic scaling, and impact in both its XC and NR v2 incarnations.

With the Delta NR v2 feeding the line stage, I “see” the soundfield background not as some iteration of “black” but rather as a formless, wholly transparent void. Minute, low-level detail remains tonally and substantively intact all the way from the program source to the system’s speakers. The absence of extraneous noise (an artifact I typically don’t hear until I notice its absence) eliminates image smear that blurs instrumental and vocal placement, dimensionality, and ensemble layering to a degree which leapfrogs by a substantial margin the already impressive you-are-there sensation I experienced earlier with the Venom NR v10 in place.

Expressed another way, the soundfield has become far less projected into my listening room than organically fused with it with recordings whose production values include the intent to replicate the performance venue with at least a modicum of accuracy. I’m still trying to figure out how, among others, the Concertgebouw, Musikverein, Boston Symphony Hall, Manhattan Center, the ensembles performing in them, and all the air inhabiting those venues have been packed so virtually boundary-free into my 11’x13’x7’8” overstuffed listening space since the Delta NR v2 really began “opening up” after about 80 hours of on-repeat playback.

Readers of my earlier D6 and XC threads may recall how taken I was with the surrounded-by-air palpability of Nicolai Ghiaurov as he sang Khan Konchak’s “Zdorov-li, Knaz?” aria from Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor (Emil Tchakarov conducting the Sofia Festival Orchestra, Sony CD rip). Well, that was then. I gave Ghiaurov a return engagement after about 90 hours of Delta NR v2 burn-in—and at about 20 seconds into the track uttered a “holy something-or-other” at the in-the-room three dimensionality of the basso. As good as the presentation with the preceding power feed to the line stage had been, it didn’t come close in terms of rendering Ghiaurov as spooky-real. With that came a more granular delineation of both his articulation of the Russian libretto and the nuanced inflections of his voice.

My wife confirmed that impression when I cued up Mirella Freni (Ghiaurov’s second wife) and Christa Ludwig in “Scuoti quella fronda” from Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, Decca 24/96 download). “There’s more body, more expression in their voices,” she volunteered without any prompting. She also noted that there was distinctly more separation from and layering of the orchestral accompaniment behind the vocalists.

Downshifting to guitar duet with Carlos Barbosa-Lima and Sharon Isbin performing Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Luiza,” (Brazil, With Love, Concord CD rip), we both heard the same thing—airier string tone and more substantial instrumental body.

Back to vocal—massed this time--with the Turtle Creek Chorale singing “Make Our Garden Grow” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (Testament, Reference Recordings CD rip). Here we heard a quantum leap in spatial presentation, ensemble layering, the delineation of individual voices as well as sub-choirs, and dynamic scaling—all of which, taken together, called up the ghost of “Is it live, or is it Memorex?”...which in this instance tilted decidedly toward the former.

There are two passages in the score of the Leonard Bernstein/New York Philharmonic reading of Hector Berlioz’ "Rackoczy March" (Symphonie Fantastique, Sony Royal Edition SBM’d CD rip) where a concert bass drum lets loose with a few healthy whacks. There’s nothing anemic about the resulting, near-subterranean BOOMs. They cause my wife sitting a couple of rooms away to wonder if I’m messing around with TNT. But as impactful as they are, they’ve always reached my ears as indistinct, almost static monotones. Enter the Delta NR v2 at about 100 hours. Each BOOM is now followed by a clearly-defined sequence of skin-vibrating decay.

Those are just a few examples of the striking improvement the Delta NR v2—in tandem with the XC and the D6—has made in the bedroom audio system’s performance. “Transformative” characterizes the whole of it succinctly...and, uh, I still have the power feed to the DAC to give a thought or two to.

[kennyb123]

Wonderful reports, Jim! Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. A Delta NR v2 is likely my next Shunyata purchase.