Venom 14 Digital hooks up with the Brick Bithouse

[jimtranr]

Nearly 70 hours of settling time have elapsed since a Shunyata Venom 14 Digital C5 (“Mickey Mouse”)-terminated power cord arrived at my doorstep and I installed it as the final cable upgrade to my laptop-sourced bedroom audio system. It complements earlier-acquired Venom NR v10s that feed AC, respectively, from the wall to an original-version Hydra power distributor and from the Hydra to a TEAC UD-501 USB DAC. If you’ve read my posted-elsewhere-on-this-forum impressions of the latter two cable installations, you know that each effected a significant sonic improvement, most notably in transparency, foundational heft, dynamic contrast, and performer and venue dimensionality.



Frankly, I didn’t know how much more, if any, audible improvement I could wring out of my modest rig after what each Venom 10 delivered to the performance table. In ordering the 14, I was winging it (you may have guessed that from my “frosting the cake” post). That’s because that power cord would feed current from the Hydra to the laptop’s AC charger “brick”, which on its output side is captive-corded Lilliputian-gauge for nearly two meters to the laptop’s input jack. How much, I wondered, of whatever current-delivery and noise-reduction magic the 14 could conjure up front would be dissipated in that final six feet of Honling-labeled wire? And beyond that, would however much of Shunyata sorcerer’s dust that might remain really impact the data transiting from an external hard drive through the JRiver Media Center-driven laptop to the Alpha USB cable that feeds the DAC?

Color me surprised. Especially after I’d given the 14 a few hours to pass some current and settle. I heard a bit more transparency. A bit wider and a bit deeper soundstage. A bit more instrumental decay. A bit more venue ambience. And a bit tighter bass. Among other things. The individual improvements were in and of themselves not as huge as what I’d experienced with each iteration of the NR v10. But “a bit of this” and “a bit of a lot of thats” added up in a hurry to a cumulative sensation of freer-of-the-speakers engagement with a given performance that summed out unequivocally as more than subtle.

Case in point: A 16/44 rip of “Captain Blood: Classic Film Scores of Errol Flynn”, one of that iconic series of George Korngold-produced 1970s RCA releases of Hollywood “Golden Age” film score suites conducted by Charles Gerhardt and engineered to the nines by Decca’s Kenneth Wilkinson. I thought I’d milked the atmospheric everything I could out of that recording—and it sounded damned up-close-and-personal good—once I’d finished putting the Venom NR 10s in place. Uh-uh. Adding the 14 Digital to the mix rendered the instruments more believably sonorous, while the broader, deeper, and airier recroding venue fused more organically into my listening space, with a strikingly more palpable reach-in-a-few-feet-and-touch-someone presence. Bozhe moi strikingly, at that.

In short, cake frosted. Deliciously.