New Shunyata Venom 14s in da house

[Puma Cat]

Thank to Mssr Ivan, I received my new Shunyata Venom 14 power cords today.

One in place of the WW Silver Electra 5^2 for the transformer brick for the Uptone Audio LPS-1 power supply for the Sonore microRendu, and a Venom 14 C7 plug version for powering the Mac Mini.

Put ‘em in, heard an immediate improvement in reduction of the noise floor, improved clarity and transparency and more extended top end. Some treble content is a little hot right now, but that's par for the course for new PCs. After 72 hours or so of continuous power, they should be ready to "rock 'n roll".

Superb performance and value for money. Perfect for low-current applications e.g. computers, small power supplies, Blu-Ray & CD players, cable boxes, HDTVs (you can SEE the improvement they bring).

[Masterlu]

Stephen... very glad to hear!

[Curio]

Maybe this Venom 14 works better than mine HC on the Whest Audio PS30RDT SE phono preamp .. the HC strangely cuts air and hights .. perhaps to big?

[jzzmusician]

Stephen,

Your reviews on the Shunyata cables are beginning to cost me.

First I bought the Venom USB. Then I bought the Alpha USB. Then I bought a pair of Venom interconnects. All are good and your reviews are spot on.

I emailed Ivan, again, and ordered a Venom digital cable for my CD transport.

I have pretty good power cables, and now you've got me thinking.

Please don't go to speaker cables. I need an 18 foot run.

- Bob

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by jzzmusician

Stephen,

Your reviews on the Shunyata cables are beginning to cost me.

First I bought the Venom USB. Then I bought the Alpha USB. Then I bought a pair of Venom interconnects. All are good and your reviews are spot on.

I emailed Ivan, again, and ordered a Venom digital cable for my CD transport.

I have pretty good power cables, and now you've got me thinking.

Please don't go to speaker cables. I need an 18 foot run.

- Bob

Sorry, Jim!

Ha! Yeah, I get that. LOL. I'm pleased to hear you found my "reviews" both helpful and accurate.

Really glad to hear that you are finding value in your purchase of Shunyata Research products. I don't know which class of Venom digital cable you ordered from Ivan, but I have a Venom RCA 75 ohm digital coax I use as a SPDIF cable for my Schiit Eitr, and it sounds REALLY good. So good, in fact, it is what prompted me to try the Venom ICs.

I've been listening to my Venom IC more and more on my Schiit Gumby, and Its impressive that it sounds not only comparable to, but slightly better than, an AQ Colorado IC that originally sold for ~900-$1000. And don't get me wrong, the Colorado is a very fine IC. But its of note that a Venom IC with an MSRP of $350 is fully competitive with a very well-made IC selling for approximately 3X the price. That, my friend, is a value proposition.

So, yes, I'm probably looking at getting some more Venom ICs in from Ivan for the system. All told, I would need three more. I'm thinking I might flip my Columbias and Colorados and use that to help fund more Venoms. Running them on the second output of Gumby is a great way to burn them in, I just leave the music server running 24/7 and in 10 days or so, the cable is ready to go...

Regarding the power cables, I'll tell you an interesting story....as I mentioned, I put the Shunyata Venom 14s on my Mac Mini server in the bedroom, and that brought an improvement, and then I replaced the WW Silver Electra 5^2 PC that was powering the Meanwell AC/DC transformer that powers my Uptown Audio LPS-1 super cap that powers the microRendu, and that made a difference in reduction of the noise floor, and a cleaner, quieter presentation.

So, the day before yesterday, I got in a Jameco 9V low noise, regulated linear power supply to power the upstream TP-link fiber media convertor (FMC); the TP-link supplied one is a piece of junk and noisy as all get-out. That helped a bit, but it was plugged into a generic power strip and I thought...."That ain't right."

So, I ordered an AQ IEC>3US power strippy-thang for $39. Its basically serves as a way to transform your aftermarket power cord into a clean, quiet, 3-outlet receptacle. Dug out my my first-ever Shunyata purchase, a Diamondback PC, and plugged it into the wall at one end, and the IEC>3US at the other end, and then plugged the Jameco LPS wall adapter into the IEC>3US. Another improvement. So much so, in fact, I had to turn the volume down a skosh. No, its not a Venom PS8, but, hey, for 39 bucks, it works. Job done! Gotta love it.

So, yeah, to say I a big fan of Shunyata power cords would be an understatement. They all represent excellent value for performance at their respective price points, and IMHO, they bring the biggest magnitude of improvement in sound quality and, from the listening ease they impart, to the experience of listening to your music of any class of cables. And, the Venom PCs punch WAY above their price points.

And at an MSRP of $125 for Venom 14s, you simply can't go wrong. I'd put 'em on anything that is low-power: Streamers, network bridges, CD players, Oppos, power supplies, headphone amps, music servers, NAS, cable boxes, etc., etc. If I get an Innuous Zen Mini or SoTM UltraNeo streamer, the power supply for that unit will get a Venom 14 going into the Triton.

As for speaker cables, I upgraded my cables to Shunyata Venoms at the end of 2017 and I love them. They are considerably better than the DNMs I was using and I really like the STIS set of terminations. They sound wonderful; the thing I love about Shunyata's products is they always sound natural and musical. They always make the experience of listening to music more engaging and beguilling, they never, ever make it worse, only better.

I haven't had the good fortune of hearing any of the other Shunyata speaker cables as you go up the line from Delta to Alpha to Sigma, but Grant says that next to PCs, speaker cables bring the most improvement. This makes sense, because like AC cables, they have to pass current, but also act as a benign impedance load that the amp sees as an interaction between the speaker and the speaker cable. And those darn interactions can be pretty pesky. This a good reason why engineers do DOEs, so they can characterize those pesky interactions, especially the ones where you make one thing better and another thing gets worse (as is the case with speaker cables' capacitance vs. impedance curves, if I understand the physics correctly).

So, speaker cables actually have pretty tough set of conflicting requirements that they have to manage and "optimize" from an audio engineering standpoint. The have to deliver the right mix of R, L, and C without the Z (impedance) profile going out of whack. Having read some pretty deep engineering papers on speaker cable design over the last few days, this is quite a bit more challenging to do than folks would think, because the speaker cable design signficantly impacts the the timing of audio signals across the audio frequency band. Timing that is frequency dependent and differences we can hear easily.

It's...complex, with equations like this: Z = sqrt((R+j*2*pi*f*L)/(G+j*2*pi*f*C)) My scientist-brain just eats this stuff up, though! LOL.

Regarding prices of Venom speaker cables, you need a 5.5 Meter pair. A 2.0 meter pair sells for an MSRP of $699, a 3 meter pair for $860; so that is $160 extra per meter. So, a 5.5M pair would cost, by my math: ~$1260. Is that within your budget? My guess is that Ivan can request a 5.5M length for you, since Shunyata Research often builds to order and drop ships directly to the customer. Worst case, a 6M pair of Venom speaker cables would cost ~ $1350. If that fits within your potential budget, I'd check in with Ivan about a quote. Given I paid approx $600 for my 2M pair of used, open-box dealer demo cables, that seems like a pretty darn good price to me.

Cheers, Jim!