What I hear after replacing an Electra 5^2 with an upgraded-connector Electra 7

[jimtranr]

The jaw drops again…this time after I’ve switched the bedroom system’s wall-outlet-to-power-distribution/conditioning unit cabling from a Wireworld Electra 5^2 to the Electra 7 with the upgraded Silver Electra connectors.

I initially thought about appending this to my Electra-7-to-DAC thread. But since the focus of this post is to report the audible effect of replacing a previous-version Electra with a current version, I thought the subject deserved a separate thread.

Brief background: When I received my first upgraded-connector Electra 7, I left the existing Electra 5^2 connected between the bedroom-system wall outlet and the Blue Circle power distribution unit and connected the 7 from the distribution unit to my TEAC DAC. When the second identically-configured 7 arrived, I installed it in the home-office system, running it from the Shunyata Hydra conditioner to that system’s DAC.

Curiosity, of course, is not only a cat killer but an incurable audiophile affliction. And it finally got the better of me today, when I decided to see what, if anything, would happen if I put the office system’s 7 where the bedroom system’s 5^2 had resided until now

I’ll state upfront that the comparison is skewed because the Electra 5^2 has the standard molded plug and IEC socket and the 7 the upgraded connectors. So I don’t know how much, if any, of the difference I hear is attributable to the 7’s upgraded Composilex insulation and how much to the connectors.

That said, the difference is striking. And all in the Electra 7’s favor. By a wide enough margin to rule out confirmation bias. I didn’t wait for the cable to settle or the electronics to warm up when I loaded the “Masque” movement from Leonard Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” (Sony, 24/192) in JRiver and clicked “Play”. The soundstage “air” I’d found compelling in my first conditioner-to-DAC go-around with an Electra 7 had expanded--again . And enhanced the dimensionality of the ensemble’s instruments along with it.

“Masque” contains more than a fair amount of upper-mid to high-frequency information ranging from upper-register piano and celesta to triangle and chimes. I thought I’d hit the jackpot regarding clarity, definition, and liquidity in that arena during that first Electra 7 go-around. Uh-uh. With the second 7 in place, those attributes simply got “more better”. And so did everything else. The low end became more authoritative and the mids more palpable, sonorous, and tonally richer, all of it framed in a more spacious soundstage that rendered speaker boundaries a joke.

A one-off? To test that, I put on Bernstein’s reading of Aaron Copland’s “El Salon Mexico” (Sony, DSD128). There’s a lot of brass in that reading, along with a fair amount of bass drum and tympani. A more spacious, reach-into soundstage here, too. And more plangent brass and rattle-the-room bass drum. More importantly, the ensemble seemed a more coherent whole, each member placed where he or should be, with no violinist winding up in the tympanist’s lap.

Next up: The Turtle Creek Chorale singing Bernstein’s “Make Our Garden Grow” from “Candide” on Reference Recordings' "Testament (16/44 rip). Vocal clarity in spades and the layering of the chorus better rendered and defined than what I thought was the already-excellent—have to make that “very-good” now--presentation with the Electra 5^2 feed from the wall to the Blue Circle distribution unit.

The long and short of it: The second Electra 7 stays in the bedroom system, with the 5^2 moving to the home office…temporarily, until I can get another Electra 7 to replace it. When I do, I’ll order the upgraded connectors with it. And with subsequent Electras I get to cable the main system as well. They seem well worth their keep.