AudioAficionado.org - Delta NR v2 replaces a v1 feeding the DAC

A little over two weeks ago, UPS delivered a Shunyata Delta NR v2 power cord to my doorstep. It was the third and final Delta v2 slated for installation in my laptop-sourced bedroom audio system (the details of which are spelled out in the signature block below). A Delta XC v2 had come first to connect a Delta D6 power distributor to the system’s duplex wall outlet, followed by a Delta NR v2 to link the D6 to an Audio Research LS16 tubed line stage. Each of these had effected an audibly significant performance improvement over, respectively, a Delta NR v1 and a Venom v10 NR, and I was anxious to hear how much, if any, more improvement I could wring out of the system by replacing the Delta NR v1 feeding my TEAC UD-501 USB DAC with its v2 successor.

https://www.audioaficionado.org/pict...pictureid=5307

I got a brief glimpse of what might be in store immediately after I installed the new v2. I played a CD rip of Leonard Bernstein’s reading with the New York Philharmonic of the final sections of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, beginning with the ominous “March to the Scaffold” (Columbia/Sony SBM Royal Edition)--and registered my initial impression with the first three words that came to mind: Unshackled. Spacious. Transparent.

All well and good for starters, but I knew from experience with the earlier Delta v2s that the new power cord would require at least 140 playback hours to really unwind (figuratively, of course). So while I spot-listened along the way to that magic number of hours—and by and large liked what I heard—I decided to withhold any semblance of a definitive judgment until after the new Delta v2 crossed the repeat-play finish line.

The program formats used in my evaluation ranged from CD, DAD (24/96 and 24/192), and SACD (DSD64) rips to high-resolution downloads (up to DSD128 and 24/352). The music played consisted of classical, jazz, massed choral, opera, film scores, Broadway musicals, and solo vocal. I listen nearfield in an 11’x13’x7’8” space furnished as a typical bedroom and treated with Stillpoints and GIK acoustic panels to provide room-mode, direct-reflection, and diffusion control.

Since I’d previously done a Venom v10 NR-to-Delta NR v1 comparison on my DAC and, more recently, a Venom v10 NR-to-Delta NR v2 comparison on my line stage, I assumed that the magnitude of whatever improvement I might perceive with the new Delta NR v2 vs. the v1 on the DAC was likely to be markedly less than what I’d experienced with the comparison performed with the line stage.

Color me surprised as I listened to a rip of the Analogue Productions-remastered RCA SACD of Kiril Kondrashin conducting the RCA Symphony in Aram Khachaturian’s Masquerade Suite and Dmitri Kabalevsky’s The Comedians after crossing the 140-hour playback threshold. What I’d thought was an already excellent spatial depiction of the recording venue (Manhattan Center) with the Delta NR v1 was floor-wiped with the v2 in its place. The space expanded—laterally, front-to-rear, and vertically—with its interior air assuming a more tactile in-the-listening-room presence, while the instruments inhabiting that space were rendered more three-dimensionally. And a tad bigger—as in “more life-sized”. More significantly in my view, their output sounded more tonally and harmonically natural (read “less electronically-reproduced”) across the brass-strings-woodwinds-percussion board, a function of their interaction with the space around them as expressed in part by noted improvements in the rendering of instrumental attack, sustain, and decay. The overall presentation sounded more relaxed, yet was punctuated by more impactful dynamic contrasts.

This wasn’t a one-off. To test that possibility I flooded the listening zone with a number of what I consider among the best orchestral “soundstage” recordings in my collection (a partial list includes David Amos conducting Modern Masters I [Harmonia Mundi CD rip], JoAnn Falleta conducting Jerome Moross’ Symphony No. 1, et al. [Koch CD rip], James Gaffigan’s reading of Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 [Challenge SACD rip], Stanislaw Skrowaczeski conducting Ravel Orchestra Works [Vox DAD 24/96 rip]), and Paul Bateman leading the City of Prague Symphony in a suite from the frequently hard-driving score of “The Proud Rebel” [The Cardinal: Classic Film Scores of Jerome Moross , Silva CD rip]). In every instance, and accounting for spatial and acoustic differences in the respective recording venues (and perhaps the production values of the recording teams), the result was the same: a sense of expanded, more tactile space; increased and more positionally-focused and closer-to-lifesized ensemble dimensionality; greater dynamic contrasts punctuated by increased speed in transient attack; and more liquid mids and highs complemented by a “gutsier-growlier” and at the same time more highly-defined bottom end.

Cueing up Bulgarian basso Nikolai Ghiaurov in the “Aria of Khan Konchak” from Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor (Emil Tchakarov conducting the Sofia Festival Orchestra [Sony CD rip]) revealed a taller, more fleshed out khan with a noticeably more dynamically- and inflection-nuanced voice that projected a more pronounced in-the-room presence. In a different tonal/timbral context, the duo of Mirella Freni and Christa Ludwig performing “Scuoti quella fronda…” from Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, Decca 24/96 download) did likewise, prompting Saint Mrs. to remark, “They sound much better than before.” In both instances, the orchestra accompanying the soloists was better delineated, more definitively layered, and spread out across a wider, airier soundstage.

On pop-oriented recordings not hard-panned to death, vocalists exhibited the same more-fleshed-out, life-sized, and timbrally-nuanced character of their operatic counterparts. This was true whether the venue was large-scale (e.g., Harry Belafonte singing “Jamaica Farewell” in Belafonte Live at Carnegie Hall, (RCA SACD rip) or Fredericka von Stade voicing Lorenz Hart’s deliciously unsanitized original lyrics to “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” in My Funny Valentine with John McGlinn leading the London Symphony Orchestra (EMI CD rip)) or far less spacious, as in Nancy Bryan’s rendition of “Nobody’s Buying” (Neon Angel, Analogue Productions SACD rip) or Steve Tyrell vocalizing “Ain’t Misbehaving” (Steve Tyrell: Standard Time, Sony Legacy SACD rip).

Given the foregoing, it should come as no surprise that massed choral, as auditioned here with the Turtle Creek Chorale’s rendering of “Make Our Garden Grow” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (Testament, Reference Recordings CD rip) and the Rutgers University Choir’s performance with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra of “Tempest est iocundum” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (Sony SACD rip), benefited commensurately in terms of vocal definition and purity of tone, ensemble layering and overall portrayal, the projection of attack, sustain, and decay into space, and dynamic scaling and punch with the Delta NR v2 in place, pushing the sense of performance-venue fusion with the listening space (and the in-the-room presence of individual instruments and voices) noticeably beyond the speaker disappearing act that had been achieved with the v1 feeding the DAC.

I’ve tried to avoid hyperbole up to now in describing what the DAC-connected Delta NR v2 has brought to the listening table. So I hope you’ll permit me a momentary indulgence: Completing the Delta “v2-ization” of the IEC-socketed components in the bedroom system has resulted in a sense of “being-there” realism (yes, I know that it’s an illusion) that is fricking reach-in-and-touch-someone mind-blowing. It also demonstrated compellingly just how critical it is to DAC performance to feed the component AC unpolluted by intra-system noise or hobbled by current limitation. The Delta NR v2 in this particular application has exceeded my expectations. The result is Unshackled, Spacious, and Transparent in "woo-hoo" spades.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimtranr (Post 1019441)

A little over two weeks ago, UPS delivered a Shunyata Delta NR v2 power cord to my doorstep. It was the third and final Delta v2 slated for installation in my laptop-sourced bedroom audio system (the details of which are spelled out in the signature block below). A Delta XC v2 had come first to connect a Delta D6 power distributor to the system’s duplex wall outlet, followed by a Delta NR v2 to link the D6 to an Audio Research LS16 tubed line stage. Each of these had effected an audibly significant performance improvement over, respectively, a Delta NR v1 and a Venom v10 NR, and I was anxious to hear how much, if any, more improvement I could wring out of the system by replacing the Delta NR v1 feeding my TEAC UD-501 USB DAC with its v2 successor.

https://www.audioaficionado.org/pict...pictureid=5307

I got a brief glimpse of what might be in store immediately after I installed the new v2. I played a CD rip of Leonard Bernstein’s reading with the New York Philharmonic of the final sections of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, beginning with the ominous “March to the Scaffold” (Columbia/Sony SBM Royal Edition)--and registered my initial impression with the first three words that came to mind: Unshackled. Spacious. Transparent.

All well and good for starters, but I knew from experience with the earlier Delta v2s that the new power cord would require at least 140 playback hours to really unwind (figuratively, of course). So while I spot-listened along the way to that magic number of hours—and by and large liked what I heard—I decided to withhold any semblance of a definitive judgment until after the new Delta v2 crossed the repeat-play finish line.

The program formats used in my evaluation ranged from CD, DAD (24/96 and 24/192), and SACD (DSD64) rips to high-resolution downloads (up to DSD128 and 24/352). The music played consisted of classical, jazz, massed choral, opera, film scores, Broadway musicals, and solo vocal. I listen nearfield in an 11’x13’x7’8” space furnished as a typical bedroom and treated with Stillpoints and GIK acoustic panels to provide room-mode, direct-reflection, and diffusion control.

Since I’d previously done a Venom v10 NR-to-Delta NR v1 comparison on my DAC and, more recently, a Venom v10 NR-to-Delta NR v2 comparison on my line stage, I assumed that the magnitude of whatever improvement I might perceive with the new Delta NR v2 vs. the v1 on the DAC was likely to be markedly less than what I’d experienced with the comparison performed with the line stage.

Color me surprised as I listened to a rip of the Analogue Productions-remastered RCA SACD of Kiril Kondrashin conducting the RCA Symphony in Aram Khachaturian’s Masquerade Suite and Dmitri Kabalevsky’s The Comedians after crossing the 140-hour playback threshold. What I’d thought was an already excellent spatial depiction of the recording venue (Manhattan Center) with the Delta NR v1 was floor-wiped with the v2 in its place. The space expanded—laterally, front-to-rear, and vertically—with its interior air assuming a more tactile in-the-listening-room presence, while the instruments inhabiting that space were rendered more three-dimensionally. And a tad bigger—as in “more life-sized”. More significantly in my view, their output sounded more tonally and harmonically natural (read “less electronically-reproduced”) across the brass-strings-woodwinds-percussion board, a function of their interaction with the space around them as expressed in part by noted improvements in the rendering of instrumental attack, sustain, and decay. The overall presentation sounded more relaxed, yet was punctuated by more impactful dynamic contrasts.

This wasn’t a one-off. To test that possibility I flooded the listening zone with a number of what I consider among the best orchestral “soundstage” recordings in my collection (a partial list includes David Amos conducting Modern Masters I [Harmonia Mundi CD rip], JoAnn Falleta conducting Jerome Moross’ Symphony No. 1, et al. [Koch CD rip], James Gaffigan’s reading of Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 [Challenge SACD rip], Stanislaw Skrowaczeski conducting Ravel Orchestra Works [Vox DAD 24/96 rip]), and Paul Bateman leading the City of Prague Symphony in a suite from the frequently hard-driving score of “The Proud Rebel” [The Cardinal: Classic Film Scores of Jerome Moross , Silva CD rip]). In every instance, and accounting for spatial and acoustic differences in the respective recording venues (and perhaps the production values of the recording teams), the result was the same: a sense of expanded, more tactile space; increased and more positionally-focused and closer-to-lifesized ensemble dimensionality; greater dynamic contrasts punctuated by increased speed in transient attack; and more liquid mids and highs complemented by a “gutsier-growlier” and at the same time more highly-defined bottom end.

Cueing up Bulgarian basso Nikolai Ghiaurov in the “Aria of Khan Konchak” from Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor (Emil Tchakarov conducting the Sofia Festival Orchestra [Sony CD rip]) revealed a taller, more fleshed out khan with a noticeably more dynamically- and inflection-nuanced voice that projected a more pronounced in-the-room presence. In a different tonal/timbral context, the duo of Mirella Freni and Christa Ludwig performing “Scuoti quella fronda…” from Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, Decca 24/96 download) did likewise, prompting Saint Mrs. to remark, “They sound much better than before.” In both instances, the orchestra accompanying the soloists was better delineated, more definitively layered, and spread out across a wider, airier soundstage.

On pop-oriented recordings not hard-panned to death, vocalists exhibited the same more-fleshed-out, life-sized, and timbrally-nuanced character of their operatic counterparts. This was true whether the venue was large-scale (e.g., Harry Belafonte singing “Jamaica Farewell” in Belafonte Live at Carnegie Hall, (RCA SACD rip) or Fredericka von Stade voicing Lorenz Hart’s deliciously unsanitized original lyrics to “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” in My Funny Valentine with John McGlinn leading the London Symphony Orchestra (EMI CD rip)) or far less spacious venues, as in Nancy Bryan’s rendition of “Nobody’s Buying” (Neon Angel, Analogue Productions SACD rip) or Steve Tyrell vocalizing “Ain’t Misbehaving” (Steve Tyrell: Standard Time, Sony Legacy SACD rip).

Given the foregoing, it should come as no surprise that massed choral, as auditioned here with the Turtle Creek Chorale’s rendering of “Make Our Garden Grow” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (Testament, Reference Recordings CD rip) and the Rutgers University Choir’s performance with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra of “Tempest est iocundum” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (Sony SACD rip), benefited commensurately in terms of vocal definition and purity of tone, ensemble layering and overall portrayal, the projection of attack, sustain, and decay into space, and dynamic scaling and punch with the Delta NR v2 in place, pushing the sense of performance-venue fusion with the listening space (and the in-the-room presence of individual instruments and voices) noticeably beyond the speaker disappearing act that had been achieved with the v1 feeding the DAC.

I’ve tried to avoid hyperbole up to now in describing what the DAC-connected Delta NR v2 has brought to the listening table. So I hope you’ll permit me a momentary indulgence: Completing the Delta “v2-ization” of the IEC-socketed components in the bedroom system has resulted in a sense of “being-there” realism (yes, I know that it’s an illusion) that is fricking reach-in-and-touch-someone mind-blowing. It also demonstrated compellingly just how critical it is to DAC performance to feed the component AC unpolluted by intra-system noise or hobbled by current limitation. The Delta NR v2 in this particular application has exceeded my expectations. The result is Unshackled, Spacious, and Transparent in "woo-hoo" spades.

I am pleased that the upgrade was dramatically worth it. That has always been my experience. So what do you do with the cables you replaced that you now know not to be as good and what about the next step up that you know to be even better??

Jalanrolls