From Transparent to Shunyata?
 

Hey Gang,

I've been away quite a while putting my life back together after divorce. So, I'm no longer in Westchester, NY; I'm in Hawaii. And thankfully, I'm in a far better place now. The system will be shipped here to my newly purchased home within the next several months. I CAN'T WAIT!!

But...

Before the divorce, I was toying with the notion of swapping out all my Transparent Cables for Shunyata. As an engineer by trade, I was enamored with Shunyata's R&D that was always available for public consumption, versus "proprietary" processes always kept secret by other high end cable manufacturers.

Has anyone ever moved from Transparent Audio Reference to Shunyata? If so, I'd love to hear all about it.

This is my current system make-up:

Lamm Industries L2
Meitner MA-1 DAC
Aurender A10 Music Server
Lamm M1.2 Reference Mono Amps
Wilson Audio Sasha W/P
Silent Running Audio Scuttle 3
Silent Running Audio VR Series IsoBases
Transparent Audio PowerIsolator MM
Transparent Audio PowerIsolator 8
Transparent Audio Reference XLMM2 RCA IC
Transparent Audio Reference Balanced ICs
Transparent Audio Reference XLMM2 Spkr Cable
Transparent Audio PowerLink Premium Power Cords

Thanks in advance...

That's a great system line up and I can definitely relate on the personal life aspects.

I cannot comment on TA specifically however I can tell you all about great musical results finally achieved after trying many other brands over a couple decades and coming back to Shunyata digital and power cables and also their industry leading power conditioners. My whole system is anchored on Shunyata and Elrod cables and I say that will not change.

Happy to share thoughts offline by phone, etc...

I have all Shunyata power products and all TA analog signal products which reflects my experience of each’s strengths. If you want to fry Shunyata I would recommend starting with their power products,cables and conditioners.

Interesting question. I have been told that the Transparent Gen 5 has been a huge jump for Transparent. So, if you were going to upgrade, now would be the time to ask the question and change camps if appropriate. I was upgrading components as I upgraded my Transparent, so I can’t really say anything about Mm2 to Gen 5... I also went from RCA to XLR.

I would make sure that you are able to audition any cable changes you are going to make at length. I've had Transparent, Shunyata and MIT all in my system and between me and my wife and my son we could never agree on which was best as they are all very different for sure! In my opinion all great cables so more personal preference and system synergy.

BTW ... I won since it was my system :-)

George

Great hardware TheSaint519! Like ariess, I've used a combination of TA for signal cables and Shunyata for all the power cables and power distributors. About a year ago, I upgraded my very old TA Reference cables for Gen 5 and found it to be a big improvement. BTW, TA just announced a Gen 6 line. FYI, I also have Wilson Sashas and ARC amps (3SE, 6SE and 250SE). I have not tried the Shunyata interconnects or speaker cables as I've always like the sound of Wilsons and Transparent. IMO, Shunyata's strength is in their power products; Transparent's is in their signal cables.

I also own Lamm M1.2’s and Wilson Alexia. I have XLG5 signal cables which I upgraded from RefMM2. For many years I had all Shunyata power products. A few years ago I demo’ed the TA G5 power cords starting with the Reference thru Opus against Shunyata Sigma HC, Digital and Analog power cords. Each TA cord was not surprisingly better than the next and I preferred the sound of the Reference to the Sigma. I now have TA XLG5 power cords and XL power isolators the PIXL replaced Triton V3 and Typhon for sources and Denali for amps.
TA recently announced the Gen 6 version of their signal cables which means the power products in their Ref and up will be released in the future. I likely will not upgrade the signal cables due to the cost.

I would suggest you demo their G5 Ref and XL cords against the latest Shunyata Sigma and your existing cords. I found each other’s cords were not compatible with the others power conditioners so I compared direct to the wall for sources and amps.

Shunyata's power products have improved with new technologies since Sigma HC. If you haven't heard the Noise-Reduction technology on their current series of power cords, you definitely should. This technology evolved out of their Clear Image Scientific Division, where their technology is used for cardiac imaging, where the data from using conventional cables is obscured by noise.

https://photos.imageevent.com/puma_c...23.52%20PM.jpg

Why is this important in audio? A quote from Caelin on this:
"The design of a power cable can significantly affect the reactance of these signals within the power supply. The power cable is effectively part of the primary winding of the power transformer. The transition between the various metals used in a power cable and its connectors can cause electromagnetic reflections and diode-like rectification of the noise impulses as they propagate away from the power supply. If the power cable presents a high impedance to these signals they will be reflected back into the power supply where they will intermodulate, thus increasing the high frequency noise levels of the component. Most power supply filters are ineffective at blocking very high frequency noise components and much of it is passed through to the DC rails."

The NR filters on the Shunyata PCs prevent this from happening, so that the power distribution chain stays as clean as possible from these noise components. You can visually see the impact of this in the cardiac traces above.

Shunyata's cable lineup from the Alpha line and higher have proprietary technologies that address the principal class of noise components for each cable type.

Specifically:

1. NR for power cords; mitigates component-to-component interferance as described above.
2. TAP for signal cables: addresses electromagnetic polarization distortion caused by longitudinal EM waves in signal cables
3. HARP for speaker cables: mitigates current mode cable resonance. Demos I've arranged for audio buddies to hear HARP leaves them talking about it for days afterward; no joke.
4. CMode for digital cables: mitigates impact of common-mode noise in digital cables

As always, my recommendation would be to rent in, and see what works for you in your system and your room.

I moved from Transparent to Shunyata on my three pieces of dCS gear but stayed with Transparent on my amps and pre-amp. At this time I have no interest in making additional changes.

I wouldn't want to "fry" shunyata, but I agree with everything else Adam said here :D