[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by RRibeiro

Following Puma Cat advice, among many others here, I bought a Sigma and afterwards an Omega Ethernet to feed the ER > Nucleus+ > Sigma USB > Wadia s7i CD/DAC. Still in burnin with only 80 hours, but already an awsome improvement. Depth, enhanced dynamics and detail resolution. Wow...
Two surprises although to which, opinion were really welcome ��
1) I now use 2 points less in volume at teh pre-amp. Strange?
2) Not only Roon SQ is better, but also playing CD ( more depth, bloom, more dinamic). Can it be the less noise in the (same) Dac effect?

Great to hear the cables have worked out so well for you.

With respect to "less noise in the DAC effect". Yes, that's what the Shunyata cables are doing, they are attenuating and mitigating the impact of various "noise factors" for the signal that is going from the Nucleus to the Wadia DAC. Some of these noise components are common-mode noise, as well as phase noise and high-source impedance leakage current, which causes a form of jitter known as "threshold jitter." Also, the TAP device in the Omega Ethernet and the Sigma USB removes the impact of the longitudinal EM wave that propogates along the conductor, but actually is also a noise component, as the signal is actually carried on the transverse EM wave. The positive impact of the TAP device on the improvement in audio quality is very noticeable.

With respect to your CD playback, the Shunyata digital cables are also removing noise components from the signal ground planes of the overall system components. It's noteworthy to understand that your system components are not "separate devices", all independent and "isolated", one from other another, they are all connected together by yes...the signal cables, what we colloquially refer to as "the interconnects". So...they are all on the same ground plane(s).

So, any noise on the ground planes of one device gets carried through to all the other devices. So, when you use cables (upstream) that remove those noise components, you hear the impact on the overall system performance. This is also why your perception of the "playback volume" has increased, because when you remove more "noise" from the overall system, the "signal to noise" ratio is larger, and thus the perpection of an increase in volume is discernable.