Hello Jim,
Ian came over to my place this afternoon to listen to my new system and to then join a third friend for dinner. He brought the new CC power cords that you had ordered, listened to and then sent to him. Ian had mentioned that he did not hear much difference between the new CCs and his two NOS CCs.
We first listened to my system as is currently configured with five NOS CCs and then replaced the NOS CCs with the new CCs on the dual mono preamp. We let the system stabilize and listened to two tracks: Ray Brown/Almeida, MoonLight Serenade and Beethoven’s Violin Sonata.
I heard a difference pretty quickly and the effect was apparent throughout the two recordings. We then switched back to the NOS CCs and within the first few seconds of the Violin Sonata, I knew which I preferred. All it took was hearing the timpani at the opening of the Sonata.
The new CCs made the timpani sound solid, black and small. The NOS CCs made the timpani sound hollow, set deep in the stage, full of tonal color with resonant energy that decayed beautifully. It had a nice muffled stick, sudden and sure footed, deep impact and soft. Very natural. The new CCs made the timpani sound synthetic and hard.
In the sonata, the whole feeling was grand, open, living breathing musicians playing instruments that were full of tonal color and energy. The new CCs made it sound pushed, too focused, with stark contrast. In camera terms, almost as if one punches up the sharpness meter in post processing. There was a hyper contrast and flattening of the sound. It was constricted. There was a crisper leading edge to transients. The guitar moved forward in the mix and seemed more immediate, while the stand up bass that Brown was bowing seemed to shrink and get really dense. The texture of the bow on the strings was pronounced and shouted at you. The NOS CCs had much more natural tone, especially on that stand up bass. The sound was more relaxed, less hyper and expanded into the room more naturally. There was more natural wood tone, the instrument was more hollow and it resonated longer as the energy hung in space until the instrument settled down. It was much more convincing to me.
In the Sonata, there are a few really loud passages where the orchestra builds up right before the violin makes its appearance. With the new CCs, that build up was a shouting for attention. Way too much contrast to the softer passages. With the NOS CCs, that build up grew organically, was softer and less pronounced but related to the softer music and more a part of the whole rather than something separate.
The difference was really startling for me. The new CCs reminded me of some of my old gear that highlighted frequencies, constricted dynamics, and choked the sound. The NOS CCs simply sounded natural, adding nothing and removing nothing. Of course I can’t be sure, but they sounded right.
I was hoping that I would not hear a difference so that you could order a bunch of these for your friends and people would have some alternative to David’s rapidly dwindling supply. Sadly, I would not want to use these in my system. The new system is so revealing that the differences were easily heard.
I gave the cords back to Ian and I think he will send them back to you. I appreciate the effort to which you went to get these so that the three of us could all hear them in our systems, but for me they are a failure. Perhaps Ian will add his thoughts to this email chain. I will also send a copy to David as I am sure he is curious.
Below are a couple of photos. The cables and wires are a mess but will remain so until I get my new rack and clean things up. The connectors definitely look different. They are different color and shape. The IEC end is also slightly looser fitting into the backs of the gear, which is not good. The NOS are very snug. David found a really good power cord.
Do you mind if I share the results of this experiment on my system thread on WBF? I understand if you would rather keep this information to yourself.
Have a good weekend,
Peter
