New Power Conditioner in the System

[Kal Rubinson]

The question is, does it sound like one as well? (Sorry, but it was too good a line to pass up)

The question is, which end is missing the head?

 

[stehno]

Still burning-in, but I like what I hear so far.
I have everything, including my mono amps and plasma TV, plugged into this monster.
You hear the terms - veils lifted, 3-D imaging, etc.
That's what I'm hearing and I assume it will only get better.
One thing nice is that the power cords plugged into it seem to react the same - whether they are inexpensive and expensive cords.
So I'm thinking it will save me the cost of using expensive cords on everything feeding into it - we'll see.
Also, may experiment with the grounding posts provided on the conditioner.
Rick Schultz told me they also are routed through the massive magnetic Waveguides.

gfroman, I didn't wanna cloud matters with my earlier post but based on dates of your prior posts it seems by now that your beautiful looking line conditioner should be well burned-in (hope you're rather pleaseed with its performance). Anyway, I wanted to toss out another suggestion for potentially significant and immediate performance gains. Well, maybe after a few hours of warm up.

I noticed you're using some fairly high-powered Jeff Rowland amps, a Meitner pre-amp, and the OPPO 105d? as your source.

6 years ago on a whim I purchased a $1300 OPPO 105D. Surprisingly, right out of the box after several days burn-in the OPPO just barely edged out over my $8500 Esoteric UX-3SE with its imfamous VRDS transport, etc. So I kept the OPPO and sold the Esoteric.

Shortly thereafter, I swapped out my $8500 BMC C1 int. amp for a pair of $3600 Wyred-4-Sound SX-1000 575wpc Class D monoblock amps which in comparison made the BMC (no slouch) sound like a $100 Best Buy receiver. But with this purchase I found myself with no pre-amp available so for the interim I tried the OPPO's passive volume attentuator. I'll spare you the sonic benefits but I sure was glad I purchased the OPPO to replace my Esoteric.

Also, I noticed with the OPPO that performance differences between using the OPPO's transport and an SSD disk plugged into one of the USB ports was for the most part negligible so I stayed focused on the transport. Yet, over the next few months out of convenience I found myself more and more using the USB port as I started ripping more CD's to the SSD. Then one day the lights came on, presumably the USB signal processing section reached full burn-in status from intermittent use. I'll spare you the sonic benefits but boy, was I ever glad I purchased the OPPO to replace my Esoteric.

I love dynamics (who doesn't?) and because of superior (as opposed to inferior) line conditioning and some things I do with vibration mgmt I've always prided myself on having one of the most dynamic playback systems I've heard. For this reason I swore years earlier I'd never cross over to a passive pre. If you haven't noticed it seems very few who try going the passive pre- route ever do so with high-powered amplification. So the usual result is more pristine highs but complaints about stripped dynamics. However, since acquiring the OPPO 105D and utizing its passive volume attenuator combined with high-powered amps, I've sworn for 6 years now that I'll never go back to an active gainstage pre-amp. At least so long as I have high-powered amps as the dynamics are now significantly more natural and realistic than previously. And as you may discover too, that's really an understatement.

If you've not yet tried using your OPPO's passive volume attenuator by connecting directly into your high-powered amps (by-passing the Meitner preamp) you should be in for a real and significant treat (read the manual first if you do). Between the OPPO's volume attenuator and USB processing option (by-passing the OPPO's transport) it should amount to a handful of very significant musical surprises. I wouldn't wanna' spoil any surprises to cloud your judgement but if you try this, but my hunch is you'll be kicking yourself for not trying this sooner.

And of course, there's always the anscilary benefits of the less is more strategy. One less component translating to more performance due to one less component dealing with noisy AC, unwanted mechanical energy, and one less set of interconnets and their connections.

 

[gfroman]

My EMM Labs DV2 is both my DA and Preamp - best of both worlds.
My system has never sound better, with the addition of the PRO Power Conditioner.
Dead quiet and really spooky 3D imaging.
I use my Oppo 105 for streaming Netflix and spinning BluRay movies only.
All my 7000 music files ripped from CD's to my SSD and played through JRiver Media Center 25.
Cables are High Fidelity, Purist Audio Design, and Shunyata Alpha USB.
I also have done a cheap tweak by connecting my EMM Labs DA, Oppo, and mono-amps using the Signal Grounding wires to my High Fidelity PRO conditioner.
Thanks!