Review: World Power Receptacle Cryoed Hubbell 5362 Tweak

Category: Accessories

I should preface this review by saying that over the past year and a half or so I have experimented with a number of standard receptacles, including the Pass and Seymour 5262, the Arrow Hart 8200, spec grade Levitons, older hospital grade Bryants, older hospital grade Levitons that were included as "original equipment" with my line conditioner(s) and the Hubbell 8200/8300 series. Listening to receptacles is, in a nutshell, a real pain in the neck, and I discovered (although it took me some time to figure it out) that with stock/standard receptacles, you could only really make a judgment if you were running the same receptacle throughout the system; in other words, in my system I had to change out the receptacle at the wall, as well as the receptacles in my line conditioner, which was not an easy task.
Experimentation with the above units led me, finally, to the conclusion that the standard Hubbell 8200/8300 units offered the best performance from those listed above. In my opinion, the Hubbell's excelled at delivering the most "accurate" portrayal of the music; compared to the others, they were much smoother and less "distorted", with a blacker background. They were also clearly superior in terms of ambient or venue information, probably as a result of the blacker background, and particularly front to back depth information. They didn't seem to "hype" or overemphasize any part of the frequency spectrum the way the other receptacles did.

This review, however, is of the "World Power" cryoed Hubbell 5362 receptacle. First of all, I am an audio cheapskate, and the idea of a $55 receptacle seemed pretty absurd to me, but I can assure you that it no longer does.

My listening results reported here are based on replacing a stock Hubbell 8300 at the wall (no dedicated lines here unfortunately) with a cryoed 5362 from World Power/Audio Excellence. I have a basic system using an Audiolab 8000A integrated amp running off this receptacle, as well as an Inouye Line conditioner running off the same receptacle which in turn powers my analogue and digital sources. The receptacles in the line conditioner, at the time of this review, remain the Hubbell 8200's.

I have been using this receptacle for about a month now, but the impressions I am posting were evident in critical listening sessions performed about 8-10 hours after installation of the receptacle, allowing time for my gear (which I leave powered on 24 hours a day) to re-stabilize after being shut down.

The immediate first impression was of: 1) a crystalline clarity without edge or glare (many receptacles I've tried have tended to "hype" or push forward the mid range, kind of fooling you into believing there is more detail there when in fact it is just being pushed in your face, and with distortion to boot-exciting but fatiguing and not accurate-not the case with the cryoed Hubbell)
2) an even blacker and quieter background, allowing sounds to emerge out of a much more defined "space", particularly a front to back space in my system, although horizontal sound stage also increased marginally (not in my opinion a real area of strength with my system, though) and 3) a fleshing out, or blossoming of both vocal and instrumental information; everything just seems to sound more "real". With instruments, it was probably most notable with saxophone and piano-there is a fullness and "roundness" for lack of a better word with these and other instruments. CD recordings that I had previously found to be thin and "glary" seemed much less so. I find many of the more recent Verve releases to be particularly guilty of this, among them: Jimmy Smith "Damn", Ronnie Earle and the Broadcasters "The Colour of Love" and Diana Krall's
"When I Look in Your Eyes". Recordings like this, which had previously been strident seemed much less so-with female vocals like Etta James and Diana Krall, sibilance was greatly reduced if not totally removed and with male vocals like Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, there was a "chesty" almost cold-like quality that disappeared and was replaced by a real resonance in the male voice that I had never heard before-it was quite remarkable and 4) Bass performance was enhanced with bass becoming both more tuneful and extended while not "overwhelming" the rest of the presentation 5) the music became much more "transparent"-you could hear into the performance much more, and particularly with dynamic passages, my system and the music sounded much less congested and "disoriented" when the going got tough.

The really amazing thing that happened, within my system, was that instrumental and vocal images seemed to increase by about 25%, something I had not come remotely close to hearing with stock receptacles. This, obviously, results in a much more life like and real sound, and really impressed me.

Quite striking to me is the fact that these improvements were clearly audible replacing only the receptacle at the wall, although, clearly that is the most important one in my system. I'm looking forward to replacing the line conditioner receptacles as well to take the system to the next level. I honestly never thought I'd be recommending a $55 receptacle, but put in the context of a reasonably good mid-fi or high end system, this is a tremendous bargain in terms of what it does. Clearly, the cryo treatment is doing something very beneficial-hearing is believing. I'd rank it conservatively at giving a performance upgrade of between 50-100% of what a good (but maybe not astronomical) interconnect or power cord upgrade will give you. So for a receptacle, it's expensive, but as a component, which it should be viewed as, it is really quite cheap.

More to follow when the line conditioner units are replaced.

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Product Weakness: Costly when viewed as a receptacle, but not as a component, which it should be viewed as.
Product Strengths: As above

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Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier: Audiolab 8000A with Cardas Power Cord
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): None
Sources (CDP/Turntable): Mychell Gyro/FT3/Ortofon MC 20 Super RCA 5223P CD/DVD player with Harmonic Tech adapter to 47 Labs DIY power cord
Speakers: Elipson 1313
Cables/Interconnects: 47 Labs OTA with Eichmann Bullet Plugs/Kimber 8TC with Postmaster spades
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Tom Waits/Mule Variations Leonard Cohen/Ten New Songs Etta James/Heart of a Woman Diana Krall/Only Trust Your Heart etc. Bob Dylan/Love and Theft Otis Rush/Any Place I'm Going The Brian Setzer Orchestra Jimmy Smith/Damn Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters/The Colour of Love etc., etc.
Room Size (LxWxH): 21 ft. x 14 ft. x 8 ft.
Room Comments/Treatments: none
Time Period/Length of Audition: 4 weeks
Other (Power Conditioner etc.): Inouye Line Conditioner with Hubbell 8200 Stock Receptacles and Cardas Power Cord
Type of Audition/Review: Product Owner