Is the Maestro AC outlet basically a cryo'd Cooper BR20 found at Lowes for $3.47?


Quote from an AA member regarding the Maestro AC outlet. 


Image: Cooper BR20 AC Outlet

I think it’s safe to assume the Maestro AC outlet is a Cooper brand product that’s essentially the same or similar to the Cooper BR20 Commercial Grade AC outlet available at Lowe’s for $3.47. If so, the Maestro AC outlet is nothing more than an ordinary hardware store product that’s been cryo’d and treated with a sweet smelling, sticky substance (snake oil?). Perhaps this unknown coating is what can supposedly make a $3.47 AC outlet sound superior to a Furutech or Oyaide product. Sorry for the snarky commentary, but this type of thing can affect the reputation of bonafide Audio Grade AC products. I’m sure you will fully enjoy the new Furutech GTX-D(R) AC outlet, bcowen!

See link:

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/tweaks/messages/20/202332.html

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Here is the full Tweakers Asylum thread.

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/tweaks/messages/20/202315.html

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jea48
I’ve had the Synergistic UEF Black in the system for a week.
Let me get the questions posed out of the way.
Yes, it looks like the Pass Seymour outlet.
I did not do the magnet test: I had put it in immediately after it arrived. However, I wrote Synergistic and asked if the backstop was magnetic. Their response? It is a "magnetic alloy." So much for my theory...
Now, on to the sonics.
The first 14 hours, from the minute I played the first cut, around noon on October 27th until 2 a.m. on October 28, it showed promise of being a dazzling performer. The entire presentation was 3-D, meaning it had front-to-back depth instantly, instead of coming into it slowly. Voices (Rick James, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Mick Jagger) were extremely good in their closeness to their analogues in real life in regards to dynamics. Instruments and rhythm and timing were great: funk sounded funky and get-down-gritty. Waltzes sounded like ONE-two-three-ONE-two-three. I went to bed happy.
6 hours later. I get up, go into the room, and things have turned dismal. (Not that I didn’t expect this: I did. But still...) Voices blurred, instruments flat as a pancake, no space in between performers and zero depth. The next 24 hours, the music became shrill (it was NOT that way upon insertion). It sounded like a bunch of hissing cobras had attached themselves to the system, and instead of "ss", I got "szzzzzzzzzzzz". I finally left the room, waiting for that to pass. 24 hours later, it did, but then the system’s depth and inner detail disappeared. It sounded like it had gone from - visually - an accordion fully extended, to an accordion, fully compressed. NO depth. Voices were stiff and the overall sound dulled in the upper midrange and treble. Inflections (also called ’microdynamics’)??? What inflections?????? Everything sounded as though it played in a nearly anechoic chamber. Disconcerting, even though I knew it would change. Eventually. It was just breathtaking (and not in a good way) how much the sound had disintegrated. Incoherent. Listenable only because I’d heard it at 5 minutes after I put it in and saw its promise.
I got inventive and hooked up a space heater for a day, thinking (somewhat magically, in retrospect) that that would ’speed up’ the burn-in, but then realized how expensive that would be if left on 27/7 for weeks. And that current was current and as long as something was coming thru the outlet, that was probably good enough. (I’d had fans on the outlet via Shunyata’s PS8 strip (itself breaking in), but wasn’t sure if that would work as well. Hence the space heater over a 24 hour period a couple of days ago.
Yesterday was exactly one week at 12 noon. Still sounded good-ish, but still a bit stiff, although it was clearly improving. Listened yesterday for a few hours, stopped around 5 p.m. when a friend invited me over to dinner. Returned home at 8 p.m. and immediately went into the room to see what small changes had happened.
MERCY!!! Who switched stereos on me while I was out?!?!? Now, keep in mind, at one time I owned a Versa Dynamics 2.0 and 2.3 turntable, Goldmund Mimesis 9, Wilson WATT/Puppies (several generations of them), Convergent Audio, Jadis, Clearaudio cartridges, MIT, Transparent and Nordost stuff (which I got rid of before I left the West Coast. I say this only to indicate I’ve owned some very upper-tier equipment, so it is not easy to surpass that, given my current system is Shunyata power cords (Sigma and Alpha), an NAD C326BEE (the control amp for all experiments) Nordost Frey 2 interconnects, Nola Contenders and an old Aracm FMJ23 CD player, as well as a Rega 3. Nothing near what my old system was like. Oh, and the CJ ET3SE, which I’ve kept out of the system, because this IS a controlled experiment and the CJ would automatically advance the sonics rather dramatically.
So, the sound: Janis Joplin, singing Summertime on the Cheap Thrills lp, sounded dazzling. Her rasp, which previously, had been present, but nothing special, was suddenly magically present. The guitar solos had all the distortion and "buzziness" they should have had on other systems (except I didn’t listen much to classic rock, although I have a thousand albums, at least) of that. But even on this old CD, it was hard to pull myself away and go to bed. The system’s transparency had increased in the way it would if I’d not had the NAD as my amp, but instead put in say, a Hegel H80 amp. Along with a CJ ET5 preamp. 
I played Nina Simone, and suddenly, there’s a room around her, and the piano is lilting and lyrical, low-level detail such as the volume of a hall, is far more evident than I’d heard it even (based on memory) in my "Big" system from years ago.
Since this is only at 192 hours now, I have a ways to go (Synergistic wrote me and said, "300 hours"). But this far surpasses the Tesla SE unit and, keeping in mind that I own both the Furutech GTX-D Rhodium and the newer NCF outlets, is serious competition for the NCF. The ’fragility’ of instruments and voices has advanced far past what I heard.
It’s disturbing to think that the ac outlet has so much effect on sound. It makes me wonder what my older, ’BIG’ system would’ve sounded like if we had the kind of outlets then that we have now. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to have a $50k system like I had back in 1991 to achieve the immersion into the music that can be achieved now, although, of course, back then, I was less knowledgable about room acoustics, electricity and especially tube trap placement (which’ll kill your system faster than anything if you have the placement along the walls, or the orientation of the seam even remotely out of place).
I marvel that my dealer, with a room with a $100k system in it, does not approach the delicacy and fragility of my $15k system. It irritates me to hear his system, because it’s WATTS (the Alexia), ARC’s 14k preamp, Ayre monoblocks and Nordost Odin all throughout. Yet, it is so lifeless, I can barely restrain myself from barricading myself in their room, disassembling everything and putting it all back together myself. NO delicacy, although people will still think it sounds ’very clear’ and ’BIG’ (but only if you turn the volume up). It just plays music, but is not particularly engaging. I could easily read a book in their room while music was playing, something that is exceedingly unlikely to happen in this music room at home. There’s just too much being revealed in the way of the backup singers’ phrasing, infections and dynamics, placement of those singers, layering in the depth field. (Airiness is good, but not stellar at this point, but it’s an NAD amp: not known for upper frequency openers). It is hard to ’look away’ because the system is becoming highly transparent (NAD aside) and one can hear the dueling guitars in the Summertime break, as well as Patti Austin’s voice doubling itself in some songs, but backup singers in other songs, recognizable because the timbre of voices is so truthful, and the harmonic information now separates out individuals as individuals, rather than just a bunch of background singers lumped together. Can you get better? Of COURSE. For a huge amount of money. But can you be mesmerized by your modest system? If your electricity, line conditioning and room acoustics are all ace, you sure can.
Speaking of which, I played Summertime last night and measured how low the sound level could be and I could still be emotionally mesmerized by Joplin’s vocal renderings (it really is a much more breathtaking rendering of Summertime than I had previously even recognized on this disc): 60db. It was 5 a.m. and I’d woken up, and gone into the music room before I went back to bed. I intended to stay 5 minutes. I was in there for an hour.
When a system can mesmerize you at 60db, the components have become highly ’invisible’ and the music is now what’s running the show.
I’d like to hear the experiences of anyone else with this outlet. I can’t be the only one who has it. I am NOT saying it is ’IT’. I AM saying that what it does for $250 is more what I would expect from a newer and much superior preamp around 5k - or higher. Or an amp around 10k (which in old days, would be 4k).

I don’t own the outlet, however I know from using the SR Black fuses that there is a long break in process.
I’m glad you are enjoying the outlet and that it has improved the sound quality of your music.
BTW; very nice review ;-)!

Gbmcleod, 

I have used both these and their lastest incarnations. 

I found both outlet are very good,  almost a yin and yang kind of difference. 

There both do things very well but have a sound in a different polar directions. 

Simply put,  the Furutech beat the Blacks in the mid regions texture and sound much more organic.  The blacks have better frequency extremes and a drier mid region and sound more technical. 

Depending on how one's systems sounds,  choosing incorrectly the use of either of these plugs and one could be missing out sonically in an important way,  though both will sound very very good. 
Justubes, thanks for the observations. I'll have to listen to everything plugged in to the Shunyata line distributor - and all on one outlet -  to determine what's responsible for the sound I'm getting.
Do you have both of these in your system now? What type of equipment have you tested it with? I'm about to insert the tubed CJ ET3SE into the system to see how the sound changes. 

Gbmcleod, 

I havent been auditioning equipment so am not in a position to comment how these 2 outlets synergise with certain charateristic of particular brands of equipment each given there particlar sonic footprints.  

I have a teslaplex se feeding a psaudio p300(with red fuse)  which has a Ncf and black outlet. 

The black feeds my esoteric k01x and clock and the ncf feeds a bsgt qol,  w4s/sonos streamer and FMC switch(with black fuses)  and i find it just rightly balanced now although i have another black outlet and gtx to introduce. 

I have tried adding the gtx elsewhere,  but now leads to a slightly warmer,  mid centric balance which is more musically pleasing to the ear but not as extended in the extremes over the mix of outlets i am using now. 

I do however find both outlets  have a very distinct sonic footprint even when used on another power line feeding my router and internet. But dont discount both as the very best overall soynding outlets. 

I have used all incarnations of oyaide (now totally removed),  wattages and some earlier furutech outlets and used and still using all incarnations of synergistic outlets. 

Of interest is that my red fuse has intentionally been installed in the p300 in the wrong direction.  This gives a slight less upfront,  vivid and detailed presentation as the "added clarity and forward focus" sounds less relaxing and musical to me.  The black fuse in this location upstream again adds another small meaningful stepup up in clarity and detail,  again seems too much. I am thus hesistant  to replace the Teslaplex se with the black outlet upstream before the ps regenerator. 

The trick is that there is no clear winner between with the blacks and gtx/ncf or the red and black fuses and find they complement each strengths of outlets  and fuses as they have different sonic character and excels in different areas. 

The time i have spent comparing the Red and Black fuse and also had used  the SR20 many year back is that the red fuse went the way of a softer more musical presentation.  Now the black fuse has added clarity,  definition and frequency extremes,  but also a less musicall saturated tonality which i find as a slight washout sonically(but allows a better perception of depth as the details are nit upfront compwting wirh one another) and takes a step back in time towards the presentation of the SR20 fuse.  

My summary is that the black outlet will most certainly work in a warmer less upfront sounding system and the gtx in systems wanting more fullness and richer musicality in a less technical fashion.  

Again,  introducing a number of both these outlets might still be the best compromise to acheive the best sonic balance when used synergistically together in whichever mix and number in any given system where one has carefully strived to achieve a more sonically balanced presentation. 

I am unfortuantely not familiar wirh the current cj gear,  but have owned the 12monos and 14 pre years back. Then intending to upgrade to the 17 and 16 pre lead me to finding a different setup. When auditiing the cheaper 17, the gains in dynamics,  clarity was a jump improvement purely on technical aspects as the comparing the 16 again took away from this technical presentation with a new level of musicality lead me to stratch my head and seek out an overall more balanced soumding equipment that is more acceptable over a larger genres of music. 

I have gone though my share of  phases of upgrading or so called changing the setup and tweak towards a particular sonic presentation where clearly direction  of tweak or cables away made an distinct improvement and relate back where i would have solely and clearly chosen the black outlet/fuse presentation.  They have voice their tweak in a certain direction similarly and will appeal to a larger audience,  who doeant like added definity,  clarity,  tighter bass etc.  All sound great,  but there is no free lunch where one should carefully assess areas where these gains may cause detraction in other area,  much like a see saw i must say. 

Overtime,  i understood that is was purely a result of my earlier system not being balanced enough and overly skewed in 1 sonic direction and found adding certain tweaks giving tigher bass,  clarity etc to compensate for this difficiency.