Shunyata Research's Denali 2000T ???

Hi lak,

I am sure you are enjoying the Denalis now because they certainly do sound good on their own.
My message is more to those who already own a Triton v1/v2 and who may have read reviews extolling the virtues of the Denali over the v1/v2, and like myself, are considering upgrading to the Denalis. 
If you do catch the upgrade bug one day and a used Triton v1/v2 happens to come your way, simply give it a listen at home as a comparison to the Denalis. You may just be amazed, like myself, as to how good the v1 can be. :)

Happy listening. J. 

@jon2020 If you are experiencing blunted transients and loss of speed it isn’t the Denali; rather, it’s something else in your system. The loss of air I believe will depend upon how your tweeters are designed. Noise floor - come on, it’s ridiculously low with the Denali - to say otherwise lacks credibility.

I purchased a 6000/S and after I purchased my D’Agostino M400 monos (which I expected to solve system speed and transients issues given the nasty impedance curve of my speakers) was experiencing all of the symptoms you are describing. For a sanity check, I pulled out the Denali and while the noise floor was higher, all the speed, attack, air and shimmer returned.

So I emailed my dealer just to let him know my experience and that the Denali was coming out of my system. He was really surprised and said that the Denali was one of the few products in his many years in audio that had almost universally positive feedback, particularly with high end systems. He said he’d email Shunyata and let me know. Shunyata couldn’t understand why the Denali was doing that but sent some things to try - one of which is to use the unit as intended (I had been sitting it on its side on two HRS nimbus assemblies due to lack of space - the 6000/T was too wide to fit in the same space due to its spread out feet).

I was planning on doing my biennial system cleaning anyway and stripped the system down completely and temporarily configured the system so that the Denali was used as intended - on its own feet on hard tile over concrete. Turned the system on and WOW were there transients, but the top end still didn’t have the proper air and shimmer.

I know my speakers and they are tipped down in the brilliance region (which generally helps with real world untreated rooms but is the region that produces air and shimmer) so I figured that the Denali was doing something Focal did not expect - delivering very clean power. Thankfully, this was solvable thanks to Focal’s wonderful jumper system - I set the tweeter jumper to high (a +1db boost) and the treble was again airy with the right shimmer.

So all good? Not quite. I started to reassemble the system and as I usually do, placed HRS nimbus assemblies under all components and cable network boxes. UGH! Sluggish again and blunted transients. Hmm... So I started systemically removing the nimbus assemblies, first from the speaker networks and then from the interconnect networks. Transient attack and speed returned to almost where it was before (for the components, the superior top to bottom effect of the nimbus assemblies warranted their remaining despite a shade of lessened transient speed - as far as I can tell this lessening has to do with my preamp not being on an HRS M3 platform (due to space issues) since it was only when placing the nimbus under the pre that there was any minor detrimental effect on transient speed).

Morals of the story for me - use components as intended/the manufacturer knows best, get to know your system (speaker measurements are invaluable although that’s more a result of the good fortune of having a stereophile review which includes measurements) and sometimes you can’t understand what something is doing until you take away other things (even if those things that you take away worked amazingly well earlier).

@bar81,

Thanks for sharing your experience with the Denali 6000. They certainly do sound good on their own and I am wondering what you were using before the Denali 6000.

For my setup, I just kept everything the same as before with only the Denali or Triton substituted throughout the comparison.
With my very much familiarised system which has been rather constant over the past 2 years or so, I had all the transients, air, shimmer, rhythm and pace, bass, midrange and tone just right.

Once the Denali replaced the Triton v1, the gestalt sounded blunted, slower, less airy, thicker or congealed with less separation of instruments and murkier soundstage. The Denali’s noise floor was indeed higher than the Triton in between tracks and during quiter passages which can be heard, and as evidenced also by its higher overall volume.

The Denali sat on a well-isolated platform on top of footers as was the Triton. From this, I can’t say that any of the other components were missing anything before the Denali was inserted into the chain. Switching back to the Triton restored every drawback heard with the Denali.

I guess this is what it is for my system and I just can’t bear to part with the Triton v1 for some time yet. :)

J.