Short Review of Revelation Audio Passage Cryo-Silver™ Reference umbilical power cable


First, my system: I have an ARC REF6, a Pass Labs 250.8 amp, Wilson Audio Sabrina X speakers, and since I am fully digital, an MSB Discrete DAC with a Premier Power Base. I stream from a dedicated music server to the DAC. I had upgraded all of my cables to Shunyata Alpha’s. They are excellent cables by the way. The only thing left were two skinny stock power umbilical from the Premier Power Base to the Discrete DAC. After reading about these Revelation Audio Power cables specifically for the MSB power supply to the DAC, and a 30 day money-back guarantee, at $689 shipped, it seemed like a fairly inexpensive tweak. I couldn’t imagine how or why replacing these power cables between the DAC and power supply would make any real difference at all, but I decided to try them. From Order to receipt was five days. Hooked them up and let them run for 24 hours. I am not one to gush, especially over cables, but I have to admit that somehow, for some reason, these made a noticeable positive difference in my system.

First, and most noticeable to me, the soundstage had more depth, more 3 dimensionality. That alone was worth it because I felt that the soundstage had lacked depth. Now it has more. The second thing that I noticed was that the instruments had more defined placement in the soundstage, against a blacker background. On music that I knew intimately and routinely use as test music, such as Patricia Barber’s excellent Companion XRCD, Dark Side of the Moon, Gary Burton/Ralph Towner’s Matchbook, both of these improvements were immediately noticeable. Third, the instruments themselves had better tone, especially the cymbals and bass, and sounded "smoother" but still detailed. Now, I have no idea why these cables work, or what’s in them. I do know that if you are using MSB stock umbilicals, you will love these cables. For $689, it is a very cheap upgrade!

One word about Brad and Revelation Audio. There are several mostly old threads discussing customer service problems, long shipping delays and lack of response. When I first emailed him, I raised these issues and said that I wanted to pay for them COD. No problem. Brad was very responsive, they shipped immediately and even confirmed that they had arrived and that I was happy with them. So whatever problems there may (or may not) have been in 2010-2017, when most of the bad experiences apparently occurred, that is apparently in the past. Brad was a pleasure to deal with, and the product is high quality. In short, I highly recommend these umbilicals!

moto_man

I confess it was me that pulled the response. Was going to edit the draft then the interest fizzled out. Lastly @roxy54 there is no arm twisting, simply my observations and opinion. Say a designer creates a beautiful wooden box filling it with magic beans and a responsive polite story that’s good enough for… Sorry the majority needs more !

@1971gto455ho 

You're making the assumption that you're the majority. I don't think that you are. Aside from that, these cords are far from "magic beans in a wooden box", and since you don't own one, you're in no position to make any judgement about them.

@roxy54, I think that he was bemoaning the fact that so many expensive cables are sold on sizzle and no actual objective empirical data to back that sizzle up.  I too wonder why improvements in sound by cables cannot be objectively measured, or at a minimum, measure differently in some fashion.  That doesn't mean that cable X does not do anything more than generic cable, and I certainly hear audible differences.  But as I observed above, I would think that if there is an audible difference, there should be a measurable difference as well.  There must be some measurable difference between these Revelation umbilicals and the stock ones.  Logic would dictate that some measurements must be different, right? Inductance, capacitance, the silver 5N wire instead of copper, something must be measurably different . . . 

Certainly @roxy54 no need to knot up the panties, I made no comment on your ‘Seemingly’ better timbre purchase. Perhaps a tally of the people that have bought into the power cable market is in order. Again is it too much to ask for some (any) technical reasoning on any audio product ? 

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