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Synergistic Research IC Active Shielding

Syn. Res. IC users that have the ICs with the "pigtails", ie set up for active shielding are probably aware of the $1000. box that provides the power for the active shields. Well, SR now has "wall wart" power supplies for a single pair of "pigtail" equipped ICs. I got two of these a couple days ago and like them a lot. SR has an introductory price of $50. apiece ($75. list). Mine came from A Sanctuary of Sound-- a good Audiogon Dealer.

I first plugged these wall warts (they have about 3 ft. leads) into a Monster HTS 1000 power strip, which was plugged into a dedicated outlet-- but forgot to turn the power strip on-- and listened for 3 hours. Duh! These first 3 hours, music sounded too bright, analytic and gave me a headache-- I think there may have been some kind of negative antenna affect going on? And I was wondering if the dealer would take them back?

But when I went to unplug them, I realized that the Mini's were not powered, and the shields not active. After ACTUALLY GIVING THEM POWER, music had a completely different and improved character, whehter compared to the non-powered Minis or compared to my system without them. I don't want to use a lot of Stereophile verbiage here, but I will say music was natural, some edge was gone from what I thought were overly bright CDs, but the most striking improvement was in soundstaging-- stronger and wider, while still sounding natural. The overall improvement was definitely worthwhile, but not dramatic. I sure recommend them. Cheers. Craig.
garfish
garfish OP
1,840 posts
 
........I should note that I've only used the Mini's a couple of days, and so don't know if there is a "break-in" factor. I will report back if anything significantly different happens. Craig
ikarus
113 posts
 
Fully agree. Those things took away the 'edge'. I have them 2~3 weeks now. I haven't noticed any break-in effects. I'm told by the dealer that the leads supplied by the 'mini's are different than the original active shielding leads. (According to him) Synergistic will now be using this 'new-and-improved' leads.
garfish OP
1,840 posts
 
Ikarus; thanks for confirming that I wasn't having a "placebo moment". Anyone else out there with experience with either Syn. Res. Active Shield Box or these new "Mini" shield devices. Thanks. Craig.
myoussif
81 posts
 
Craig,
I see you went back to SR cable. I am still using the res. reference with the active sheilding. The word of wisdom is if you ever pick up a used box, make sure it is the new kind with new type of cables. The older type of cable had a bad connectors on them which will get loose and burn the unit. It happened with me and SR guys were too nice and sent me for the free the new type cables with a new module.
good luck.
Mohamed
bob_bundus
1,834 posts
 
Completely agree with the "smoothing of edginess" and "enhancements in staging" but I would say that the dramatic staging improvement is most immediately noticable. I also noticed a blacker noise floor with the active shielding.
There are two major differences between the wall wart power modules & the Master Control Center. (1) With the MCC you can change AC cords, which has a definite effect on the sound. I don't have a clue about why this happens because in my mind it shouldn't have any effect at all, but it definitely does. When I borrrowed a dealer-demo MCC before ordering my own, I also borrowed every AC cord made by Synergistic. Best sonic results were achieved with their best cord, the Designer Reference Squared. It's a lot more $ but worth it.
(2) The MCC DC output modules actually have two different DC shielding voltages available; 15 volts & 30 volts (you don't have this choice with the wall warts). J1 & J2 are 30 volt active shields. J3 is a 15 volt active shield, and according to Synergistic's Scott Novak the lower voltage may work better on source components. I found that this sounded better on my CD player source, but my turntable & tuner seemed to sound the same using either voltage. Preamp to poweramp also seemed to sound the same either way.
(3) Also: the MCC offers availablilty of a second output module, allowing up to 6 pair of interconnects to be active shielded. I bought the second module also because now I have two lower-voltage shields available for experimentation, and I have a number of SR interconnects so I needed it anyway.
Overall I would recommend this active shielding system mainly for "better" rigs, where you can really appreciate the improvements. I would probably not use it for just an average quailty A/V setup.
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