Synergistic Research IC Active Shielding

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

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.

Hi Bob; Thanks for the detailed report on the Syn. Res. MCC, I've been curious about it for a long time. I only have two pairs of shielded ICs, so I probably won't go to the MCC, but the Mini power supplies for shields certainly seem to be worth it. In fact I had to decrease speaker toe-in to accommodate the cleaner, more dynamic presentation of the SR Mini shield modules. It's interesting that the MCC provides a choice two voltages. Do you happen to know the voltage of the Minis? Cheers. Craig.

No Mr. Garland I don't know that shielding voltage, but a VOM test would tell very quickly. I wonder if S.R. offers a choice? Or if you might be able to swap out the one-chip DC regulator inside of a wall wart supply?
For myself I asked them for an ADJUSTABLE range of shielding voltage, but the reply was a humorous "no" as customers would then be asking them "is it better at 14.7 volts or at 22.3786 volts (you get the idea).

I was also looking at the Master Control Center, but thought I'd investigate this new MPC product - since it;s only $50, much less than the big unit! Synergistic says they do the same thing, though the big unit is "more refined" and has a big power cord. I was told that it passes a current into the shield and "turbocharges" the shield, while it charges the dielectric at the same time, so it secures the conductor purity or something (that's where he lost me). I did a demo on the dealers system and it sounded AWESOME - richer and more dynamic soundstage - but I haven't been to this dealer before, so I wondered if anyone else tried it. Glad to hear others have had positive results.