Both new Summit AC's arrived from Wayne today. One of them went on the Ultimate right away. The other is waiting in the wings.
Current setup is the full mod analog SB2 playing through the Sonic Euphoria PLC, mono BEL 1001's to the Nomad Audio Ronins, Reality Cable IC's and speaker cables, Cardas Golden Reference power cords on the amps, plugged into an RSA Haley conditioner with a MAC Delta power cord. As it is, this is already a very transparent yet musically satisfying combo. After a week of constant tweaking, the Ronins are settled into the right spots and really sounding great. I was honestly very comfortable with how far they had come in my short time with them.
Then, I dropped in the Summit AC cord in place of the Black Sand Violet Z1 on the Ultimate MKII. I knew something was up, but decided to let it play the rest of the day to settle in, just listening a few minutes along the way.
Later, while listening to Keith Jarrett's Carnegie Hall concert (again and again), I knew immediately there was just more there, that feeling that someone cleaned the windshield a bit. As usual, there is a lot going on in the performance/recording with KJ, the groaner, but the big piano also took on a body and weight it just didn't have before. The attacks and decays of the notes seem more natural and clearly defined, but I didn't sense any added brightness or harshness creeping in. It became more obvious what some of the sounds he's making, as well as the plethora of ambient sounds captured from the audience, really might be - as if you were there watching the whole thing unfold. I'd attribute this to some sort of improvement in spatial specificity, maybe even lowered noise between the sounds. You are there with the audience. If you've heard the Ronins you know what I mean, as they are quite amazing at distinctly nailing down the relationships between various sounds within the spaces. With the Summit cable in place, all of that just became very much more apparent to me. Bass articulation, at least on the piano, also seemed vastly improved, but I need more time with other music to get a real good feel for that.
Maybe I need to take Wayne's advice and put the EE BBA back in with the other Summit plugged in this time to see what happens. Hmmm....
I still have a lot more listening to do, but my early view is this cable will be very hard to send on to the next victim.
Tom
