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
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.
I have the Designer ref. with the updated module and have found after months of switching between the 3 outputs that indeed the J3 sounds better on CDP. A more alive musical presentaion . I was unaware of the difference in voltage between J1-J3 thanks for the info Bob.
steve