After 100 or 150 hours we already have a good idea of the sound reproduction. After that just gets thinner.
Delicious! fried chicken wing dinner for a family of four in San Francisco? I am not sure about that. No drinks for sure.
Sounds good. The Ultimate Premier was a bit thick mid bass but wider bloomier soundstage compared to purple. it should be a good trial vs Purple. Thanks for the low down.
In TX at least can get a few beer pitchers throw in or some non CA wine for sure.
When visiting TX Tomahawk steaks for two will be on menu, but $300 is not going to cut it anywhere anymore.
I have never tried a Tomahawk steak it says they are from Kansas City. But doing a Google search it appears Flemming’s in Plano is closest with 35 oz ribye for two special. No quote on what the special price is. What establishment do you find them at in TX?
The Mrs has a birthday this week. A steak sounds like a must.
BTW.
I went back and listened to entire Whisper Power Cable Evaluation playlist I have saved for public consumption once again last night. This is after returning the Whisper Elite to streaming LPS duty and adding a Tuning Ring to the Dragon HC. Everything was entirely exquisite. Definitely best yet. Such space and a natural ease. Not a voice or instrument that sounds wrong. Nothing is falling apart if you choose to push the volume. The sound holds up in the Home Theater arena also.
Now time to sub out Al’s Stealth on my preamp and try to find a cable worthy so I can trial the stealth VR18 SE versus the Dragon HC with tuning Ring. I need to finish up this trial and get his cable back he was so gracious to loan. I hope I can tune a regular Whisper I have unused now to make it work on preamp. May have to resort to double tuning rings. Otherwise must bite the bullet and order a Stealth. Easily a quarter of year of Tomahawks weekly.
I do say this Whisper cable trial sure has improved my system so far. Never thought I’d be tuning power cables yet alone owning So many Whispers and entertaining spending 8K on a power cable.
Let me start with the caveat that I haven’t been there since the mid-90s. But, there’s an establishment in Houston, the Taste of Texas, that had some of the best steaks I’d ever had. You used to be able to pick out the steak you wished at the display case when you entered, they had an excellent wine selection and they do have a Tomahawk steak on their menu. The price listed is $116 and it’s 38 oz.
Might be worth a shot.
EDIT: Just checked and Houston is way, way farther from DFW. Sorry about that.
Thanks Joe. Yeah Houston is not a frequent haunt for me. One of my favorite steak houses is Pappas Brothers in DFW. H3 Ranch in Fort Worth Stockyards is also nice My all time favorite is Berns in Tampa.
Fleming is very good but I have not tried it in TX. In fact I have only been in your state a couple times and that was years ago. I just remembered I liked the food portion a lot better than in SF.
On the golf course now and having a nice round, my system sounded better too and I’ll write more later.
Okay my M-1 Masterpiece Fuse order is in. Can’t wait to see whether it is truly a work of art or a Purple fuse forgery.
I hope your Whisper with tuning ring can compete with Stealth V18 in some areas. If it does then it is a great bargain, and you could have top-grade Tomahawks or even Wagyu every week. I have a Stealth V10, and I really like the sound. But in my system the AQ Dragon is the winner. Of course, V18 is a few grades higher so I have no doubt it is the best out here. But I really do not think I will spend more than a Dragon on any cable.
After I removed all the dust caps (or noise stopper as some called it) on non-used connectors, my system sounded quieter and more three dimensional. I am going to re-try some of the tuning rings to see if they make more difference now.
I really hope M1 is equal or tiny bit better than Purple. I really like Purple and do not want to leave her so soon.
Mine will also be here in 1 to 2 weeks also from Cable Company frequent flyer.
I can hardly wait. I have a good feeling about this one.
I received a Whisper today. Duncan apparently added something additional which is from the elite version (additional EMI shielding?). I’ve got it settling in between my Shunyata Denali V2 and Mola Mola DAC.
Initial impressions that it’s very good. My daily driver power cable to the DAC is an Alpha V2. I’ll try to add more detailed thoughts after the weekend.
FYI, for anyone who is curious to hear the Whisper, I’m in the Portland, OR metro area. PM me if you’re local and want to set up an listening session.
Congratulations on the Whisper. They settle out quickly especially with Duncan’s burn in. I need to have my three whispers updated with the new EMI shielding. Looking forward to your review. Especially given you have the Shunyata cord. When and if you feel you want a bit more out of them. Make a tuning ring out of 3M. absorber. It is like have a dozen more power cords in one. You maybe satisfied as is with the added shielding of Duncan’s new design . They are that good.
Last night I finally took the time to place Al’s the Stealth Dream V18 LE Digital into PSA P20 powering entire system mode. This was after finding a replacement for its spot where it truly reined supreme powering my MX150 pre processor with a tweaked tuning ring position . That was not an easy feat only have one Common Ground Whisper Elite. The spots I have trialed the Whisper Elite it is always near the top. Especially if you also find an optimum position for its tuning ring.
I did find recently after my Dragon HC was tuned onthe P20 with a homemade 3M AB7050HF tuning ring all of my downstream cables got better way better just liked the Whisper Elite with tuning ring. The whisper Elite with tuning ring knocks of the Dragon until the Dragon HC is tuned near the female IEC then its very close.and perhaps the Dragon edges ahead but I dount have enough Whisper Elites to place elsewhere
The cable for the MX150 ended up being the Core Power Diamond Xtreme with a Al foil wrap and Cu foil wrap. Interestingly no homemade tuning ring. It turns out it does very very well in the Preamp role and powering DS DAC when the Dragon HC on P20 has the 3M absorber tuning ring. It was best of all cables I had available to trial except the Stealth V18 digital in this role I felt it important to get my system sounding top notch before swapping cables at the P20.
It would be interesting to have a Stealth Dream V18 UNI cable for this trial since it has adjustments with Pins placed in its back shell to convert between Digital, Power Distribution and Analog roles.
But what I found was the Stealth Dream V18 Digital powering P20 is not as open high end and objects in Soundstage are more founded perhaps a tad filtered. However it still performed better than the Base level Whisper or tuned Ehisper or my double Al and copper wrapped BAV power cord powering the P20. Please note none of the choices are bad for my system until one hears a better match to the system you would be completely happy.
So for the P20 using a SR Purple Fuse for my system a subjective ranking
- AQ Dragon HC with 3M Tuning Ring or Whisper Elite with 3M Tuning Ring Note: Perhaps a slight edge to Tuned Dragon on more High End clarity.
- Whisper Elite
- Dragon HC
- Stealth Dream V18 LE Digital
- Whisper base with tuning ring
- Whisper base
- BAV 20Amp with two foil wraps
- BAV 20Amp
- The P20 cord it delivered with Note any of the above cords way out distancing its performance by a mile.
Now on to testing my new M-1 Audio Magic fuse vs Purple.
Now that I have the Dragon HC with tuning ring on for some time, the system does sound better because when I remove it, the sound is duller.
In my system, some power cords benefit with tuning rings and Al/Cu wrappers more than others. For example, I have a Silnote Orion 1 Master Reference power cord and the wrapper/ring makes it sound worse. but Anticable 3, Purist Audio Colossus, and Cullen Crossover 2 benefit tremendously. They did not make any SQ difference in Stealth V10 nor Zavfino Silver Dart OCC. These PCs all have their best places to use too. When I switched them around among the components, the SQ varies quite a bit too.
But with the ring/wrapper on the right PCs, there is no doubt my system sounded a lot better than before.
I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the M1 fuse.
Yes same or when I move it further away from female iec end. Something just makes the highs right. The absorber has equivalent effects inside P20. I thhink it is a noise floor lowering. Funny thing I liked a tuning ring on the Diamond Xtreme’s with wrapping until i put Absorber Ring on Dragon HC. I had to pull rings from the Xtremes absorber was killing imaging and transparency nut the net effect with absorber on Dragon is way better.
The drilling and soldering of the Beeswax M-1 surely is not smooth. Look at all rough sanding. Hopefully that doesn’t distract from the sound. But it ensures I did not buy a purple fuse with a AM M-1 wrapping and higher price tag I suppose. Lol. That would be an interesting business model to see how many audiophiles you could fool.
Funny looking one, I hope it works