Wow. I don’t know exactly why or how but Windom has certainly come into its own in my system. I’m back to the same tube complement I had enjoyed so much with Snowmass 3.06 (Amperex 7308s in my preamp, Amperex 6085 in my ZROCK2 and as inputs in my Monoblocks, Arcturus 0B3 and Tesla 0A2 as my voltage regulation tubes, Sophia Electric Aqua 274B as rectifiers and 6P15-EV output tubes) and I’m getting full and clear and dynamic sound just a bit better than I’ve ever had before. Three high performance tuned watts per channel.
I think the crucial change must have been adding the PS Audio Ultimate outlet in front of the P10. There may have been some electrical noise it has filtered out that Windom was revealing as an extra dollop of brightness. It’s no longer there, there’s no longer the fatigue that it had brought, and I’m enjoying marvelous sound.
I honestly would not have anticipated this two weeks ago.
Without doubting what people here say…I guess if you put water in three glasses and then start a discussion, this discussion will go around if, how and why it tastes different out of those 3 glasses and there will be opinions for all alternatives
Just for grins, I suggest you remove the “Ultimate Outlet” from the power chain and listen again.
None of your concern really, but I would like to test a hypothesis that what actually happened is that you have finally joined the “good software load” club.
You were pretty disappointed in Windom vs. Snowmass previously. The “Outlet” did not overcome all of those “objections” did it?
I don’t mean to pry or hassle you. Rather I am sincerely interested in your Windom journey. If I understood your post above correctly, you reversed most if not all of the system tweaks you used to wrestle Windom into submission and now you are enjoying Windom and (I am assuming) consider it an “upgrade” in overall sound quality.
In any event, thanks for the reply and have a great weekend.
SEE
[Edit: Feel free to send a PM if you would rather not get into such minutiae publicly. Cheers.]
Lonson…I too use a PS Audio Ultimate Outlet high current model in front of my Shunyata Hydra 8 and it makes an outstanding difference to my systems sound quality. It lowered the noise floor and added a blacker background.
@lonson and @mark-d - both of you already have filtration of sorts right? The Shunyata Hydra 8 is already a stabiliser or filter and you needed to add another layer in the form of the Ultimate Outet? Isn’t that too much filtration?
I did end up with the same tube complement again and I undid the mistake of changing a power cord. But I can adjust gain on my DAC, my preamp, my balanced to single-ended transformer unit, my tubed EQ component and the input of my Monoblocks and “riding the gain” with these put me in a different gain situation than with Snowmass 3.06 and I also have the speakers positioned differently. These and the Outlet were significant changes that have allowed Windom to shine in a way it hadn’t before.
I don’t know if you’ve followed the “journey” I had but I had come to the conclusion I had gotten two consistently different “loads” when I loaded the OS over and over, and one must be the “correct” one. I had gotten very close to complete satisfaction with Windom tailoring around that better load, and still had a bit of brightness that seemed unrealistic. Then I added the Outlet and breathed a sigh of relief. A few days later I repeated that process. Luckily the “load” didn’t change either time I made this change, and the next day I had the best sound ever.
This leads me to believe the Outlet was an important factor. My experience with it mirrors MarkD’s. Regardless I no longer feel tempted to go back to Snowmass 3.06 as I had been before, and the system is sounding great. Even some recordings that seemed “thin” to me with Snowmass 3.06 sound more “natural” now. (I find Windom to be subtly more revealing and it wouldn’t surprise me if when it’s in place a bit of electrical noise interference would be perceived as a bit of excessive brightness compared to the way treble was presented by Snowmass 3.06 and especially Snowmass 3.0.}
Kudos to Ted and thanks to PS Audio for allowing us these advancements OS to OS.
I would have thought so too, but apparently not. To be honest I didn’t have the best wall outlet in place and so the Ultimate Outlet improved the “plug in” connectivity as well. And the regenerators aren’t “perfect” components, producing an output regardless of the input. I find that power cabling matters both before and after the regenerator, so it doesn’t surprise me that an outlet would as well. And the “filtration” that the Outlet performs is not harmful as some are. Even adding an additional PS Audio PerfectWave AC-12 power cord to connect the Outlet may have been a factor in the improvement. I am not an engineer and don’t think in engineering terms. . . I’m comfortable with an element of mystery in these audio matters.
Good to hear you have gotten Windom to work any which way
I have reverted to Snowmass 3.0.0 and am enjoying it sans the brightness I had with Windom. I am waiting for a SD card from PS to conclusively do away (or not) with the possibility of a bad load as my Mac doesn’t work with the programme needed to unpack the new Mac files.
By the way, the 2019 AP SACD remasters of The Standard Coltrane and Bluesy Burrell sound pretty good.
Great to hear. Thanks for sharing the details, @lonson.
I am still getting little bits of “new aural magic” here and there as I listened to familiar work. A detail I missed before, an extended note I did not hear previously, a more natural/realistic portrayal of a voice or instrument in space, etc. Fun stuff…
Yes I am too. I particularly sat up and noticed how McFarland’s vibe playing stood out in vivid solidity at one point when the accompaniment drops out on a track of his Verve album with Bill Evans at the piano that appears on the first disc of the Complete Bill Evans on Verve box set. Wow. It sounded very real.
