Thread: Shunyata 6000S V2 Review

Originally Posted by Billt1

We just built a new home with special attention to AC delivery including a dedicated Sub panel 6' from the system terminating into high end outlets which measure only 50 mv of line noise. Believing we had a good Power Conditioner and low line noise measurements if anybody asked me if line noise had any significant impact on my listening experience I would have said no. That changed Saturday when my local dealer asked me to home demo a 6000S V2. I was wrong, AC prior to the installation of the 6000s V2 was having major negative influence on what I was hearing. Over my thirty years in the hobby I have had many power conditioners in my system or at home for demo. Some helped a little, some hurt. Most were of very good reputation including a few variations of the Shunyata Hydra. Some were only to be used in parallel but none sounded better with my amps plugged into them until now. Up to this point I had mostly considered Power Conditioners as a "feel good " power strip offering no significant sonic value. The Demo unit is silver and I need a black to match the system. The dealer needs his demo back but I don't want to be one day without it while I wait for the black one. I may very well buy the demo so I don't have to be without it and when the black one comes in put the silver one in my second system. Until I tried the 6000Sv2 at home there was only half a chance I was going to buy a new power conditioner. It may now be two. As far a describing the listening experience? I will just say that even if you don't think line noise is an issue you won't really know until its gone. Try one

Great review. Power does matter. And many don’t know they have a noise problem until the noise is gone.

Originally Posted by Billt1

We just built a new home with special attention to AC delivery including a dedicated Sub panel 6' from the system terminating into high end outlets which measure only 50 mv of line noise. Believing we had a good Power Conditioner and low line noise measurements if anybody asked me if line noise had any significant impact on my listening experience I would have said no. That changed Saturday when my local dealer asked me to home demo a 6000S V2. I was wrong, AC prior to the installation of the 6000s V2 was having major negative influence on what I was hearing. Over my thirty years in the hobby I have had many power conditioners in my system or at home for demo. Some helped a little, some hurt. Most were of very good reputation including a few variations of the Shunyata Hydra. Some were only to be used in parallel but none sounded better with my amps plugged into them until now. Up to this point I had mostly considered Power Conditioners as a "feel good " power strip offering no significant sonic value. The Demo unit is silver and I need a black to match the system. The dealer needs his demo back but I don't want to be one day without it while I wait for the black one. I may very well buy the demo so I don't have to be without it and when the black one comes in put the silver one in my second system. Until I tried the 6000Sv2 at home there was only half a chance I was going to buy a new power conditioner. It may now be two. As far a describing the listening experience? I will just say that even if you don't think line noise is an issue you won't really know until its gone. Try one

Very consistent with my experience. I've been using Shunyata power distributors for about a decade now, and while they've all been excellent, the Denali 6000/S V2 represents a real technological breakthrough because its the first one I know of that can provide > 64dB of noise reduction while not impacting the most important requirement for any power distributor, dynamic transient current delivery. When the rectifiers in component's power supply snap open during a dynamic or transient passage in the music, they pull hard on the AC line for current, and the inductance of the line resists the much-needed in-rush of current. This is where the technological advances of the Denali 6000/S V2 represents a real breakthrough, because it allows for this current to be delivered while simultaneously providing significant noise reduction. And, these two functions generally do not go hand-in-hand, and in the power distributors from other companies, they generally conflict with one another. I.e., make one response, e.g., noise reduction, better, and the other, e.g. current delivery, gets worse.

Its also important to use NR power cords on components in conjunction with power distributors, because the NR filters on these power cords prevents noise from the component's internal power supply from going back out from the component, to "dirty up" the current internal in the power distributor. Think of the current in the PD as a swimming pool with fresh, clean water, and the noise from the components internal power supply as "muddy water". Using an NR power cord prevents the muddy water from the component's power supply from "muddying up" the fresh, clean water that the rest of the components are sharing.

Moreover, installing a dedicated AC line is virtually no guarantee of "clean" power; the mains wiring is an excellent antenna for high-bandwidth noise, and with the right analyzer, you can hear AM and/or FM radio as a significant noise component on dedicated AC lines.

Check out this video as an example: https://youtu.be/g2SAj7aKXGo

Originally Posted by Calvin

Great review. Power does matter. And many don’t know they have a noise problem until the noise is gone.

Truer words were never spoken.

Hello everyone,

Nice review, I have one question though. I understand if lowers noise floor but what about voices and instruments "timbre"? Do they still sound real ?
Most people don't realize but besides positive effects, a conditioner could affect negatively the PRAT of a system making it slow or sluggish, instruments and voices could lose body and sound constrained, etc.
How good is this unit fomr this point of view, honestly ? I'm looking to buy it but I need a fair opinion.

Shunyata dealer said Shunyata stopped producing Triton V3. Anybody can confirm? And what new product is replacing Triton V3?

Originally Posted by mep

So once you have the noise epiphany, what did the noise sound like that you didn’t know existed until you no longer hear it?

For me personally, I own the Hydra, not the Denali - i.e. the Denali is definitely better. I wish I owned one.

It's not as easy to describe the noise that is heard, as it is to describe what I now hear. Perhaps a veil being lifted and moved out of the way; "Garbage Out, Music In" would be a way of describing the noise being removed. No matter, with the Hydra what I now hear is a darker more silent background from which the music emerges. So what I play comes thru more clearly. Though the changes are subtle I hear more of the music. There is more detail.

I'm a former homicide detective, so I'll use an illustration of a fingerprint (FP) recovered at a crime scene. In FP ID one is looking for loops, arches, and whorls, etc. of a print recovered at a scene. Some recovered fingerprints are very definite - there are more "points" of ID and greater ridge detail making an identification of a perp very certain, while others don't have as many points of ID and thus the ID of a perp is not as certain. Needless to say the more points of ID the better. If the recovered print has 25 points in common with a perp and not merely 6, I know whose it is ....

So, in a matter of speaking what the Shunyata does passively is allow more points of ID to be heard. There are more the artist's "loops, arches, and whorls" heard in the music. The sonic fingerprint is precise and clearer. There is more "ridge" detail, i.e. less distortion. The harmonic texture has greater range. There is a richer integrity in the sound.

Sorry if the illustration causes more confusion than clarification.

Originally Posted by CGabriel

A little teaser ......

Wow. Looks nice.

Photo shows - MODEL D8T - so is this a new Denali 8?

Originally Posted by CGabriel

I wouldn't infer anything since this is just a pre-production test unit. But a good hint at what might be around the corner. Like a future Corvette with cladding and camo paint.

Gotcha

Sorry, I just had to:

Originally Posted by soundmax

Hello everyone,

Nice review, I have one question though. I understand if lowers noise floor but what about voices and instruments "timbre"? Do they still sound real ?
Most people don't realize but besides positive effects, a conditioner could affect negatively the PRAT of a system making it slow or sluggish, instruments and voices could lose body and sound constrained, etc.
How good is this unit fomr this point of view, honestly ? I'm looking to buy it but I need a fair opinion.

Many power conditioners can, and do, impact the PRAT of a system, making sound slow or sluggish. The chokes, coils, and/or inductors typically used in most designs are generally responsible for this.

But the Shunyata series of power distributors do not do this because their top, #1 requirement is DTCD: Dynamic Transient Current Delivery. While the current models also provide noise reduction, DTCD is still the top requirement because this attribute is one of the most important for creating an engaging and involving musical experience, part of that is the PRAT you refer to.

The technological breakthrough the Denali series brings is outstanding noise reduction while NOT impacting DTCD. These two functional responses interact and historically, have been "conflicting" responses, i.e., make one better, and the other gets worse. The current Denali 6000/S V2 broke through this functional conflict to provide > 64-68 dB of NR while not impacting DTCD.

This is why you are reading so many comments from folks like Billt1 that are finding this product to be a breakthrough in power distributors.

Originally Posted by Calvin

... Power does matter. And many don’t know they have a noise problem until the noise is gone.

This applies to everything else on hifi.
Sometimes, many of us only realized what we are missing when we got better.

Originally Posted by Billt1

absolute black. Every note now holds it's own definition . Picture notes floating in air with nothing else as an influence ( except the room)

I´m with you.
This is the feeling when we lower the background noise. And I don't use any power conditioner.

Originally Posted by mep

Thanks for your response. I''m always skeptical of the words "absolute black" when describing the sound of music in a listening room. There is no recording studio or recording venue that is recording "absolute black" music. It doesn't exist in the real world and neither does it exist in our listening rooms. When I hear the term "absolute black," I think of a system that has had all the life sucked out of the music. All of our gear has a noise floor, and so does the gear used to record the music. All of our rooms have a noise floor. Digital recorded from analog tape should preserve the analog tape noise floor, but I'm hearing hi-rez recordings originally recorded on analog tape that have filtered out the noise floor of the analog tape and that is not the only thing getting filtered out.

Can you still hear the decay of notes or do they just abruptly end into a black hole? Can you hear when a pianist is stepping on the pedals and when they release the pedal? Can you hear when a drummer has a squeaky foot pedal? It's the little cues that add together to make our music reproduction cross the threshold into sounding more real, not real black.

Of course, there is no such thing as "absolute black". While its possible to significantly reduce the noise in a system, as long it is powered, there will always be some level of noise, even if this noise component is as low a level as "shot noise" or Johnson–Nyquist noise.

But, that being said, the noise reduction of the current Shunyata power distributors (PD) is considerable, ranging from >40dB on the Delta D6 as the entry level PD and greater than > 64-68 dB on the Denali.

With respect to the impact on sound quality, the considerable reduction in the noise floor is very notable, but the Denali also is very dynamic. For example, swings from pp to fff in full orchestral passages is very fast and but also very, very clean, so you can hear clearly all the small, intricate details, timbres, instrumental placement, size and position relative to other instruments during a quiet passage of an orchestra, and still have the impact and power of the timpani and bass drums during crescendos.

With respect to decay, that depends on the instrument. Not all instruments decay and trail off in to space in the same manner; this is very dependent on the note(s) and the specific instruments, but you can clearly hear the different ways that different instruments decay.

The other qualities or characteristics that I consistently hear are these and, I should preface this by saying that I typically use full orchestral classical music for these evaluations as it is spatially, "timbrally" and dynamically both more complex and nuanced than popular music that is recorded in "multiple mono" by "multi-miking".

1) the ability to clearly and cleanly hear a fairly quiet instrument, e.g. a classical guitar, against the background of the orchestra as a whole. For example, on Concerto de Aranjuez by Pepe Romero and The Academy, I can clearly distinguish Romero's position and guitar in the orchestra, and his guitar stands out cleanly resolved and naturally rendered vs. the "background" of the full orchestra. His guitar's notes and timbres are still cleanly discernable and does not get "swamped out" by the orchestra and full orchestral passages.
2) As the noise floor diminishes, the stereo image "opens up", becomes more extended and airy at the top end, and the "sound stage" becomes larger and more expansive, and individual voices, whether it be instruments or vocal, within that sound stage are more precisely rendered while revealing more positional "complexity" (i.e., more clearly defined layers of differentiated "voices")
3) As the noise floor drops, the "perceived loudness" increases, so you can actually turn the volume down and still hear more deeply into the presentation.
4) These products also impart a sense of "listening ease" by removing a layer of grittiness, spitty-ness, hash, etc. that one doesn't know is there until it's gone, but once it is, it creates...a much more engaging, involving and beguiling listening experience.

Hope that helps...

Originally Posted by mep

So where is the 64dB of noise lurking before it’s removed?

Its on the AC mains and also some part of it comes from the components themselves. AC mains are very effective antennas for EMI and RFI. And, AM and FM radio noise as well.

And the components themselves as Puma said. The wall is not the only source.

Originally Posted by mep

So the 64dB noise reduction is the amount of noise it it could remove from your wall sockets assuming you had that much noise riding on your AC.

I'm not an expert on this, Caelin would be able to provide more specifics. I would say that the figure of ~64-68 dB is a "mathematical average" on the whole for an engineering specification of a parameter that by definition, is variable. If one put a lot of particularly dirty components on the power distribution system, it may not be that low, and possibly at other times of day, it may be lower than that.

As with almost any engineering-based design embodiment for a varying functional response, the "nominal" operating parameters may fluctuate a bit when dealing with factors that, by definition, vary.

Noise would not be "noise" if it did not vary.

Originally Posted by GSOphile

And the components themselves as Puma said. The wall is not the only source.

Bingo.

Originally Posted by Calvin

Gotcha

Sorry, I just had to:

LOL. That's great...

I don't think its going to do anything for noise inherent to the equipmet. My Ampsandsound Casablanca seem to have a pretty high inherent noise floor. I have tried a couple conditioners to rid the noise. No change or worse, they amplify the conditioners noise. In conversation with a manufacturer last night, my take away was a power supply, not well designed. generates its own internal noise that can easily be heard from your speakers. In my case at the listening chair. What a power conditioner may do is keep external noise that is really going to set off your poorly designed power supply from magnifying the problem. To some extent a line isolation transformer does this with my amps. Yet I hear the transformer so I don't use it. A power conditioner is not going to climb into your equipment and rebuild the poorly designes power supply, ridding it of its inherent noise.

Before you go all crazy consider what inherent noise may be. How about poor placement of transformers alowing magnetic flux into the circuit. How about cheap components with leaky voltage. How about poor internal grounding scheme. How about tinned wire and crimp connectors not properly passng even current.

I fully agree a good power conditioner may be able to filter unwanted noise or sine wave distortions on the branch circuit feeding your rack and keep it from entering your stereo system. I don't see it fixing a less than optimum piece of equipment.

From the Shunyata website under technologies employed in their power distributors:

"Actually, it is quite easy to design a power conditioner that blocks noise from the power line by using transformers, ferrite beads and simple LCR filters. However, these designs, by their very nature compromise DTCD® delivery which translates to a compressed and lifeless sound quality in a high-end audio system. While traditional power conditioners block noise coming from outside the home they do not address the noise that is generated by the electronic components themselves. In fact, many conditioners reflect noise back onto other components that are connected to the same power conditioner. Shunyata’s power distribution systems are designed to address outside sources of noise and to isolate internal forms of power supply generated noise.
"Caelin Gabriel believes that CCI™ is one of the most significant and often overlooked aspects to power system performance. Shunyata Research has developed patented and proprietary technologies that reduce CCI™ noise interference without using current-robbing transformers, coils or large capacitors."

Originally Posted by GSOphile

From the Shunyata website under technologies employed in their power distributors:

"Actually, it is quite easy to design a power conditioner that blocks noise from the power line by using transformers, ferrite beads and simple LCR filters. However, these designs, by their very nature compromise DTCD® delivery which translates to a compressed and lifeless sound quality in a high-end audio system. While traditional power conditioners block noise coming from outside the home they do not address the noise that is generated by the electronic components themselves. In fact, many conditioners reflect noise back onto other components that are connected to the same power conditioner. Shunyata’s power distribution systems are designed to address outside sources of noise and to isolate internal forms of power supply generated noise.
"Caelin Gabriel believes that CCI™ is one of the most significant and often overlooked aspects to power system performance. Shunyata Research has developed patented and proprietary technologies that reduce CCI™ noise interference without using current-robbing transformers, coils or large capacitors."

Correct. And the noise from component's internal power supplies is further reduced by using Shunyata NR power cords in conjunction with their power distributors. In this manner, the provide even more noise reduction from the component from contaminating the clean current that is within the power distributor and subsequently being distributed to other components.

Fully agree it will reduce reflected noise from the bad PS back into the overall power distribution system.

It wont stop compounding of noise via the signal cable. A noisy preamp will still pass noise to the amp. The amp will amplify that noise again and build its amplitude.

But the Shunyata will definitely reduce a lot of unwanted noise, not all. It may just tell you the problem is in your equipment, not in your power.

I have run a 6000S V2 all day in my system. As far as a hum that plagues my amps. 0 change. Denali does nothing to remedy issues with your equipment.

On rhe bright side. This is the first plug into product I like al the way around. It adds a level of air and dynamics that are welcome. I don't here the Denali at all. When I remove it, I hear the sound stage collapse some and the dynamics are a little muted. Without the Denali its a little richer and slower. Thicker sound. Maybe you want that. With it the bass is tighter and the tone is more even top to bottom. The highs are a little steonger.
But overall it just sounds more correct. Only bummer is 6 slots is not enough for me. I take 8.

Originally Posted by Kingrex

...Only bummer is 6 slots is not enough for me. I take 8.

It looks like eight to me!

The one on loan to me is 6. Very nice. Wish I had $5.5k . At that cost I'm thinking new amps will suit me better. I am far to sick of all the buzzing from my ampsandsound casablanca.

Denali is back with rightful owner and I miss it. It does change how my stereo presents, but I like what it did. It was more cohesive and even. Felt more balanced top to bottom. Even though my buzzing was louder, there may have been an underlying noise that was cleaned. I kind of want to try it again to see if it was ridding DC or noise that builds up at night. I did not have time to focus on that when I had it.

Last night without it my buzz got to heard through the tv loud. I dont remember or did not focus on whether the amplitude of buzzing was rising and falling durring the day and night.
Does rhe Denali block DC?

My friends have $16,000 power cords. And a mess of $7,000 cords. I have $300 power cords. Actually moving to $27 power cords. But hey, the $27 ones get out of the way of the sound. You are closer to the gear and whats really going on in your stereo.
A darn good cord for the money is the Akiko power cord. I was going to get a loom of them but felt they like most other more expensive cords add their "color". I'm trying to get away from tone controls.
I think the Denali was doing something as such. It did not sound artificial. It seemed to let sound flow more even and open. It was more music coming through. Less audiophile equipment sound getting between my ears and the source. If that makes sense.

Originally Posted by Kingrex

Denali is back with rightful owner and I miss it. It does change how my stereo presents, but I like what it did. It was more cohesive and even. Felt more balanced top to bottom. Even though my buzzing was louder, there may have been an underlying noise that was cleaned. I kind of want to try it again to see if it was ridding DC or noise that builds up at night. I did not have time to focus on that when I had it.

Last night without it my buzz got to heard through the tv loud. I dont remember or did not focus on whether the amplitude of buzzing was rising and falling durring the day and night.
Does rhe Denali block DC?

Your buzz is due to a ground loop somewhere, I would think. Could it possbly be due to some other home appliances, perhaps?

Kingrex, I'm not an EE, but after reading a bit, wondering if a GigaWatt power conditioner (e.g., their PC-4 EVO+ with DC Offset Blocker) might be of interest.

Originally Posted by Kingrex

No its not. And I don't want to go into the days an weeks of investigation as well as consultation with engineers and builders on the issue. Its the Ampsandsound Casablanca are noisy. The internal amp noise is exacerbated by noise coming in from the utility line.

Ah, got it, thanks, Kingrex.

Originally Posted by Kingrex

My friends have $16,000 power cords. And a mess of $7,000 cords. I have $300 power cords. Actually moving to $27 power cords. But hey, the $27 ones get out of the way of the sound. You are closer to the gear and whats really going on in your stereo.

Ha!-you must have been reading my mails--I just went though the same episodes!

In a time far behind and up till 2weeks ago--I had $3,000 power cords

-they remained part of the system till forced to pack for moving to new Digs. When gear setup sans the exotic cords-which
were still in transit due to storms over the country-I dug up some humble grey ones to at least test the waters and say the odd prayer in case anything damaged during the move.

After the mandatory warmup with the test discs/Cardas/etc --settled down to listen--exhaled finally all sounding great on my known music--great, in fact clean pure and so natural-- WTF?
yes how is possible without my behemoth 4x $3k cords in play??

I didn't even bother over the next few days to when the cords arrived to change out--my instinct and ears told me the sonics were bliss--the grey ones stayed and have actually
resolved to even purer output than I have heard previous--true!

Oh yes the ordinary grey ones 2.5m factory moulded/etc $15 are Japanese branded Hirakawa's( not the lauded Ching Chengs,tried one of those and the stage closed in).

The BIG expensive -and colored x4 are on the market to see if I can recoup some Funds and maybe some humility to replace the ego that purchased them!

Bruce