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...
