Fully agree. Those things took away the 'edge'. I have them 2~3 weeks now. I haven't noticed any break-in effects. I'm told by the dealer that the leads supplied by the 'mini's are different than the original active shielding leads. (According to him) Synergistic will now be using this 'new-and-improved' leads.
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.
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.