Short Review of Revelation Audio Passage Cryo-Silver™ Reference umbilical power cable
First, my system: I have an ARC REF6, a Pass Labs 250.8 amp, Wilson Audio Sabrina X speakers, and since I am fully digital, an MSB Discrete DAC with a Premier Power Base. I stream from a dedicated music server to the DAC. I had upgraded all of my cables to Shunyata Alpha’s. They are excellent cables by the way. The only thing left were two skinny stock power umbilical from the Premier Power Base to the Discrete DAC. After reading about these Revelation Audio Power cables specifically for the MSB power supply to the DAC, and a 30 day money-back guarantee, at $689 shipped, it seemed like a fairly inexpensive tweak. I couldn’t imagine how or why replacing these power cables between the DAC and power supply would make any real difference at all, but I decided to try them. From Order to receipt was five days. Hooked them up and let them run for 24 hours. I am not one to gush, especially over cables, but I have to admit that somehow, for some reason, these made a noticeable positive difference in my system.
First, and most noticeable to me, the soundstage had more depth, more 3 dimensionality. That alone was worth it because I felt that the soundstage had lacked depth. Now it has more. The second thing that I noticed was that the instruments had more defined placement in the soundstage, against a blacker background. On music that I knew intimately and routinely use as test music, such as Patricia Barber’s excellent Companion XRCD, Dark Side of the Moon, Gary Burton/Ralph Towner’s Matchbook, both of these improvements were immediately noticeable. Third, the instruments themselves had better tone, especially the cymbals and bass, and sounded "smoother" but still detailed. Now, I have no idea why these cables work, or what’s in them. I do know that if you are using MSB stock umbilicals, you will love these cables. For $689, it is a very cheap upgrade!
One word about Brad and Revelation Audio. There are several mostly old threads discussing customer service problems, long shipping delays and lack of response. When I first emailed him, I raised these issues and said that I wanted to pay for them COD. No problem. Brad was very responsive, they shipped immediately and even confirmed that they had arrived and that I was happy with them. So whatever problems there may (or may not) have been in 2010-2017, when most of the bad experiences apparently occurred, that is apparently in the past. Brad was a pleasure to deal with, and the product is high quality. In short, I highly recommend these umbilicals!
