The Official Club Polk - Snake River Power Cord Demo

PT 1.
The Snake River Audio Cable is solidly built and easy to maneuver. I have had many power cables in the past that were beyond stiff, and you could not bend them or move them around easily. I had no problem with the weight of them falling out of the back of anything I tried it on. Again, in the past, I have had issues with moving a component slightly and the power cord falling out or, just over time from vibration, it would become disconnected. Sometimes people forget this aspect of cabling.

I tried this on my Innuos Zen MKIII and then on my Border Patrol dac. In both places, I feel It had the same effect. I also did this testing before I sold my Tri-Vista and Tyler Acoustics Highland H2 speakers. Speaker cables, and RCA’s were Audioquest Thunderbird. Power cords I normally use on the Zen and Dac are Cullen Crossover II ( way better then the original crossover) and Audioquest Thunder. The price point of the AQ and the Snake River are close. AQ Niagara 5000 for power conditioning.

First song up, Lo and behold James Taylor on the Zen. This song I use to see how revealing a speaker, cable or component is. 1st off, this song has a lot of hissing on it. Some things try to hide it or don’t let it come though as it was recorded. None of the 3 power cords hid the hiss however, the vocal, guitar and percussion was more pronounced with the Snake River. Vocals seem to take a few steps forward. On my system, it seems to take everything and just move it forward. Same thing with Fire and Rain (same Sweet Baby James album) The drum on Fire and Rain was actually a bit overpowering and not as balanced as the Audioquest or the Cullen. I thought that was a bit odd and then put the Snake River on the Dac. Same results.

Next song up, Rhythm of the Heat from Peter Gabriel. If you have never heard this song before, it shows off the dynamics of any system. Very soft beginning that just builds up with a ton of percussion. The same thing with the Snake River happened on this track as well in either spot, dac or streamer. Everything seems to take a few steps forward but, in my system, not in a good way. It felt like it was too forward and out of balance. The width and dept of the music were about the same as the AQ or Crossover II but, it just brought everything too much in my face.

Paul Simon Rhythm of the Saints album, same results, Santana Abraxis, Metallica one, Sara Bareilles, Sara K. Dave Brubeck, all the same type of results. Tonality, all sounded great but, how it was bringing everything forward and not as balanced as the AQ or Cullen was making it not work in my rig.

treitz3 wrote: »

FWIW and not to change the topic of the thread but Jonny sent me a pair of single wire Signature Series SC's to test out and I put them in last night. They were going head to head with a pair of Transparent Music Wave Ultra's and I was floored at just how restrictive the Transparents were in comparison.

I will definitely be ordering a pair of bi-wire cables from Snake River Audio. The bi-wires have two different metallurgy blends for each run, as the needs for differing drivers vary.

In the meantime, I am enjoying quite a bit of Snake River Audio cables throughout my rig and I can say with complete certainty that with each addition? It just gets better and better. So very musical and in my case? They have perfect synergy within my rig.

Tom

This is what I am talking about when I said they just might not the right synergy with the Tbirds. Doesn't make them a bad cable, just a mismatch with the rest of my rig.

So Tom, it brought everything more into balance outside of anything else you might have heard vs the Transparent \ SRA ?

2 years ago you were done but now you have a whole new rig lol!

Here’s my finial thoughts on the SR PCs since I had the awesome opportunity of sampling both of them in my system at the same time.

Bass: Fast, articulate, accurate and full (not in a bloated way at all). I found myself turning down the sub to better blend the speakers together.
Mids: Stand out more, like they’re better projected from the “box”.
Highs: Sizzled and more forward. These ring radiator tweeters came to life! Keep in mind the LSi sound signature is “laid back”. I find myself turning up the treble on the pre from centered to two o’clock on some material. This was not the case with these PCs in the mix.

It’s a pretty cool transformation when you go from using tone controls to not at all and the only change was two (be it very high end) power cords!

I wish I had the “scratch“ at the time of demoing these because these power cords from Snake River defiantly won me over and deserve a spot in my system! Maybe one day. . .

I’d like to give a big THANKS again to Tom and Jonny at Snake River for offering this demo program.

P.S. I apologize for the extremely late final review post.

This demo program definitely opened my mind to the fact that everything matters when I want to wring out every last detail from my system. Tom, I appreciate all the work you did to put this together, and thank you, Snake River Audio for your generosity in making these cables available for us to demo in our systems! The experience was absolutely worth the cost of entry!