2. misc-audio
  3. 1011495840

not a charming day with snakes

so, all afternoon and into early into this evening, i listened to the digital side of my rig with a power snakes hydra inserted at different positions. my older son, a second-generation audiophile, was present during the greater portion of this session. during our time together, i began by plugging my pre/dac and transport into the hydra. we played numerous disks, mostly in the “groove rock,” “acid jazz,” “adult rock,” and “folk/pop” genre, including some direct-to-cd recordings done in the past few days ( this son is a consultant to radio stations and record labels, which gives me some awesome access to the current music scene). some examples of discs on our play list: radiohead, “kid a”; air, “moon safari”; phish, various; pink floyd, “echoes”; oysterhead, “the grand pecking order”; mark knopfler, “sailing to philadelphia”; the bobs, “cover the songs of.....”; dylan (also my 1st son’s name), “slow train comin’ ”; dave carter & tracy gammer, “drum, hat, buddha”, etc. (yeah, I know “etc.” doesn’t quite make it with this lineup but, hey....). after listening for an hour and a half or so to numerous cuts on the “play list,” our initial reaction was: wow, the soundstage has really widened but something’s not quite right. then it hit us both, almost simultaneously: the PRaT’s all screwed up. everything sounds constipated, slowed, without rhythm or pace. we then took the hydra from the frontend/source and moved it so i could plug my amp into it. at first, things improved. the supreme quickness of the system returned, while the huge soundstagen remained. as the hydra “warmed up,” however, the constrictions to the bowels increased. constipation again. the flip-side of PraT. unplugging the hydra brought everything back as it had been. the quickness was heard again in the cymbals, drums, lead guitars and mandolins. the bass tightened. voices were back where they should be, separated, focused and steady. thus my query: has anyone else had this experience with the hydra? i’ve heard so many good things about it that I was completely unprepared for the negative things it did in my system.

associated equipment (digital side only): boulder 1012 pre/dac; accuphase dp- 90 cd transport; jeff rowland 8ti amp; avalon eidolon speakers; tara, the one ic’s (pre to amp) and speaker cables; accuphase st att&t optical and accrotech 99.9999 coax digital connections; tara, the one and power snakes python pc’s; 5 dedicated 20 amp circuits w/ hospital-grade outlets.

-cfb
cornfedboy

Showing 2 responses by rcrump

rcrump
427 posts
 
The Hydra doesn't travel well and the fully cooked unit (it was the Soundstage! review sample) sounded just about the way you described it and took about five days to settle down from it's journey to me.....It was really dark sounding the first couple of days and lightened up a bit after that......I liked it better than the PS Audio I purchased and better than the Vans Evers units, but liked a custom unit I build a bit better (it is essentially out of production)......Bottom line is plug it back in for a few days to see if it doesn't come back....Keep the cord off the floor and put the unit on some small cones on something hard and you might end up liking it....I used it with some home made electronics I cobbled together or modified along with Rockport turntable table and speakers......

Bob Crump
TG Audio/CTC Builders/DDR Mfg
rcrump
427 posts
 
Cornfedboy, I heard flaws in the Hydra that you and Albert heard, but nothing is perfect....Upper midrange is down just a touch and there is a glitch way up top, a coldness as it were that bothered me, but not nearly like the ferrite bead tricks lots of folks use.....The lower mids/upper bass is a touch fat, but can speculate it is the cord used as understand it sounds that way.....The bottom line is that in most systems the Hydra will roll off the upper mids, fatten the lower mids and quiet things down a bit with the ferrites used inside the unit......These are good things for most digitally driven systems and I can sure understand the popularity.....I know Albert likes to hear how drunk the players are as do I and we use big analog rigs as a reference.....I think we are all being a bit too hard on the Hydra as it is a godsend to most folks out there that don't have 100K in their systems and the Hydra screws up the music much less than most all of the line filters available.....Oh, the unit I used to make is called a BybeeSucker and a two circuit unit would be necessary for your set-up with a digital preamp and CD player so the clocks don't talk to each other down the AC lines...I have not sold any in a while and there are updates available to those units in the field....It was set-up for those folks that primarily use analog and don't want to turn off the digital gear to enjoy analog as the digital AC backwave can ruin analog sound.......If I were you I would spend a little money and have three lines brought into you room, one for the CD player, one for the digital preamp and one for the amps and other analog gear and just forget about a line filter.....The inductance in the three separate lines should do a decent job of taking care of the digital backwave of one clock polluting other clocks or the analog gear.....
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