Power Conditioners: Audioquest Niagara 5000 or Shunyata Denali 6000S
I’ve been trying to decide which of these two power conditioners might make a better purchase. Do any of you own either, have chosen one over the other, or better yet, gotten to A/B them? I’ve found some, but not a lot, of information online comparing the two. So I thought I’d ask if any of you might know something more.
They both come in at $4000 retail which is my budgetary limit. The Niagara is active, the Denali passive. Some threads compare the Denal a little less favorably to the twice as expensive Audioquest Niagara 7000, for what that’s worth. I heard that the Audioquest Niagara 5000 may hum or buzz under some cirumstances. Anybody have that issue? I’ll probably never get a chance to demo them out here in the hinterlands so I’m hanging on your every word before I drop another wad of cash on one or the other.
There is also an Audio Magic conditioner at the same $4000 price point, but I didn’t quite understand it’s function in comparison to the other two. I’ll have to reread that product description.Someone else recommended a Richard Gray model that confusingly turned out to be a giant-sized surge protector.
Anyway I’d appreciate if any of you have any input on this somewhat obscure topic of power conditioners. I’m looking at one of these two power conditioners as opposed to a regenerator, or pure isolation transformer, or other type of line conditioner. If it’s of any import my equipment is a VPI Classic 2 SE turntable with an Ortofon 2M Black moving magnet cartridge, a Marantz SA8005 CD player, a Luxman 507uX Mark II integrated amp, and Magico A3 speakers all to be on a dedicated line and plugged into the conditioner. I am not interested in purchasing used.
Thanks for any input or advice. I hope someone out there knows something about these two.
Inna I demoed the Magico's with vinyl records only, so I'm fairly confident that analog should be okay. Perhaps the cd player will work even better.
I left out a word in my post above. I am going to use a dedicated Romex line straight to the power conditioner from the service panel, so there will be no power cord to it. It's almost like hard wiring, except I'll put a C19 12AWG 20 amp hospital grade plug on the end of the Romex. We'll see how that works. I honestly don't understand in what way a power cord could improve the function of a power conditioner. I'm not saying it doesn't, I just don't understand how it might. I do understand how an inferior cord, or zip cord, could degrade the signal from the wall outlet to the power conditioner, but I'm eliminating that cord completely by running the 12AWG Romex straight to the power conditioner, so there should be no signal degradation other than what the hospital grade plug might provide.
Somewhere along the line I'll try an experiment and insert a audiophile quality cord between the Romex and the conditioner and see if there is any improvement, or change, in the sound of the system. And don't worry, I always accept responsibility for whatever decisions I make. I was only trying to throw you a compliment for taking the time to reply to my posts and helping me figure things out.
I am going to use a
dedicated Romex line straight to the power conditioner from the service
panel, so there will be no power cord to it. It's almost like hard
wiring, except I'll put a C19 12AWG 20 amp hospital grade plug on the
end of the Romex.
You might want to check with NEC and your local electrical code. What you describe doesn't sound compliant because Romex isn't intended for that use.
Cleeds I’ll take a look at the NEC. I’ve got an older copy. If not, I’ll use a 20 amp, 12awg hospital grade power cord having the C19 plug. I was thinking of being lazy and doing that anyway.
P.S. I looked it up online. At first glance It appears you have to put the Romex in conduit if it’s exposed. Since that would still be odd with the plug exposed. I’ll go with the 12AWG stranded hospital grade power cord instead. That should be about the same difference.
Now I’ll have to go back and put some conduit over an exposed length of Romex connected to my furnace, which did pass inspection years ago. That’s where I took the idea from. I certainly don’t want any code violations that would give my insurance company an excuse to not pay off a claim if the worst was to happen. Thanks cleeds fot the good advice.
In a week I should be able to provide a more informed comparison that may be of some interest to you on the Shunyata v. Audioquest issue, but right now I have in house both an Audioquest Denali 5000 and the latest Shunyata Triton v3, which I am comparing to my current Purepower 3000+.
As of this time, I have not had enough time to give thoughts on the Shunyata, but I was not impressed by the Audioquest. Like pretty much every serial filtering conditioner I have tried, it presents a mixed bag of audio qualities. In my system, it constrained the soundstage, bringing everything forward towards the plane of the speakers, and produced a more pronounced lower midrange. If one's system is laid back, it may provide the sense of more excitement or jump factor, but I found it fatiguing.
Caveat 1 - I only use power conditioners on front end components, not amps Caveat 2 - my default power setup is pretty good, with all dedicated AC lines wired with Cardas in wall cable and Oyaide R-0 outlets, with an Eritech 10ft chemical grounding rod surrounded in bentonite clay.
Rzado, to be sure I’m not misreading you, you’re meaning the Audioquest Niagara 5000 aren’t you. I think you got a typo in there. I’m interested in how the two compare when you finished demoing both in your system. That’s good information on the Audioquest you’ve provided. Keep us posted. You’ve done a more thorough job wiring than anybody else I’ve run across. Must have been a fair amount of work. I’ll be watching for your next post. Thanks,
@skyscraper, here are some thoughts on running romex or other rather simple cable directly from your breaker box to your conditioner vs running a high end purpse designed audio power cable from a wall socket to your conditioner. From a current perspective, direct connection would be great. From the perspective of any EMF around that cable that might interfere with other cables in the vicinity, perhaps not the best solution.
Same goes (especially) for using budget power cables from a conditioner to your gear. Why I hear you saying. You just spent $4,000 to tidy up your power, so now its all good, right? Yes and no, and the reason is that a power conditioner cleans up the power from the street, but can’t protect your low voltage/current signals in cables like IC’s and speaker cables from exposure to field effects from nearby high current power cables, even if the power running through those power cables is very “clean”.
As @inna says, good conditioning and good power (and other) cables work together, removing noise and reducing signal and field interactions, especially in crowded spaces near the back of each piece of gear or where low and high current wires come close to each other, cross, or heaven forbid, run in parallel. Sorry to say its all potentially important.
Best way to determine if it’s important enough for you to make additional investments is to try different power and other cables in your system once you select a conditioner. Try the cable company lending library for a low cost way to trh before you buy.
I find that the better my gear gets, the bigger the benefits I hear from good power and other cabling. But frankly, good cables can make some even modest gear sound surprisingly better and good.
The better all your other cables are, the more likely your romex idea is to generate more potential benefits than penalties.
Knownothing, I’m listening to what you’re saying about low voltage cables picking up field effects from high voltage cables nearby, particularly when in close proximity. I’m trying to understand this. Would " field effects" be the same thing as EMI interference or something in addition as well?
Would using shielded power cables prevent them from emanating field effects? I had thought about a using shielded hospital grade 12AWG, 20 amp power cable to the power conditioner instead of the Romex, due to the possible code violation Cleeds brought to my attention. This would be in addition to audiophile quality shielded interconnects and speaker cabling. I don’t know how well shielding alone limits signal and field interaction. I thought about doing the same with the other power cables plugged into the power conditioner. Maybe the shielding is insufficient to do the job. I simply don’t know, but would like to learn. I was hoping with "clean" power I wouldn’t need to venture beyond simple shielded power cables for any device plugged into the power conditioner. Having read that would be sufficient, was a major prompt to acquire a power conditioner. Maybe it's not true.
I read a long "white paper" on cable design to try and better understand the issues involved, but can’t say I fully understood it without need for further studying on the subject. I wonder if running the power cables inside conduit would be of any benefit in limiting transmission of field effects? As I similarly mentioned in one of my posts my ignorance on the subject is fairly comprehensive. The subject is interesting though.
I did go ahead and purchase a second-hand Shunyata Denali 6000S last night from a dealer at a price I couldn’t pass up, approaching 50% off retail new, so all major components have now been purchased. Completing cable acquisitions comes next. Thanks for your explanations and advice. I found it helpful in trying to understand this complex subject.
Yes, I am referring to EMI. I am not an electrical engineer so have only an audiophile’s interest in the subject and some trial and error experince under my belt including designing, assembling and using a few power cables.
That said I have experienced great benefits from power conditioning with audio in both dirty office environment, and with a relatively “clean” home power setting with dedicated circuit, breaker, 10 guage romex to high quality outlet.
With the former, I could not get any kind of natural sound without separate power conditioners on the amp and then on all digital sources plus the sub.
At home I am running my amp and sub directly to dedicated wall outlets (few electric storms and power surges in my area), and all other analog and digital sources from dedicated outlet to qualty power strip with Shunyata Venom Defender which worked miracles on hum in my analog source and provides inky black backgrounds and good soundfield with no apparent reduction in speed of transients or slam for all sources. My experience with this simple product should bode well for your use of the Denali.
I use a bunch of different cables including Shunyata Diamondback, but am very pleased right now using modestly priced digital and speaker cables from Audioquest and interconnects and power cables from Nanotec. And I try to manage wires in the back to stay away from one another as much as is reasonable. YMMV.
The critcal issues for power cables are speed of current rise, current capacity, protection from external EMI and protection from creating excessive EMI. Everything matters in this regard from to connectors to the conductors to the dialectric to the conductor configuration. There are many different designs, and you just need to determine which is highest performing and cost effective solutions for you.
Typically, PCs for amps do not utilize shielding, while PCs for digital sources do.
Shielding is used in digital power cables to effectively reduce RFI/EMI, important for keeping noise out of the cable, but also important to keep noise generated in your digital gear within the cable and harmlessly drained to ground.
Amp power cables typically do not incorporate shielding in order to maintain unrestricted macro and micro dynamics. Complicated geometries are often employed to concentrate the current towards the center of the conductor weave, providing some shielding from external sources, as well as mitigating radiation of RFI/EMI.
Appreciate the further explanations, Knownothing. I'm definitely going to need to research this subject more, The simplest thing to figure out will probably the interconnect between my relatively, inexpensive CD player, a Marantz SA8005, and the Luxman 507uX II amplifier. I think what I'll do there is purchase a modest Audioquest interconnect that comes in at 20% of the CD players value. We do have an Audioquest dealer in Roanoke who would let me swap out cables if I liked.
That would simplify that matter. That CD player was purchased before I decided to upgrade my whole system, and it's the only component I would consider upgrading down the road if I acquire more CD's. 90% of my source material is vinyl records.
The power cables I'll definitely need to look into further. I'll keep them as far away from the low voltage cabling as possible as you suggest. I'm going to see if there isn't some simple mechanical means to shield them, starting with the shielded hospital grade 12 amp power cords, maybe conduit. I'll need to look into the other variables the cords are designed to deal with, some of which you mentioned. I'd honestly be horrified if I needed to buy a thousand dollar power cord. But you have to do what's necessary, like it or not. Thanks,
You can get budget aftermarket power cables that provide over 50% of the improvements that SOTA cables provide at 1/10 of the price. The opposite of diminishing returns.
Give the cable company your budget and tell them your gear and they may recommend an uneven distribution of costs between cables based on what they think will provide the biggest return. Or look at Pangea cables from AudioAdvisor or Signal Cable as a place to start. You may get the best results with the most expensive power cable on your CD player, difficult to prejudge.
swapping cables and power cords is the best approach until you reach products that compliment your system. Take full advantage of your local AQ dealer, retailer. Have fun!
I have now had enough opportunity listening in my system to provide some comparison thoughts. The below anysis is with respect to the Audioquest 5000 to latest Shunyata Triton only. Please note I have no skin in this game, and ultimately elected to purchase neither product after auditioning both for about 2 months. In fact, I own and use an AQ WEL Signature power cord for my current power conditioner (a Purepower 3000).
In short, the Shunyata substantially outperformed the Audioquest in my system. The Shunyata works well at reducing noise, presenting information with a lot of ease. Instruments have a lot of tonal density and color across the stage. Low level resolution is good. Ultimate stage width and depth is passable, but not remarkable. My biggest issues is in the lower midrange to midbass. The Shuyata is, in my system, notably colored, with a bit of a caramel presentation and warmth in the range of the cello and bass guitar. In many systems, this would work well, but my system is already a touch warm in this range, so the Shunyata is not a good fit.
In view of the above, I would recommend the Shunyata for those in the market for such a product taking into account its characteristics. I would not recommend the Audioquest, which to me sounds like a typical active filtering power conditioner - you can get the same performance for less.
Thanks for the input rzado. I'm hoping my recently purchased Shunyata Denali works well with my new system once my back ordered Magico A3's finally arrive in February, hopefully. I'll post my assessment then. Sounds as if it should fit in well as you usually don't read the Magico's have a warm presentation. The Denali may vary somewhat from the Triton you demoed. so I'll just have to wait and see. How do you like your Purepower 3000 relative to the others. I'm unfamiliar with that make and model. I'll have to look it up.
I tried both the Denali 6000s with its accompanying top-model fat but flexible powercord, and the Audioquest Niagara 7000 with my own Hi-Diamond 3 power cord for a month each.
The Denali 6000s was good, but music sounded "artificial" to me. And I noticed it only goes well with its own Shunyata cords.
The Niagara 7000 has a faint high frequency whirling sound, like a CPU fan, but I can barely hear it from my listening chair. According to some sources, the humming becomes louder with tube equipment. I dunno. My system is all solid state.
I bought the Niagara 7000 because it played music better... Musicality-Fulfillment! Technically, the Denali was not bad, but it did not make me feel musical enjoyment.
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