WBT Nextgens


Hi audiogoners; does anyone out there have any experience with the new WBT Nextgen female rca sockets? I use silver eichman bullet plugs on my valhallas and am looking for a high performance chassis socket to use with them. The silver nextgens would appear to fit the bill however they are expensive and i wanted to get some feedback first. thanks mark
colesey
In case anyone's thinking about doing this, I can confirm that the results were indeed worthwhile. I put a pair of the silver wbt jacks into my rogue amp at the weekend and there was a definite improvement in transparency and palpability. the dac's going back to the manufacturer shortly for a blackgate cap conversion and they'll fit the second pair. the only caveat i'd note is that you need to be careful inserting the eichmann bullet plugs so as not to displace the central section of the jack.
The question would be: How much improvement over the older 201E model? I got the same result using the regular ones so I'm not sure spending 2 times more is worth a while.
A technician at the local DIY parts supplier/modder THL Audio told me one customer had replaced his older WBT socket with the silver NextGen and found the improvement worthwhile. It's for S/PDIF application though.
That's interesting.
I have quite a few questions to ask:
1.) Which old WBT connector?
2.) The sonic difference -- Could it be because of the conductivity old soldering vs new soldering? or the old connectors were dirty?
3.) Placeble effect? Since you can't change back and forth to do A/B test.
4.) What is the sonic difference?
I've now had my dax returned from the mods and it's still burning in. This unit was previously fitted with rca midlines and AS remarked the nextgens were notably superior. This is easily verifiable as the unit has two pairs of rca outputs for biamping and we ony replaced one set. The magnitude of improvement transcends the suggestion that the connectors may be dirty and is of a similar magnitude to fitting bullet plugs to an interconnect. Sonic difference is as previously reported; greater clarity which takes one a step or two closer to the music. Verdict? Expensive but worthwhile. This is very much a hobby of incremental improvements and these take you closer to music.
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