BLOCK AUDIO Snakeblock

MJ30.01.2013

Power cables

All power cords have certain filtering effect. The best case scenario is that a power cord filters itself out from the sound, and this was the case of the Snakeblock. It stepped aside and let the music communicate with me with more intensity. The more I listened to it the more I felt it did the right job.

Function and form

90%

Ease of use

28%

Sound

94%

Appearance

The Snakeblock uses stranded pure copper wires; I had two versions of the cable available – I used 3x4mm2 to power my power amplifier and SACD player, and 3x2,5mm2 for active subwoofers. The total gauge exceeds the usual average but it is not a guarantee of good sound - look at Crystal Cable with almost nano-thick cables that sound great. The Snakeblock is wrapped in a PVC jacket and has tinned copper shileding. The outer protective jacket is a polyester braid.

Bass management

Weight

Slam

Articulation

The Snakeblock was easy to manipulate with, it is quite thick yet very pliable cable so I could route it wherever I wanted. Block Audio offers custom-made terminations, though the Snakeblock uses Furutech Schuko plugs (any model from the Furutech's big catalogue) in standard. Should you have another preference it is not an issue.

From my experience a power cable terminations interact with the power cable itself as well as with wall outlets and component inlets. So one-for-all logic does not work here. It may be beneficial for the sound of your audio system to experiment with several terminations therefore. I did not want to audition some maxed out version of the Snakeblock so I asked for the most basic model for this review.

Clarity & delicacy

Detail

Air

Transparency

Classical music is the reliable partner of any reviewer - so I started with Puccini's La Boheme. Listening to this piece through the Accuphase SACD player was a delight and the Snakeblock enhanced this experience even more. The voices in La Boheme got more defined both in timbre and spatially, as if an invisible haze had evaporated. Puccini wrote this piece for the voices that were singing different parts simultaneously which is extremely demanding on resolving capabilities of audio components. Often with the increasing resolution the enjoyment factor drops - the music becomes a sound, if you know what I mean. Not with the Snakeblock: the higher resolution did no harm to organic wholeness of the majestic piece.

Tonal accuracy

Timbre

Dynamics

Temporal resolution

There are many good pieces on Concord Jazz Super Audio Volume 2 sampler - The Ray Brown trio, Maynard Ferguson, Karrin Allyson and more. The Snakeblock was not moving my listening chair far away from the soundstage neither it delegated me into a role of an observer. Rather it let the music bloom and develop, let it embrace me with colours and absorb me entirely. No matter whcih piece from the collection I was listening to, I could not stop the track until it was over. It was as if I was witnessing a performance that might not repeat again.

Spatial resolution

Holography

Soundstage width

Soundstage depth

The sonic picture drawn - or painted - by the Snakeblock was robust and with concrete outlines. It was not laser-sharp, it was not bombastic, neither were dynamic nuancees deleted by spotlight tonality. I hate saying that it was just ' normal' but this is what it was. The Snakeblock delivered everthing I wanted from a high end power cable and it delivered it in a natural way.

Note.: As with all our reviews, the sound descriptions, no matter how enthusiastic, are relative to the product's category. Don't expect the Snakeblock to outperform the very best.

Price as reviewed:1 500,- Kč

Recommended resellers

Audiostudio s.r.o., Olomouc, tel. +420 608 752 475

Manufacturer's website: http://www.superhifi.cz

Associated components

Sources: Accuphase DP-78, Linn Unidisk 1.1
Amplifiers: Accuphase A-60, Spectral DMA-150
Interconnects and speaker cables: Krautwire Fractal, Homegrown Audio DNA, MIT MA-X and MIT MA
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy 8, Audio Physic Virgo V
Power conditioning: Nordost Thor (modified), Nordost Valhalla, GigaWatt PF-2 with GigaWatt LC-2 power cords

Gallery

AAI Maestoso