XLO Reference Type 4, Part 10
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| Posted on May 16, 2020 at 13:30:36 | ||
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Posts: 7338
Location: Bay Area Joined: December 11, 2000 |
In May 1992, I was towards the end of my junior year at UC Santa Cruz. But one weekend, I went home to San Francisco, in part because one of my friends' dad was getting remarried. The ceremony was to take place late morning/early afternoon, in Golden Gate Park. We were told that, it was "low key," so my friends and I did not really know how to dress.  After the lunch, but before the cake cutting, the guests, many with small children, got up, walked around, and mingled. At this time, my friends, then all in college, reunited. We were 18-, 19-, or 20-years-old. We were neither kids nor adults. Despite attending various colleges across the country, most of the dozen or so of us were coming home to San Francisco for the summer. In the photo above, my friend, who was then a freshman in college, was wearing a ring on her ring finger, which angered and still angers audiophiles. My friend Ken, who was a freshman at San Jose State, had a Discman. He was grooving to King's X's "Lost In Germany." Ken and the others exchanged contact information, and agreed to reach out to other friends. Our intention was to make the upcoming summer of 1992 the best ever. "Lost In Germany" inspired us to come up with a checklist of local (remember, even if we had drivers licenses, we did not necessarily have vehicles) places to explore.  That same weekend, some of my old friends from high school got together. We went to the Exploratorium, then located at the Palace Of Fine Arts. And when we got out, we came across multiple wedding parties taking photographs.  San Francisco wasn't exactly a place to see baby animals, so we were stoked, to see cygnets. Maybe those swans were trying to tell us something. We may not have known it on that Sunday in May, but 1992 turned out to be our magical Summer Of Love. Cue up the Baby Boomers' laughter :-) Don't laugh. Even though I needed a preamp, I was not romantic about it. Instead, since my underwhelming NAD 5000 CD player had a digital out, I lusted after DACs and digital cables. So when my school year ended in June 1992, I came home, and reached out to my friend ACS, who had finished her freshman year at Cal (UC Berkeley). She no longer had on-campus housing, so she was looking for an off-campus apartment. So ACS (whose parents' place was in San Francisco's Sunset District) and I took BART to Berkeley. Among other things, we hit Berkeley's audio stores. As we came to The Audio Chamber, ACS remarked, "Lame! Why don't they just call it The Torture Chamber?" The poor salesmen at TAC did not know that ACS worked at Victoria's Secret, and was good at it! She remarked, "You should have called yourselves The Torture Chamber! That's more fun, and it'd draw in customers."  At the time, TAC carried both Audio Alchemy and XLO. The $150 XLO Reference Type 4 digital cable originally came in an anti-static plastic Ziploc bag.  Why waste money on expensive packaging? ACS and I liked the Ziploc bag. Later, XLO would switch to a corrugated plastic box.  A customer was holding an XLO Reference Type 4. Because of the white-colored barrel on the Type 4's RCA plug, ACS laughed, "Be careful where you stick it. Looks like a tampon!" The customer dropped it like a hot rock, and that incident infamously lost XLO a few sales (customers overwhelmingly went for the $175 Kimber AGDL). Later in June 1992, ACS and I went to San Francisco's Ultimate Sound, which carried both Kimber and XLO. In digital cables, they predominantly sold the Kimber AGDL, and later the Illuminati D-60. ACS spied the forlorn XLO Reference Type 4 in a glass cabinet, and remarked, "It's the tampon!" She continued, "o.b. stands for our bodies."  A nearby customer recoiled. Even if he had been interested in the XLO Type 4, he no longer was. And o.b. stands for "ohne binde," German for "without napkins." Anyway, the writing/printing on the Type 4's heatshrink wrap can easily rub off. The signal flow directional arrows are printed here.  This sample was previously Cooked, in the late-2000s. So it is time for an overnight recharge (sounds kinky, but isn't). Using the directional arrows as a guide, you make sure that the Cooker's signal flows in the correct direction.  Later production XLO Reference Type 4 was packaged in the corrugated plastic box, and came with this RCA plug (all of my XLO Reference Type 1 line-level interconnects come with it). ACS called it "circumcised." Some samples have a male center pin, whose tip is rounded, such as the one above. On others, that male pin is hollow.  An audiophile sent me an XLO Reference Type 4, which has never been stuck on a cable burn-in device. The untreated sample exhibits losses in image integrity. With losses of edge definition, the images sort of blend into each other. Thus, the contrast between music and space is reduced. There is a loss of treble sparkle, which is probably why, back in the mid-90s, customers instead opted for the Kimber AGDL. A warm veil is thrown over the music. No relation to ohne binde, "Lost In Germany" loses some expressiveness. Forget the 1992 Summer Of Love. The XLO Reference Type 4 needs some love (just 3 days, actually) from the audiodharma Cable Cooker. -Lummy The Loch Monster
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