AudioQuest Hawk Eye, Part 3
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| Posted on October 3, 2020 at 12:12:06 | ||
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Posts: 7336
Location: Bay Area Joined: December 11, 2000 |
 When we were in college in Spring 1992, my housemates and I bought a new AudioQuest Topaz interconnect. We were kind of taken aback, that our old yet identical pair sounded better than the new one. Eventually, as it garnered playing time, the new Topaz then sounded identical to the old pair. And that was our introduction to the concept or phenomenon of cable "burn-in." In 1993-94, I worked as a teacher's aide at Everett Middle School. Since I was done as soon as the ending school bell rang, I had plenty of time to hit San Francisco's stereo stores. In September 1993, I acquired my first DAC, the Theta Cobalt 307. Sigh, but that then meant we had to try various coaxial digital cables. And, similar to interconnects and speaker cables, the digital cables could sound radically different from each other.  On Saturday mornings, I was a teacher's aide at Redding Elementary. I could meet up with friends for lunch, and then we liked continuing being tourists within our own town. 93/94 was hot and dry, so we headed for the coasts quite often. During the very first week of 1994, I acquired my very first CD transport, the Theta Data Basic. Damn it; with the Data Basic setting the table, the differences between digital cables became more stark, but often with trade-offs, which made you vacillate. Saturdays at 6:00p, I bowled league at Japantown Bowl. A popular song was Ace Of Base's "The Sign."  After bowling, I could meet up with friends, who needed a late dinner. And 1994 was when we started to go out for Korean BBQ. Japantown already had some of these restaurants. You are given small dishes, which you can mix in with the rice, meats, and/or lettuce wrap. As long as you had multiple people at your table, it was fun, to cook the meats yourselves.  After dinner, we could go karaoke or clubbing. Everyone looked at each other, then realized that no one had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Yet, you would not date or have sex each other. I would just shrug, and state that my parents were always home, which put a crimp into listening to music, playing video games, renting movies, or (gasp) making out. While this was my life, I left CD transports/players on infinite repeat, to give playing time to my audio products. Over the course of half a month, the AudioQuest Digital Pro settled in nicely. In early 1994, I also had the Canare Digiflex Gold, some Cardas digital/video model, Kimber AGDL, first generation Wireworld Starlight(s), and XLO Reference Type 4. Whether I listened alone, or in the presence of friends, the AQ Digital Pro was the "friendliest" or best all-rounder, between the Theta Data Basic and Cobalt 307. And in many ways, after letting go of it in 1995, I've always missed the Digital Pro. At the same time, I never did check out AQ's subsequent digital cables.  Until now. Here is AudioQuest's Hawk Eye S/PDIF digital cable, which, we believe, was in production for over a decade. Because of the popularity of AQ's models with DBS, I do get asked about placing such a product on the audiodharma Cable Cooker. Yeah, you could disconnect the DBS battery pack.  However, we have experimented with various AQ DBS products on the Cable Cooker. Not only is there no harm, to leaving the DBS pack connected, the cable sounds slightly better (less grain) that way. Uh oh; after a mere two days on the Cooker, the Hawk Eye started to sound over-Cooked: bloated images, soft textures, slowness, rolled-off treble, no transparency. -Lummy The Loch Monster
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