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Revelation Audio Labs Passage, Part 3

162.205.183.92

Posted on October 5, 2020 at 21:08:45
Luminator
Audiophile

Posts: 7288
Location: Bay Area
Joined: December 11, 2000
An audiophile emailed, "I was the fat kid. So they automatically made me catcher [baseball/softball] or offensive lineman [football]. As an adult and father, I coached girls' soccer. But in my day, even if they wanted to, girls couldn't play with or against us."

I responded that, every time I write about sports, you can feel the deafening silence, as audiophiles lose interest.

"F--- them," emailed the audiophile, "Your coverage of sports is honest, human, intelligent, and interesting to me. And you always make it a point that sports are [inextricably] tied to life and music. Even if I'm not interested in the product, you're always a good read. And in the end, I know if I shouldn't waste any time on the product."

At the start of my junior year of high school (September 1987), my few but previously loyal guy friends stopped coming out to play sports. For those of us remaining, it was a sense of desperation and necessity, to add new recruits. We found some, in the freshmen girls. But most were nerdy, had the >4.0 GPAs. The ones who had played on their middle school teams did so, not because they were good, but because they were not academically ineligible. IOW, they came from schools mine picked on, and counted as easy victories. My future girlfriend, KJ, had been on her middle school's softball team. She said, "We did it for fun. All my friends were on it. You guys get all crazy, competitive, and violent."

For my friends, softball was the easiest to get into, and was the sport we played most often. We had no talent in basketball, so that got pretty ugly. But the sport which brought out the girls' animal instinct, and was arguably the most fun was football. I think that started when ACS jumped on her older brother, and commanded, "Let's kick some ass!"




I'll cover offense in future posts. Alas, with so many short and often thin girls, we did have much choice, on defense. We played a 3-4. We set aside the three biggest guys, and made them the defensive line. Too bad. If they wanted to play other positions, no dice. But we did rotate whoever the fourth guy was, from his linebacker of strong safety position. The above photo was taken when we were in college, not high school. The setting sun made us look more imposing than we really were.



Some of us would meet in the cafeteria, and go over positioning and technique. If the other team (justifiably so) chose to play smash mouth football, and run up the middle, our guys up front had to muck it up. We then had some of the girls play linebacker, and instructed them to move as a pack. Ben (above, left) repeatedly emphasized, "If it's you one-on-one with the ballcarrier, he's going to run you over. So get down, and trip him up by the legs."

His younger cousin said, "You mean like I do to you?," as she grabbed him by the leg, and tried to flip him over.




Anyone who went to our high school will nod about hanging out in front of your locker. There, I'd coach up Penny, who was, by far, our most fleet of foot, dexterous, and skilled. Penny had the best body control, and could go all day. However, she was 4'10", and weighed under a hundred pounds. So tackling was an issue. We made her a cornerback, and kept saying, "The sideline is our best friend. If we force the ballcarrier out of bounds, we don't have to bring him down."



This looks like it was taken on the NW corner of Geary & Steiner. That pedestrian footbridge was demolished earlier this year. We finished playing softball at Kimball, then walked across the street, to Hamilton Pool. Maybe it was during Spring Break 1988. We were at South Sunset, where we got slaughtered in softball. I recall that, regardless of how good the opposition was, we just did not play well. The San Francisco Zoo had sea lions, whose barking seemed like they were booing us. We ate lunch while the girl on the left, Sau Lai, played the new album by Johnny Hates Jazz, Turn Back The Clock, on a boombox. As the last song on side B, "Foolish Heart," played, something clicked within us. We got up, walked out onto the field, and got into a 3-4 football defense. Aided by 2 or 3 other guys, Ben walked through the 3-4 defense. And the girls who played linebacker now understood where to line up, which areas of the zone to patrol, whom to cover.



Which brings us back to the Revelation Audio Labs Passage 5-pin XLR cable. After 3 days of Cook time, it sounded terrible, like students piling more garbage on top of the overstuffed cafeteria garbage cans. So I put it back on for another half day, and it sounded worse! So we hooked it up to a Simaudio 820S outboard power supply, and just let it sit in place.

The instruction sheet reads, "The cable may require several days to physically "settle" after installation, and then again after any subsequent relocation or significant movement. Hence unnecessary disconnecting and reconnecting should be avoided."




Again, we left the Passage in place. Over the first couple weeks, you could sense, like sniffing out a receiver trying to run a pick play, the sound starting to change. But nothing concrete changes, until after the third week.

Other 5-pin XLR cables sound "conventional." The Passage alters the 820S' influence. The soundstage itself is wider, but not any taller, and with hardly any depth. Likewise, the images are sufficiently wide, with excellent focus and stability. You definitely, where appropriate, can "see" the images. But they lack 3D depth, shape, and substance. The music's speed is accurate. But there's a loss of snap and punch to drums. It's well-timed, like Penny's footwork. But it doesn't pack a punch, like pear-shaped ACS jumping on her brother's back. Instrumental textures are weird -- dry yet slick. Backgrounds are free of fuzz and hiss, but there are also losses in breath and breathing room. And where did the air around and above cymbals go?

Whether singing along to some lite rock, boogie-ing to dance music, or rocking to jock jams, my friends had passion. The RAL Passage is too paint-by-numbers, and loses some of that human element and swagger. Where music should be funky, the Passage comes across as pistonic and machine-like.

The Simaudio 610LP phonostage and 740P line-level preamp should have no sound of their own. So on these components, the Passage, IMO, works better. In a future post, I'll cover the Passage, when hooked up to my Simaudio 750D CD player/DAC, which, as a source component, produces sound.

-Lummy The Loch Monster

 

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