Cable Asylum: REVIEW: NBS Mine/Serpent-II AES/EBU Cable by Keith

What's there to say about NBS? They seem like somewhat of an ominous company; they don't say much, their webpage is rather sparse, and they charge upwards of $10k for power cord. It was one of those cable companies that I never thought about; after all, there were only a few people out there who have their stuff, and they seem like the kinda people who already had maxed out their components and are throwing away component-level money at cables... and I'm definitely not one of them. Then, they came out with the Stingher line to touch on the lower-end market; some of my friends swear by them. I was (un)lucky enough to know where to get them really cheap, and before I knew it, I was walking home with this AES/EBU cable in their little black factory bags. In it goes into my system...

... what the HELL is happening here? Ok, this is like not a cable. Someone must have sneaked in here and changed my tubes. Every single instrument was more accurate sounding, and more of their tonal characteristics were showing; flutes had more air and more of their silver shine, clarinets had more wood, the highs were more extended but smoother and meatier, the lows went lower and tighter. There are no more lyrics too fast to understand; the low level details are slightly more, but the decays are incredible! But ah, the thing which it does the most is makes the entire musical picture a lot more coherent! The music seems to come alive and the fun factor just skyrockets... it reminds you of that feeling when you first listened to your very first audio rig and makes you grin stupidly at the system.

Now, lemme try again: This is not a cable. I can't express this enough. How can a single, digital cord do this?! If anything in the audio stream creates a distortion, I can't imagine what the hell kinda distortion this thing is giving off that it can sound so darn life-like, so natural, just so right!

Oh yeah, I haven't even fully burned it in yet. But the differences were so stark that, after two days, I still can't accept. Maybe you can try it for yourself and see I'm dilutional; but while I'm at this Asylum, I'm going to eventually NBS my entire system.

As for me, well, this is it. Now I no longer wonder why they call it Nothing But Signal.

Note: Sorry about the picture, they only had the Mine/Serpent-II speaker cable picture on their website.

REVIEW: NBS Mine/Serpent-II AES/EBU Cable Review by Keith at Audio Asylum