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Audiodharma Cable Cooker, Part 29

Posted by Luminator on June 7, 2020 at 16:39:44:
The beginning of junior year (Fall 1987) was when everything changed. First, you were an upperclassman, so you took charge. Also, this was the last year, to get your grades up, score high on standardized tests, and pad your application with extra-curricular activities. Perhaps because of these demands, your few guy friends met up with you less and less. But you needed head count, in order to do group activities, such as team sports. In that void, up stepped the underclassmen girls.

When over half of your team consisted of physically small nerd girls, sports were going to be an uphill battle. No matter how well-positioned, hard-working, disciplined, and smart your team was, the opponents just man-handled you. Still, you always had a teammate who would stand up, and exhort, "We can beat these guys!"

And there'd also be another skinny kid, who proclaimed, "This is a test of our manhood." Which was funny, because you were 13-, 14-, and 15-years-old, nowhere near adulthood. Moreover, we had more girls, than boys.

I'll never forget one gray afternoon, out on the outdoor basketball courts. No one was within 5' of Trina, and she just keeled over at the waist. Mona came over, and asked, "Side pain?," such as those we got, while running or jogging around the track.

Trina took a swing at the air, gathered herself, got off the asphalt, and winced at Mona, "What kind of girl are you? It's so I can have your babies!"

You just never forget incidents like that. Oh well, Mona would go on to Harvard. As for Trina, she liked an album cut on The Smith's The Queen Is Dead, "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out." Trina would insist that, on her period, the last thing she wanted to do was be at home, curled up in pain. She preferred to go out, keep busy, kick ass in sports (as long as she didn't have to do any compromising stretching). Trina looked down, and frowned upon her flat chest: "Bigger boobs my ass!" She would also say that, being flat-chested, she could chest-bump teammates. But I had to caution that, with Trina being short, if she chest-bumped you, her head would hit your chin.

Trina and other friends came over to my house. I had two identical 1-meter Monster Cable IL-400 line-level interconnects. Everyone swore that the newer one sounded coarser, as if it had a cold, or was fighting its period. And that was our introduction to the concept or phenomenon of cable burn-in. The Smiths broke up, and, as of this writing, have never re-formed.

In 1992, while we were all now in college, the hot new audiophile cable company was XLO (Wireworld hadn't ramped up, yet). Customers were just starting to get into XLO's original Reference series. Record companies posthumously released The Smith's "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," five years too late, but still appreciated. And XLO announced that they were coming out with a more advanced Signature series.

When the XLO Signature series hit the market in 1993, only a few dealers carried it. Hmmm, maybe Mona could have driven from Harvard to CarFre. Personally, I did not get to audition Signature series products until 1995, from San Francisco's Ultimate Sound.

Normally when we evaluate the audiodharma Cable Cooker itself, we take two samples of the same model, leave one alone, Cook the other, and then compare.

But here, we have Cooked the XLO Reference Type 4B (left), but left the pricier Signature 4.2 (right) untreated. And in this shootout, the cheaper but Cooked Reference Type 4B performs better. It has an even sonic balance, and allows you to resume getting mad, that the Smiths did not last long, and never got back together again. The untreated Signature 4.2 has a cold, and is jack-knifed at the waist. With shrunken images, she is not getting a breast boost, during the onset of her period. With grain gumming up the music, it's like spotting when she's not on her period.

Here we have untreated XLO Signature 4.2 and 4.1 digital cables. Sigh, it's like getting frustrated from playing well and smartly, but still losing. Someone jumps to her feet, and declares, "We can beat these guys!"

Well, yeah, you can beat anyone, if you have a Cable Cooker. And if you do possess a Cooker, think twice, about letting others know that you have one. They will want to ship you their cables, so that you can Cook them. In that case, it'll be the Cooker's light, which will never go out!

-Lummy The Loch Monster