Cable Asylum

Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

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Better than ever

Posted by Luminator on January 26, 2021 at 00:14:51:
I don't know exactly when Mark Levinson released the No. 37 CD transport. I first had one in the early 2000s, and with the various DACs I had on hand, clearly, the No. 37's sonics were SOTA. It proved that, at least for the music I had and liked, Redbook CD was awesome.

The issue with the No. 37 wasn't sonics; it was reliability. Units (especially the disc drive) often broke, and repairs were slow and expensive.

By properly reading a CD, a No. 37 makes life on the DAC much easier. However, that assumes that the digital cables are up to snuff. That is, they must pass all of that information intact, without leaving it open to interference and noise.

Feeding a No. 37 into a Simaudio 750D shows that the No. 37 is sonically superior to the 750D's interior Phillips drive. The latter rolls off the treble. The No. 37/750D combo sounds simply superb. And it gets better, as you (a) Cook all of the cables, (b) use the after-market fuses which suit your tastes, (c) select the right powercord, and (d) add Simaudio's 820S outboard power supply.

It's implied that, if you start with a high-quality source, then you are able to judge properly everything downstream, including cables.

Tara Labs' ISM digital cables possess a sonic openness, which makes most of the competition (and Tara Labs' own lesser-priced models) sound hopelessly colored, inept, and broken.

Most audiophiles prattle about how a product sounds. And that's perfectly fine. But astute readers have observed that my writing partners often eschew that. Notice how we phrase audio in terms of "accuracy," "deviations from perfection," and how it moves or does not move us. When we find and use audio products which are clean, transparent, and sonically invisible, they leave you with the music. And when that happens, my writing partners don't talk about "how it sounds." Rather, they supply detailed, movie reel-like life stories, interwoven with, caused by, and intensified by the music. Thus, their connection with the music has been fortified.

Okay, back to real life. An Inmate read the OP, and emailed, "Goddamn, why don't you give foo-foo cables to ME?!!! Talk about privileged. You live in one of the most expensive places in the country. And your relatives live in Hawaii, ferchrissake!"