Danny R drove down yesterday to help with our high school speaker project competition and to eat some barbequed ribs. Each rib was rubbed generously with Tony's Greek Seasoning and smoked over smoldering mesquite for about 2 hours, then each slab was covered in a basic sauce but with different seasoning. One with white wine, one with habenaro, one with chipolte, and one with Tiger Sauce
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and cooked with low heat for another hour and a half. I'll let him evaluate the ribs.
I'll however evaluate the cables that he brought for me to listen to. Danny knows that I have been a skeptic about cables for a long time. It's not that I don't have the "faith" that they can make a difference, it's just that I didn't think that I would be able to hear anything other than very subtle differences if any at all. You see, with tinnitus and pretty major upper frequency loss I really didn't think there would be any reason for to bother. Now when Danny says something like, "Did you hear that hummingbird just lick his lips after he drank that nectar?", my response is not "Yeah, right
". I don't doubt for an instant that he really does have golden ears, and I don't... just as I have no doubt that I can hear things in piano recordings that he doesn't pick up on. It's what happens when your Mom is always yelling "You have only practiced 30 minute, you have another 30 to go young man" for years and years. So it's not that I can't hear at all, I just thought I knew my limitations.
....we started with his Electra Cables interconnects for which he is a distributer. We didn't have to go back and forth, no A-B test needed. An obvious -yes the correct word is
obvious- change occurred in the clarity and air around the guitar work in Patty Larkins "Angels Running". This is a cd I know by heart-every note. I was somewhat shaken by the increased clarity and detail that I had been missing. I had been convinced that interconnects made no real difference. Even the Blue Jeans stuff that replaced the freebies that came with cheap midfi stuff hadn't made much difference, so obviously further exploration of interconnects was a waste of $ for me. Wrongo! So now I need a set of Electra interconnects.
Danny wasn't through. He tried to hook up a power cord to my old Moscode 300, but it was hardwired. Instead he replaced the power cord to my Cambridge Audio cd. We had just hit play when laughter breaks out behind me. Danny is doing a wow thing. I didn't quite know what I was hearing
. It seemed almost like a 33.3 RPM record was slowed to 32 RPM. Things really appeared to happen more slowly. I didn't know at first if I really liked it, and was having a hard time categorizing the changes that were
obviously there (there's that word again). These difference were not subtle, not small. This was move the decimal stuff. This was like connecting different speakers. I'll say that again.... this was as different as changing one set of speakers with a different brand.
I was beginning to see the light. Danny says something like, "Do you want more?" " *%#@* yeah" I think. We change the power cord again... more wires, thicker gauge.... we hit the Patty Larkin intro. I've got the controls and 3 seconds in I hit pause. Danny's laughing. I'm quivering. Did I really hear that? We play it again. There is an echo to her vocals that defines the recording studio. There is a depth of soundstage that I had never heard in my system. The last time I heard something of this magnitude in my house, in my room, was when Gary Dodd hooked up his prototype Battery Pre and I knew that I had to get it.... we changed the cord back to the smaller one. Hit the intro, the eho disappeared and the sound stage collapsed. We put it back, and there it was again. We A-B again. I really didn't need to hear it again. I knew what I was hearing, I really just couldn't believe it. A power cord was a major.... key ... component in my system. I was humbled... a Doubting Thomas made into a believer
... and I had to hear it with my own ears in my own system to really get it. My knees are weak, Danny says "Let's press on" I beg for a break.
We come back for a last round and Danny hooks up the latest black box, his new line conditioner the Magic Buss. I should have fairly clean power, out in the country with only my house on the main transformer. We hit play and Danny laughs like a madman. He tells me it is just as big as the power cord, that noise has dropped away from that Patty Larkin intro like cleaning the bugs of the windshield of my Goldwing... but this time I don't hear it. Nada. No difference. Finally my limitations have caught up with me. Tinnitus provides a level of background noise that no power conditioner can remove. I can't hear it, but I have little doubt that he does. Finally, I'm a believer!
I'll order the interconnects and power cable when my system moves to another room and I know the needed lengths.
This rather long winded review was to show how absolutely floored I was by the difference these Elektra cables make. There may be better ones out there, but these are going into my system and will probably stay for a while.
