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| Letters -- April 2003 More on RS Audio cables April 29, 2003 To Mike Silverton, I just wanted to compliment you on a well-worded review of the RS Audio interconnects and speaker cables. You gave me a good feel for the sonic characteristics (or lack thereof) of these cables. As a result, I placed an online order with RS Audio for the speaker cables and XLR interconnects; they should be a good match for my Ayre amp/preamp. In addition, I thought I'd give their AC line filter a try. I've never used a power conditioner before, so it should be interesting. Thanks again for the great review. Tom Haleas Digital is digital -- or is it? April 23, 2003 To Ross Mantle, OK, so I am more of a computer guy than a music guy. But I still like to listen to music and would like to be reasonably assured that the quality is good. Therefore I invested in a (comparatively) high-end system a few years ago, of which the key part is a McIntosh 7007 CD player that still gets rave reviews. Any change should of course not lower the standard. Now for the problem. Over time my CD collection has grown and is taking up too much room (the two kids that arrived in the family might have also cramped available space). At the same time, our home has grown a computer network, and I was wondering If I copy the CDs to hard disks, then I could get a good DAC and play from the computer. There are programs that give you nearly perfect recordings from CDs, such as EAC: www.exactaudiocopy.de. My thinking is that digital is digital -- either it is 1 or 0. So as long as it is digital, there should be no difference if I use a CD player or the 0 and 1 that comes from the hard disk when they go into the DAC. Before you delete this e-mail in disgust, I do realize that there must be a flaw in my reasoning. Otherwise why would you, a real music guy, be able to notice a difference when running different transports through the same DAC? There must be a part that I do not understand. And that's my amateur's question Where does the difference come from between the two transports, and how does this figure in to my plan to go to a hard-disk recording? Robert J. Sonderegger I used to own the McIntosh 7008 CD changer, and very much enjoyed the vivid, lifelike presentation it offered. But as good as it was, such older units have been outclassed by many of the more recent-generation players. But that's another story. You've partially answered your own question by recognizing that special software is needed to produce "nearly perfect" copies of CDs. Music CDs are digital, but non-deterministic in the way the data is lifted off the disc. Unlike CD-ROM, in which every bit is mission-critical, music CDs read a long continuous string of ones and zeroes at a rate that is largely determined by the rotation speed of the disc, and with an accuracy that is partly determined by the nature of the reflective materials on the disc and the laser pick-up in the transport. The situation is alarmingly similar to that of a phonograph stylus reacting to bumps and grooves on a record as it passes over them. Though I'm told that a limited checksum-type correction is provided for on music CDs, the elaborate corrective measures built into the formatting of CD-ROMs that allow perfect data retrieval were not implemented at the time the Redbook standard was devised. Hence, the mechanical stability of the disc platter, the evenness of rotation speed, and the quality of the reading mechanism are big factors that influence playback from CD transports. Alas, even though the EAC program you mentioned is purportedly better than other ripping algorithms, it achieves this by repeatedly sampling the disc and hoping that the errors cancel out. Thus, it is still ultimately limited by the less-than-audiophile read quality of your computer CD-ROM drive. Further damage is done in the burning process, such that CD copies from my computer (that are ripped with EAC but burned using stock software) tend to sound brittle and thin in comparison with the originals. Having said that, I'm a proponent of the utopian ideal of storing CDs (without compression, please) on a hard drive for convenient access. There may even be advantages in relation to jitter correction due to RAM buffering of the bits as they come off the hard drive -- this time-buffering principle is one that has been used to good effect in the Chord 64 DAC, for example. I myself have managed to get surprisingly good sound out of my computer using EAC, but I haven't figured out a way to get a digital signal out of the computer for input into my high-end dCS DAC. Let me know if you do. By the way, Linn offers a pre-packaged version of the computer-based system you want -- for a price....Ross Mantle RS Audio cables April 14, 2003 After reading Mike Silverton's review, I purchased a pair of the RS Audio Silver interconnects. They replaced a product in my system from another manufacturer that cost more than twice the Silver interconects' price and which were blown away by the RS Audio cables. Let me say at once that Mike Silverton's review was as accurate as it was perceptive. The RS Audio Silver interconnects are an astonishing product for the money, and kudos are due to Ultra Audio for bringing such a terrific value to readers' attention instead of covering yet another high-dollar toy. I do have one question. The review mentions a Palladium product, and I wonder if this is being considered for review. I'd love to read how they compare to the well-received Silversmith cables from a few months ago. John Jamieson Mike does have the RS Audio Palladium cables, so you'll see a review of those sometime in the near future. Cable impressions -- and a question April 9, 2003 To Mike Silverton, Hey, yet another Mike -- or is it Michael? -- here. I like to be called Michael myself -- and this brings us to cables. Yeah, I ate cables for breakfast lunch and din-din a while back. I ate a lot of research before figuring out which flavors to investigate. At the time, my sound was darkly on the side of neutral. I needed the help of a good silver wire. I'm a guy who likes the best but doesn't want to pay top dollar. I first settled on what I think to this day is a very fine audio cable: PSS's very affordable interconnect and speaker cable. Simple unshielded braided Litz design with nice silver-plated locking RCAs. I was pleased. But couldn't leave well enough alone. With a snicker from John over at Audio Connection in Verona, NJ, I was offered the opportunity to try all the cable I could fit in the trunk of my car. I read reviews and I have my own experience to weigh against. A cable review has to be hard, if not almost impossible, to give an accurate opinion in. There are so many variables; the components themselves are going to react like day and night with different cables. Cables are so system dependent that it's almost unfair to review them, let alone put all that on a reviewer's shoulders. I wouldn't like to review cables if I were an audio reviewer. I would have to write half the review with a disclaimer attached, then make it very clear as to the components being used. Given all this, I ended up falling in like with the Kimber Select. The 3035 speaker cable, the 3022 13w3 cable made exclusively for my Sonic Frontiers Transport 3/Processor 3 single-box CD player (yes, this transport and DAC are a one-box CD system that bypasses the digital input receiver when connected using the I2S interface and cable). The Kimber 1130 balanced interconnect -- these have proven to be more than just cable for my system. I've never tried Nordost Vahalla, but have many other cables. Which brings me to my point: I doubt very much that I would be writing a review and saying this RS Audio cable is only a subtle difference next to my Kimber Select. I have tried PSS's cable, which is basically RS Audio's design except for the annealing process using less-pure .9 silver. The PSS is a .999 purity and of medium temper, making a "soft" wire. As I stated above, to this day I feel the PSS (for only $140 one-meter RCA pair or twice the wire for the balanced version at $189) is a good cable and better than a lot of the much more expensive popular brands. But it is no Kimber Select -- not the same kind of signal passage. I feel this to also be true of the RS Audio cable. I'm open-minded, mind you, and cannot know for sure unless I try it for myself. But tell me Mike, in all fairness and truth, am I going to be wasting my time following your review and comparing this $119 interconnect and $300 speaker cable with a cable that was not a subtle but rather a very huge difference from all others I tried? Will I be wasting my very precious time? My system: Sonic Frontiers Transport 3/Processor 3 Very true-to-life sound. The Kimber Select just absolutely transformed the sound -- in a big way. Thanks, Michael Difficult question. Let's put it this way: If you're as pleased as you say you are with what you're using, why the urge to check out yet another product line? If only doctors recognized audiophilia nervosa as a bona fide ailment, they'd prescribe appropriate meds. Save your precious time for listening to music, which, they tell us, hath charms to soothe the savage breast, and by inference, the disquieted breast....Mike Silverton
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