Introduction I received the Curious Cables USB a few months back and postponed this review until I was able to compare this venerable cable with at least a dozen other USB cables. We all know it’s a fantastic cable, but how does it fare against the giants of today? So over the course of a…
SOtM iSO-CAT6 Special Edition: The Flavors of Audiophile Ethernet
Introduction When I hesitantly (due to the $500/1.5m price tag) reviewed the SOtM dCBL-CAT7 ethernet cable back in March, I realized the importance of having a high-quality ethernet cable in the chain. Now I have a dCBL-CAT7 running from my modem to my router and two more for my actual source components. I felt the…
Supra CAT8 Ethernet Cable Review – An Amazing Spotify and Tidal Experience
Introduction I was going to title this post “A Swedish Surprise” but presumed it was something salacious. Thank you Urban Dictionary. I was firmly in the camp of spending no more than $10 on an ethernet cable. After my review of the fantastic sounding SOtM dCBL-CAT7 ethernet cable, I wanted to survey a few more quality cables,…
SOtM tX-USBultra USB Regenerator Review – The Ultimate Digital Defuzzer
Introduction I’ve reviewed quite a few USB conditioners/regenerators and their variants in the past. Their job is to filter noise and reconstruct an accurate and jitter-free signal for your DAC. Many of them apply their own sound signature, which isn’t a bad thing, as long as it does its job of phase correction and noise reduction. When…
SOtM dCBL-CAT7 Audiophile Ethernet Cable Review
Audiophile ethernet cables. Most would laugh or vomit when they hear those three words. I firmly believe it’s one of the biggest bottleneck for many networked rigs out there. Naysayers would be believers if they just take two cheap ethernet cables from different brands and just give it a listen. If you aren’t a complete…
Audioquest Vodka vs SOtM dCBL-CAT6 Ethernet Cable
Trust me, I was dumbfounded and skeptical when I heard ethernet cables made a difference in audio quality. It’s over a reliable TCP/IP connection where the bits are error-checked. Presumably the bits should be exactly the same on both ends. Well, apparently there’s EMI/RFI that could envelope the path of the cable and generate a…
Digital Cables: Chord SilverPlus USB vs. Supra USB
I didn’t really subscribe to the idea of USB cables making a difference. I was pretty much in the same camp as these guys and these guys. However, as I’ve learned on this climb up the audio food chain, everything matters for audio. It’s not as simple as 0’s and 1’s. There’s timing involved, noise pollution…