October 2, 2009

  • MIT Digital Reference, Part 1

    20 years ago, in those golden Fall 1989 days, Berkeley's Joe Satriani released Flying In A Blue Dream.  For the first time, Satriani sang, but musically, he's quite experimental here.  There's a lot of variety.

    For the next couple of years, the Oakland Coliseum was the place to be, 'cuz the A's would win with pitching an just enough timely hitting.  With the present-day A's so bad in an ultra-competitive American League, it's hard to imagine the Coliseum being packed, especially for baseball.  But, in 89-91, packed it was.  Back then, I never knew that I'd end up living just a few stops south of the Coliseum.

    But all these years, I've been using Flying In A Blue Dream as an audio reference.  No doubt, some of you have seen and heard me playing it in stores and at shows.  In the mid-90s, I was using it to audition, among other things, digital cables.  Around the $325 price point, San Francisco's Ultimate Sound carried the Illuminati D-60, XLO Signature 4.1, and MIT Digital Reference.  The D-60 was the run away popularity contest winner.  The Sig 4.1 was so wildly inconsistent, hardly anyone I know bought it.  And the Digital Reference had a small but loyal following. 

    I'll get to the Digital Reference's performance later.  For now, let me get on with the physical description.  Though it can be bent, the Digital Reference is a rather stiff product.

    It is so stiff, it actually levitates in the air, when stuck on the Cable Cooker.

    "Okay, while the Digital Reference is on the Cooker," says Tessa, "Let me clean out the tubes the California Audio Labs Alpha killed."