July 5, 2012

  • Simaudio CD3.3X, Part 14

    Ah, summer of '92.  Since I did a lot of new (for me, that is) things, my mind has always been sketchy about the order, reasons, places, names.  Yet, some of the details are exceedingly clear.  I was back at home in San Francisco.  But I had no car, so I had to rely on others to get outside of San Francisco -- or take public transportation.  You see, in those days, we had to purchase and read paper maps.  And we often had to use a phone book.  Such was the case, when I wanted to hit the high-end audio stores outside of San Francisco.

    Most of my fellow college brethren were into alternative music.  But I, as always, was into heavy metal.  One "alternative" to metal which college kids got into was Ministry.  The industrial grind of "N.W.O." seemed to fit the decay of the time.  George H.W. Bush kowtowed to the right-wing for four years, and was on his way out.  Ross Perot tried to regain his campaign's footing.  Jerry Brown and his "We The People" campaign finished a distant second to Bill Clinton in the Democratic Primary.

    It was kind of weird.  After I'd get off of work, I expected people to be pissed off about 4 terrible years of Bush, and 12 years of despotic Republican reign.  But I guess that, instead of getting mad, San Franciscans just tried to make a better life.  Me too.  I actually had the time to visit audio stores, and I eyed those across the Bay.  But I was afraid to venture out into the "great unknown" of Oakland and Berkeley.  Fortunately for me, my friend Margaret, a Cal student, had begun renting an off-campus apartment for the 92-93 school year.  Though she was staying more at home in S.F., she offered to accompany, escort, and guide me to Berkeley.  And her apartment would be a could "pit stop" for us.  Perfect!

    I did not like San Francisco's Sounds Alive, from whom I had purchased the Muse Model One Hundred power amp.  Sounds Alive also carried Audio Alchemy and XLO.  I wanted to check out Berkeley's The Audio Chamber, located on University Avenue.  TAC were roughly halfway between the Downtown Berkeley and North Berkeley BART stations.  TAC carried, among others, Audio Alchemy and XLO.

    Again, I don't recall the exact sequence, but one Saturday morning, Margaret came over to my place, then we took MUNI to downtown, and from there, we rode BART to Berkeley.  I think we initially went to her apartment, and then bummed around Shattuck, before heading down University to TAC.  It could also have been on this trip, where we went to a Barney's hamburgers.  And now that I think about it, there might not have been Barney's in Berkeley [currently, Berkeley has two].  Margaret and I most likely went to an Oakland Barney's.

    Anyway, I lusted after XLO, not Margaret, so there.  IIRC, TAC preferred the Aural Symphonics digital cable over XLO's Reference Type 4.  At home, my NAD 5000 did have a digital output, so I was certainly interested in DACs.  I didn't care for the Audio Alchemy DDE v1.0.  I greatly preferred the more expensive Theta DS Pro Prime.  I did long for Audio Alchemy's top-loading, two chassis CD transport, though.

    I'm not sure exactly when Ultimate Sound took over as San Francisco's XLO dealer.  In the mid-90s, when I finally did get my Thetas, I bought the XLO Reference Type 4 from Ultimate Sound.  In my review of the Ref Type 4, I mentioned that Margaret likened the white heatshrink wrap around the RCA to a tampon applicator.  Eew.  She held the RCA jack between her thumb and index finger, then noticed that it was "ribbed, better than condoms."  She would then go on to complain that Trojan's "Ribbed" condoms were so barely ribbed, that she couldn't feel the ribs.

    Ribbed, lubricated, spermicidal, Enz, Naturalamb, Magnum, ultra thin...  My audio buddies and I used a variety of digital cables, including that XLO Ref Type 4, with the Simaudio CD3.3X.  We also used a variety of CD transports/players into the CD3.3X.

    You know what?  By doing these experiments with myriad equipment and cables, we find that the CD3.3X's DAC section is superior to the transport.  The internal DAC is blessedly free of the warm, overblown mids [or if the mids are "right," then the treble is too small and chintzy] which mar the transport section.  Via the DAC, the scale and proportion are correct, and there is greater see-through transparency through the mids.