May 24, 2014

  • Lifatec Silflex, Part 3

    Imagine Marcie from the Peanuts, but with straight long brown hair. During my freshman year in college, living down the hall was such a girl, Nora. Nora even had, like Marcie, round glasses. Nora was usually serious, rarely smiled. But once I got to know Nora, I found that she wasn't mean, cruel, nasty, or harsh at all. Rather, she just wasn't jovial and light-hearted.

    Nora did have this thing against lava lamps. She would always denigrate them as "so 70s." To which one of our guy neighbors cluelessly asked, "What's wrong with that?"

    Well, down on the first floor were two girls who had, not a lava lamp, but one of those fiber-optic table lamps. Nora still said that the fiber-optic lamp was "so 70s," but did not object as hard. In fact, Nora would run her hands through the soft fiber-optic conductors.
    IMG_0758
    Hooking up the Lifatec Silflex Tos-link cable to an operating source shows a red laser light. It reminds me of my dormmates' fiber-optic lamp.

    I initially used the Lifatec Silflex between an HDTV and the NuForce DAC-9. With the Nintendo Wii U as a source, the Lifatec Silfex demonstrated greater resolution and speed than, for comparative purposes, the MIT AVt1.

    Nora may have given off a vibe similar to Daria from Beavis And Butt-Head. But underneath that unsmiling exterior, Nora wasn't at all stuck up or uptight. I remember one hot Saturday afternoon, when Nora couldn't stand her stuffy and baking dorm room. So she said, "Let's go." She took off her shirt, revealing that she wasn't wearing a bra. She flicked her long, straight hair, gathered some on her left, gathered some on her right. She used her lengths of hair to cover her boobs. Then she put on a blue brimmed hat, grabbed a book, led me out of the room, out of the dorm, and into the quad.
    IMG_0769
    Okay, it's not quite the same as the small dorm room getting too hot and stuffy. But the pressure was rising, to use a CD transport, to test this Tos-link connection. My reference Mark Levinson No. 37 CD transport does not have a Tos-link output. So out comes the California Audio Labs Delta.

    Ah, now we are getting somewhere. No, the soundstage, much like the small dorm rooms and little quads, isn't large. But the resolution hinted at by the Wii U is strongly present. It's like being able to see the correct colors of Nora's brown hair and fair but not pale skin. Okay, so I've just said that the soundstage isn't big, remaining bound by the speakers. But the images are small and relatively focused. The images are then coupled with decent speed. Toni Basil's "Mickey" and Katrina And The Waves' "Walking On Sunshine" aren't slow, plodding, or rhythmically retarded.

    Overall, you could say that the Cal Delta, Lifatec Silflex, and NuForce DAC-9 are "okay," and "better than expected." That's like assuming that Nora was a pill, but finding out that she wasn't. Using the CAL Delta, I've heard tens of coaxial digital cables (all of which cost more than $69) sound worse than the Tos-link connection via this Lifatec Silflex. In many ways, I prefer the Tos-link Lifatec Silflex over the coaxial Illuminati D-60.

    Reading that the $69 Lifatec Silflex Tos-link outperforms the $390 Illuminati D-60 can upset the audiophiles' beliefs and comfort. Hey look, if Nora is going topless out to the sunny quad, don't stand there with your shirt on. Take it off. Your eyes will tell you that while Nora kept on her panties and Birkenstocks, she was otherwise nude. But if you want to take off your panties and footwear, don't let others stop you. Your brain will tell you that you are using Tos-link. But your ears will tell you that the Lifatec Silflex often sounds superior to the coaxial and much-hyped Illuminati D-60.