February 27, 2016

  • AudioQuest Forest RJ/E, Part 1

    In September 1989, when I arrived at UC Santa Cruz, I learned that the campus was formerly a farm/ranch, which started at the foothills. So when you entered at High Street, it was grass and rock. If you went up Hagar [not Sammy!] Drive [not 55!], you began a slow and steady ascent, past the Great Meadow. You'd then hit the sports buildings, and then - BAM - you'd run into the trees leading to Stevenson College and the Bay Tree Bookstore. As you climbed the hill, the trees got denser and taller. I happened to be assigned to Crown College, then situated at the highest elevation, and arguably the most sylvan.

    Yes, Crown College's buildings (none taller than three stories) were engulfed within the tall redwoods. But Crown College also sported a wide variety of other trees, bushes, undergrowth, mosses, grasses, and low-lying ground plants. It was not a monolithic forest.

    Nobody warned me that the students in the dorms let their hair grow. Long before "No-Shave November," we had, well, "no-shave school year." Since I lived in coed dorms, that meant that BOTH boys and girls let their hair grow. So when you heard the word, "forest," it conjured up images of the hairy students. Yes, that meant facial, body, armpit, pubic, and leg hair.

    In contrast, today's Americans are going full Brazilian.

    In September 1989, I was using Monster Cable interconnects and speaker cables. But I wanted to graduate to "high-end audio" cables. High on my list were AudioQuest. Yes, that means that AudioQuest are old. So when they name a model "Forest," they are harkening back to their first decade (the 80s), honoring an era when big hair could mean more than just the hair on your head. If AudioQuest wanted to shine the spotlight on being hairless, they would have named it Brazilian.
    IMG_2892
    So that brings us to their Forest RJ/E Ethernet cable. When I entered UCSC in September 1989, and when I exited in June 1993, I had never even heard of "Ethernet." All we had were landlines. Hell, we didn't even use the term, "landline." We just called it the phone.
    IMG_2893
    Did AudioQuest phone the marketing company they used back in the 80s? The fonts and writing style are reminiscent of their 80s and 90s efforts. But as a nod to multi-lingual customers and international markets, the back panel of the Forest RJ/E box is written in English, Spanish, French, and Russian. When I was at UCSC's Crown College, we did not have many ethnic minorities. Those students were mostly placed out at Oakes College.
    IMG_2894
    Let's not leave out the other foreign students. Open the back panel, and you'll get the writing in Chinese, Korean, Portuguese (okay, you may go Brazilian now), Thai, German, Japanese, and Italian.

    In 1990 and 1991, my AudioQuest Video Z, Topaz, Ruby, Quartz, and even Lapis came in clamshell packaging. My F-14 and Type 4 speaker cables were cut from spools, so they did not come in packaging. In January 1992, AudioQuest phased out the clamshell packaging, and introduced boxes. The Forest RJ/E box's dimensions are 6.25"x8.5"x1.5". Though larger than a paperback book, this box can fit nothing bigger than an iPad Mini. But as it only holds a skimpy Ethernet cable, it is not crammed. Oh. If you now go to UCSC's Crown College, a dorm room which held 2 students when I was there now houses 3.