During the Spring 1990 quarter, I learned that UCSC's Student Housing, after setting aside units for next year's incoming freshmen, opened up on-campus housing to current students. For those of us at Crown College, we went to what was then the rec room.

I went with my friend Warts. She and I learned that, in dorm rooms, boys and girls were not allowed to be roommates. Student Housing also held informational sessions about the Crown-Merrill apartments. SH said that, unlike the dorms, where you go on the dining hall meal plan, in the apartments, you have to do your own grocery shopping and cooking.

And that brings us to the Chord Company C-Stream Streaming Cable. We had it for a number of weeks, where it was used between a router and (a) a satellite TV receiver, or (b) the Simaudio Mind 180. With this regular playing time, the C-Stream cable was "fine," in both audio and video performance. Versus throwaway Ethernet cables, and the AudioQuest Forest RJ/E, the C-Stream had (a) slightly more avoidance of grain, (b) not as tiny images, and (c) a smoother sound and picture.

But then we acquired RCA/RJ45 adapters, which allowed the audiodharma Cable Cooker to treat Ethernet cables. We Cooked the C-Stream cable in 1-day increments. Optimal Cook time appears to be between 3 and 4 days.

For the 90-91 school year, Warts ended up finding a roommate, and they got a double-occupancy dorm room in the lower quad. I, of course, did not find any guys I wanted to room with, and ended up in a teeny tiny single room in the upper quad.

For months, audiophiles have kept badgering me about how the Simaudio 750D "sounds." That is almost impossible to answer, because it all depends on (a) the powercord, (b) powerline conditioning, (c) signal cables, (d) sources, and perhaps most importantly, (e) the fuse.

In my previous coverage of the Audio Magic Premier Beeswax, Hi-Fi Tuning Silverstar and Supreme, and Synergistic Quantum Red, the 750D sounded radically different with each. Because of the 750D's high native resolution, it "took on" the sonic personality of its fuse. If you had two Simaudio 750Ds side-by-side, each with a different fuse, you would swear that you were listening to two distinctly different models. Think about all of your radically different girlfriends. They were not the same person, and no two were exactly alike.

Let us, for the sake of argument, say that the SR Quantum Red is the Patricia (above, in the white sleeve-less shirt) I knew and spent time with. She was always in uber-casual settings: sports fields and courts, bowling alleys, the fair/dance at Justin Herman Plaza, the Japantown street fair, city streets and buses, the mid-summer dance at S.F. State, hanging out at my place, and the road trip down the Central CA coast. Patricia was always in raggedy clothes. The sunlight, beach sand, wind, soot, fog, and dust made her skin kind of crusty, goose-bumpy, and salty. She didn't wear makeup or get her hair done.

You may have heard the buzz about Synergistic Research's new Quantum Black fuse. My audio buddies and I have tried at least a dozen of the small (20mm) Blacks. Regardless of equipment, the Black takes a looooooooong time to burn-in. It needs at least a month, sometimes three. Moreover, if the Black is pointed in the wrong direction, the sound will be f----- up.

In the 750D, the wrong direction is when the fuse points to the middle of the unit. Images are of the funhouse mirror variety, and the music moves at various speeds. Things are just "off," as if Patricia stumbled off the mound, got hit in the pelvis by that comebacker, slipped and staggered at the bowling foul line, or keeled over due to menstrual cramps.

But if you use a burned-in Black in the correct orientation, it picks up where the Red left off. You get a more even tonal balance, with even greater freedom from grain and hash. Treble instruments are not robbed of their sheen. No, it does not address the lack of punch and snap to snare drum, so PRAT is still subpar. But if you need a cleaner presentation, especially if you are running MP3 through the 750D, you seriously need to audition the Black.

So let's say you already liked the Red/Patricia. Going to the Black keeps the same 19-year-old Patricia, but cleans her up, without making her pretentious or over-glamorized.

What if Patricia did the whole spa thing, with exfoliating body scrub? What if she got a mani-pedi with clear nail polish? What if she got her hair done, with moisturizing agents? What if she wore nice, modern, good-fitting, new, but not pretentious clothes? What if she donned nice, but not expensive, necklace and handbag? Doing all of these would be the equivalent of the Simaudio 750D going from Synergistic Research Red to Black.

But what if you simply do not like Patricia, cleaned-up or not? No problem, get another girlfriend. That is, take your 750D, and use a different fuse.

One Saturday afternoon, my friend Warts and I went down to one of UCSC's gyms, to play some pickup basketball. Sweating profusely, she huffed and puffed, "Hey, I have some Gatorade in my fridge."

Exhausted, I moaned, "We could use that right here, right now! But yeah, let's go back."

For me and Warts, getting back to our Crown College dorm meant walking gradually uphill, and then scaling Cardiac Hill. So by the time we got to her dorm room, we were crusty, salty, sour-smelling -- and dry.

The cold Gatorade was welcome, but by now, we were stiff and sore. Trudging down the hall to get to the bathroom seemed daunting. My shoulders and arms felt like dead weight so I cringed, as I removed my shirt. Partially to get me going, Warts pointed to the zits on my back, and called out her joke, "Warts!"

She then took a deep breath, folded her arms in front of her stomach, and pulled off the t-shirt over her head. After tossing the dirty shirt into the hamper, Warts mustered the strength to raise an arm. Looking past the stubble, she pointed to a dark brown bump on the fringes of her armpit and said, "Warts!"

She reached behind her back, let out an ouch, and unhooked her off-white (kind of like the C-Stream Streaming Cable's outer jacket) bra. After tossing the bra into the hamper, Warts stared at my chest, then looked at her own. She pinched her own tiny nipples, ran a finger around each areola, glanced at my chest, and remarked that her nipples & areolae weren't much bigger than mine (correct).

The molded plastic RJ45 plug on the Chord Company C-Stream Streaming Cable is not much larger than the small ones found on generic OEM throwaway Ethernet cables. The C-stream should fit in the tightly-packed sockets on, for example, routers. With its white colors, the plug is clean, unlike Warts and me, having played basketball and marched up the hill.

After slipping off her shorts and panties, Warts reached into and parted her pubic hair. She strecthed her labia left and right, and directed me to a small black dot, resting on the edge of her vagina. She complained that it was "a wart, as LARGE as a Cocoa Puff!"

No. Warts was exaggerating. That small black dot was, at most, 3mm in diameter. It was smaller than even today's Cocoa Puffs, which are not as big as those from 1989-91.

Even smaller is the tiny black-filled dot or dimple, on the tab side of one of the C-Stream's plugs. This black dot is very important. It indicates which is the cable's source end. Thus, if you are running this cable from your router to a streaming device, the plug with the black dot goes into your router.

Unlike hooks in bras, most tabs in RJ45 cables are plastic. The C-Stream's RJ45 is no exception. I have heard from people (not just audiophiles), who have broken the tabs off their Ethernet cables. Be gentle and careful.

Many of my friends went to jam-packed, competitive, and crowded UC Berkeley. OTOH, I went to UC Santa Cruz's sparsely-populated Crown College, where there generally weren't any large groups. The flip side to that was that you got to spend a lot of time with individuals.

Living in the dorms during our first two years, one of my best friends was Warts. While there were others when we ate in the dining hall, most of my time with Warts was one-on-one. In addition to the dining hall, I'd hang out with her in the quads or in each other's dorm room. During freshman year, she and I didn't particularly care for a party we had attended, so we left together. We went to her dorm room, where Warts said she was from Merced or Modesto, Califorinia's Central Valley. She said it was hot, dusty, polluted, and full of farms. Thus, even in the '89 earthquake aftermath, she greatly preferred being on the coast.

Because we were in our late-teens, we had all sorts of skin conditions and blemishes. While her nickname was Warts, she did ignore skin anomalies which weren't bumps. She did not have any actual warts. She would, however, jokingly call out any bump as a wart.

I had the Sony D-10 Discman. Since Warts did not have a CD player, she would ask me to bring over the D-10. She would use the cable with a mini-headphone plug at one end, and two male RCAs at the other, to connect the D-10 to her small desktop stereo's AUX input. I do not recall what we were listening to, but she pulled down the tank top strap over one shoulder, revealing a small, raised, pinkish bump. She smiled, and jokingly said that the bump was a "wart."

Nope, in 89-91, Warts and I could not have imagined Ethernet cables, certainly not for audio use. Back then, Chord Company did exist, but neither Warts nor I had heard of them. So here we are. The Chord Company C-Stream Streaming Cable uses this molded RJ45 plug. Hey, at least its off-white color isn't a beige pus, red rash, pink bump, or blackhead.

Another time, Warts came to my room. After kicking off her Birkenstocks, she pointed to small calluses on top of her toes. She lifted her foot closer to my face, and said, "Warts!"

From the side, the C-Stream Streaming Cable's RJ45 plug may or may not remind us of Warts' toes. But parts are gold-plated, and the molding does have a splash of light blue.