November 3, 2016

  • Cable Cooker, Part 11

    By now, everyone is aware that, during my senior year of college (92-93), my stereo system comprised the Sony CDP-520ES II; Adcom GTP-400 and GFA-535; and Pinnacle PN-5+. That GTP-400 had 1 phono input, and 3 line-level inputs. One of those line-level inputs was for the Sony CD player. So that still left us with two. Neither of us had a tape deck :-(

    My housemate Tron had a 13" color TV. It had a wireless remote, and an F-type connector, so we could directly hook up the CATV feed. However, this TV was monaural, not stereo. It did have RCA composite video and mono audio input and output. To feed the TV's sound to the Adcom GTP-400, we initially used a throwaway patchcord, with one male RCA at one end, two male RCAs at the other. Too bad the audiodharma Cable Cooker did not exist back then. In the 2000s, my colleagues Cooked such patchcords, with positive results.

    Later in the school year, I acquired another AudioQuest Topaz interconnect, for my stereo back at home in San Francisco. That freed up a Monster Cable IL-400. I then dug up a gold-plated, L-shaped, roughly 1.5" Monster Cable adapter, with a male RCA at one end, two female RCAs at the other.

    So here we are, 24 years later. Instead of converting mono to two channels, we now need to convert RCA to RJ45, so we can use the audiodharma Cable Cooker to treat Ethernet cables. Computer/electronic supply stores carry such adapters, about which I wrote on my last Cable Cooker post.
    IMG_3221
    But now audiodharma themselves make their own cryogenically-treated adapter, with 1 male RCA plug and 1 female RJ45 socket. In the set above, one has black heat shrink wrap, the other green. I am not sure about current-production sets, but for this particular one, signal should flow from black to green.

    During my senior year, my 3 housemates and I lived in UC Santa Cruz's Crown-Merrill apartments, nestled at the edge of the forest. The school's mascot was (and still is) the Banana Slug. Even though I had AudioQuest cables, which were good enough, I still stared at the Audio Advisor, Stereophile, TAS, and other audio promotional literature, and dreamed about Cardas cables, whose promise was a more organic and "natural" sound. Indeed, my power amp at home, the Muse Model One Hundred, sported Cardas RCA jacks and binding posts.
    IMG_3222
    The audiodharma Ethernet adapter uses a Cardas RCA, which waves the magic wand, makes that tingly sound, and brings me back to that most wonderful 92-93 school year.
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    Sorry, I can't make up anything enchanting about the female RJ45 side. It is a computer supply part, and not even my computer science major housemate, Ron, found electronic parts sexy. He just wanted them to work. So let us hope that this female RJ45 works for years.
    IMG_3242
    To me, Cardas' snail/nautilus shell logo was the complement to UCSC's Banana Slug mascot (slugs, by definition, don't have a shell). Yes, that is a glow-in-the-dark rubberized banana slug toy. Sounds kinky, but isn't.

    The more important scientific thing is, we have three identical Ethernet cables. Leave one untreated. Use the generic RCA/RJ45 adapters to Cook the second cable. Then use the audiodharma adapters, while Cooking the third cable.

    Keep the audio/video system constant, with the only change being the Ethernet cable. Using the untreated Ethernet cable as the baseline, cable #2, Cooked with the generic RCA/RJ45 adapters, has a MAJOR influence, greatly reducing grain, in both audio and video. Cooked with the audiodharma RCA/RJ45 adapters, cable #3 takes another small step forward, in terms of grain reduction. That leads to a more refined sound and picture.