Apparently, Silnote Audio have had an audiodharma Cable Cooker [Anniversary Edition 3.5 with Cardas CCGR RCAs] since June 2013. So if you are in possession of Silnote's products after that, they may already have been Cooked. Be that as it may, any time we come across a used cable, even one which has been previously Cooked, it receives a 1-day recharge on my own Cooker.

Even after a digital cable is Cooked, you need to use it on a variety of gear. This will discern how well or poorly it does its job of (a) passing signal intact, and (b) being impervious to interference and incompatibilities with gear.

Assuming a decent DAC is in use, when the Silnote Poseidon Signature II takes signal from the Simaudio Mind 180, MP3 streams are noticeable, for what they lack: grain, hash, spitchiness, static. Guests are shocked or pleasantly surprised that digital streams, without all that distortion, have some sonic stability, flow, image size, and resolution. People actually have fun, listening to MP3, and often state (correctly) that it is not as bad-sounding as the same music on vinyl.

When we bring out the professional-sounding NuForce DAC-9, we can plainly see, vis-a-vis reference-level digital cables, where the PS2's negatives lie. First of all, image outlines aren't as razor-sharp as they were recorded. In addition to sounding a little "crowded" (but not to the extent of Wadia's 781i CD player/DAC), absolute soundstage dimensions are reined-in. Add these shortcomings together, and the PS2 is not as see-through transparent as it should be. Assuming the use of top-notch sources, the PS2 does not fully track all the music's minor gradations in speed. Thus, in an overall sense, music loses a little control, PRAT, expression, texture, and feel-and-grip of the note. But really, this is not a long list of negatives. By and large, the PS2 holds the music together. Even as you are aware of the deviations from absolute perfection, you can brush them aside. The music, in most cases, is palatable, accepatable, and unpretentious.

I think that the Mark Levinson No. 37 CD transport came out in the mid-90s. It was state-of-the-art then, and, 20 years later, is state-of-the-art now. That is NOT an indictment of today's digital. Rather, it is a testament to the No. 37's excellence.

With the No. 37 as source, the PS2's negatives two paragraphs above are merely reinforced. But no other major faults are unearthed. And that is a good sign.

Recall how we found that, no matter what version, and despite their strengths, Wireworld's Gold Starlight digital cables always had a yucky, icky golden glow. Moreover, they drained the energy, inter-image space, and vitality from the music. So imagine getting rid of the Gold Starlights' colorations. That is what you'd get, if you went to a Silnote PS2.

Now get yourself a top-notch DAC, such as the one found in the Simaudio 750D. By not making matters worse, the PS2 works well with thin-sounding sources. Yet, if you bust out SOTA sources, and have not much money left over for digital cables, the PS2, in just a relatively small way, gums up the works. Again, it does a good job holding things together, buying time (assuming you even want to aim for the kilobuck digital cable stars), and best of all, letting you appreciate what you have.

To start the 92-93 school year, I moved into the college apartment I was sharing with 3 other guys. After my parents drove off, and I was left with figuring out where things should go, and what else was needed, I noticed that Ron had assembled his own PC. The dial-up modem made that blood-curdling scream. For updates, he did not download via that modem. Instead, he had to go out, buy software, and load multiple 3.5" floppies. Yep, those were the days.

As the school year took shape, Ron would spend hours on end, on that PC in his room. Meanwhile, his roommate, Tron, worked part-time at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Because it took so long to get there and come home, when Tron did work at the Boardwalk, he'd be gone for hours. My own roommate, Will, was a biochem major. So when he had labs, he was gone all day. Thus, with Ron holed up in his room, and with Tron and Will out, I had pockets of time at home.

My most frequent guest was Kim. She lived off-campus. Similar to Tron's commute to/from the Boardwalk, it took a long time for Kim to get on and off campus. With her class schedule, Kim preferred not to make multiple trips to campus. So between classes, she needed places to hang out on campus. And that explains why Kim frequently came over to my apartment.

With Ron slaving away on his PC, Kim and I gladly stayed in the living room, where we used the Sony/Adcom/AudioQuest/Pinnacle stereo system. Update software and firmware? No way! If you wanted to upgrade your stereo, you had to go out, and buy new components or accessories.

It was hard enough, to cobble that stereo system together. So yes, we would have loved to have something even better. But really, Kim and my housemates wished we could upgrade the shower. More specifically, we didn't like the fixed shower head. Looking back, we should have skirted Student Housing's rules, removed that fixed shower head, put in a hose/head, but then put back the fixed shower head, in time for inspections.

We 4 guys complained about the weak water pressure. Even after we removed the flow restrictor (really, just a tiny mesh screen), the water pressure was still weak. It was Kim, who then said to go in the opposite direction. She suggested using the shower head's "misty spray" setting. She recommended using hot water, at maximum pressure. The resultant steam would then turn the shower room (the toilet and sinks were outside the shower room) into a sort-of mini-sauna or steam room. Yep, that was yet another reason Kim liked to stay at our place [her off-campus apartment's bathroom was larger and more open, so it didn't get as steamy as easily].

The Simaudio Mind 180 connects to the internet. The software periodically finds updates. Just like not knowing how long my housemates would be away, you don't know how long the Mind 180's updates will take. So you do have the option to decline the update, and do it later. I don't think this Mind 180 has gone less than 3 months, before the next update hands become available. And of these few updates, I think the slowest took about 10 minutes. Some updates took as little as a minute.

With some of the updates, I do not see a difference. But with others, you see added options and access to streaming services.

During my first three years of college, within deodorants, it seemed that stick/gel became the dominant format. Roll-ons and sprays were a very distant also-ran.

During the Memorial Day weekend 1992, I met Patricia, who had just completed her freshman year at S.F. State. Physically, she was your typical slender, 5'3", 110-pound Asian girl. As I got to know her, she explained that she didn't like bra straps and underwires. Thus, her preferred everyday casual dress was a tube top bra [my other friend at the time, ACS, would work for Victoria's Secret. ACS used the term "bandeau" instead] under a tank top. Regardless of what she wore, and even when not playing sports, Patricia frequently sniffed her armpits.

When Ken, Roy, and I went on our road trip down the Central CA coast, Patricia was fighting her period. That still did not prevent her from sniffing her armpits, especially when we were at beaches. In her soft knit bag, Patricia had a few moist towelettes, which were supposed to be for cleaning your hands. But the four of us just used water fountains and bathroom sinks, to wash our hands.

Oh ho ho. Nowadays, we have deodorant wipes. If these had existed during that summer of '92, Patricia probably would have used and loved them.

In 1992, in order to clean metal contacts, I was still using Monster Cable's 2-bottle Cramolin set. One liquid was red, the other blue. I forget which was which, but one was to clean metal. You then had to use a lint-free cloth or swab, and remove said cleaner. Then you used the other liquid, as a "contact enhancer." Shut up. When my friend Kim was over at my college apartment, she laughed, "Contact enhancer? Sounds like something you put on your dick!"

I pressed on, and continued applying the Cramolin set, to the jacks on my Sony CDP-520ESII, and Adcom GTP-400 & GFA-535. Kim joked, "Why don't you use my nail polish, instead? They're prettier."

1992 was when XLO truly entered the high-end audio cable market. Back then, they had not yet come out with their so-called TPC individually-wrapped wipe, which cleaned metal contacts. But had the $0.99 TPC "moist towelette" existed then, I would have preferred it over the Cramolin set.

Oh no. When I did get the TPC in the mid-90s, ACS, who was then my gf, joked that TPC stood for Tiny Pink Clitoris. No, TPC stood for The Perfect Connection.

Oh no. When ACS read the back of the TPC packet, she crossed out "Things," and substituted "Dicks."

Then we actually opened and used a TPC. Though you had to figure out how to get the moist towelette into nooks and crannies, it did a decent job of cleaning metals. The wipe also did not dry out as quickly as you'd think. Thus, if you had all of your electronics out, you could clean quite a number of jacks, connectors, and plugs.

Oh no. When ACS noticed that using a TPC caused our hands to get greasy, she called it The Penis Cleaner. Though I had no sense of smell, ACS and others stated that, at most, the TPC had only a mild scent.

One mild day in June 1992, a whole bunch of us had spent a few hours at West Sunset Playground. While taking a break from basketball, Patricia wiped the sweat from her brow, pulled her athletic shorts from her crotch, flapped her t-shirt, sniffed both armpits, and shivered, "My whole body stinks." She then went on to curse her Secret stick deodorant, "Strong enough for a man, my ass." She also shook her head about the deodorant not offering "all-day protection." She said it wore off after 20 minutes of basketball.

In those days, maybe the Secret stick was available in just scented and unscented [presently, it is available in a cornucopia of fragrances]. Because she was fine with the fragrance, Patricia did use whatever the sceneted one was. She then mattter-of-factly explained that, the Unscented did have an olfactory signature of its own; it wasn't completely odorless. It did have faint traces of being a material, similar to glue. She said that other brands' "unscented" deodorants may have been more transparent and odorless than Secret's. However, since they didn't completely mask, alter, or eliminate body odors, she ended up smelling her body's own odors, just at lower levels.

Still, as I hold these now 20-year-old packets of TPC (in pricier cables, XLO sometimes would throw in a TPC), they make me think, by a 2:1 ratio, about the benign Patricia, rather than the crude and sexual ACS. While working up a sweat in sports, Patricia claimed that, after her armpits, her stinkiest body parts were her scalp (because her hair trapped in the heat, salt, and sweat), feet, and back. As much as Patricia got all self-conscious about her armpits (more so than other parts of her body), no, she wasn't anywhere near as stinky as us guys.