When I became a college student in 1989, I lived in Crown College, atop the UC Santa Cruz campus, nestled at the edge of a forest. On Friday and Saturday nights, a small handful of dormies would walk through the parking lot, past the Crown-Merrill apartments, and across East Road. From there, trails and fire paths went into the forest.

Armed with flashlights, we would come to breaks or small clearings amongst the trees and foliage. Any available moonlight was of enormous aid, in helping us to see.

While gathered in these clearings, we lamented not being able to have a campfire. In lieu of that, we had to pretend that our flashlights were campfires. We liked to joke and tell tall tales. We really got to know each other better, when we played Truth Or Dare. Some kids liked to drink beer, smoke marijuana, and do shrooms. But then there were those who liked to disrobe, and run around in various states of nakedness.

Sigh, you always had a few kids shining their flashlights on streaking bodies. I think the coed above was Rachel. She liked to do a belly dance, toss off her clothes, and howl at the moon.

Which brings us to the Simaudio MOON Evolution 820S power supply. Yeah, as the batteries in our flashlights drained, we college kids wished we had a generator in the forest clearings. Back in the dorms, none of us gave a damn about outboard power supplies. For me as an audiophile, the only outboard power supplies I really knew about were from Audio Alchemy and Naim. Be careful; in its shipping box, the 820S tips the scales at over 54 pounds, which is heavier than any of my components from college, and half of what my dainty coed neighbors weighed.

The 820S, whose US retail price is $8,000, will only do you good, if you have a Simaudio Evolution series CD player (650D and 750D), DAC (780D), phono stage (610LP and 810LP), or preamp (740P). The 820S bypasses and replaces the above models' own interior power supplies. An 820S can power up to two of the above components.

When I was in college, there were no maps (paper, satellite, or Google) of the wooded areas just outside of the Crown-Merrill apartments. So when we trekked into the forest at night, we felt like we were exploring.

This 820S comes with warranty card and explanation; promotional literature; QC checklist; and manual.

The lack of city lights made the forest north of the Crown-Merrill apartments very dark, especially when the tall trees' branches and canopies blocked out the moonlight. It's not the same as the moonlight beaming down on us, but this is what the top of the 820S looks like. Yes, it is exactly the same as the Evolution 750D. Note that its top sports 8 hexhead screws, which you will have to remove, in order to access the internal fuses [more on those in a future post]. Also note that the 820S' top does NOT have ventilation slots. Thus, dust cannot get into the innards. Not generating any heat, the 820S is meant to be powered up at all times. Cool; literally and figuratively.

During all four years I was at UC Santa Cruz, the beds in the dorms and apartments were always separated. If you wanted to stack them in a bunk arrangement, you had to ask maintenance for the dowel pins.

Now that Student Housing crams more students into the same units, the beds now come stacked. There's just no room to separate the Twin XL bunks.

When I moved into the Crown-Merrill apartments (pictured above), my housemates and I cobbled together enough electronics, to form a stereo system. We did not have an entertainment center or audio/video rack, so we had to make do, with stacking the components, one on top of another.

My roommate Eric was, uh, a bit on the rotund size. Guys would point to Eric's man-boobs, and kid that he was "stacked." Moreover, Todd's girlfriend (I forget her name) would occasionally sleep over. In the morning, she would walk out topless, and make breakfast. She had good-sized boobs, and was considered "stacked." Alas, the hungry Eric was more interested in the stacks of pancakes.

To get started in this review of the Simaudio Mind 180, my current household decided to go small, and stack it with the matching Moon 100D. Again, after making the connections (both physical and wireless), downloading all of the apps and software, organizing the sources, we used the Mind app (I use it on an iPad), to send digital data to the Moon 100D.

I moved into the Crown-Merrill apartment at the beginning of the Fall 1991 quarter. On the musical front, that meant the dreaded grunge revolution. On the audio front, that was the time people already had CD players. Wanting even more out of the CD format, consumers now wanted to migrate to digital separates: CD transport and DAC. And the affordable DAC of choice then was the Audio Alchemy DDE v1.0. A quarter century later, DACs are the anchor, but the transport is now a streaming device, such as the Simaudio Mind 180.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When I entered college, I did not know a soul. I'd never felt so isolated and lonely before. One of my better friends was a girl, whom people named "Warts." That was a truncated mash-up of her Germanic surname. Though Warts did not have any actual warts, you're damn well right, she was super-sensitive about any blackhead, bump, dot, growth, polyp, or zit.

Warts and I were in the same Section, which met outside of Core Class. Even though my dorm was in the upper quad, while hers was in the lower, she and I would occasionally eat together in the dining hall. She would invite me to her room, and we'd have chats.

To me, two things about Warts stood out. One, she had the narrowest canine teeth. They resembled something from a scary deep-sea fish. Two, her only jacket, which she wore frequently, was this light-gray, almost dirty white, trench coat.

But in Warts' own mind, she didn't just dislike her hair color, she hated it. It was a matte brown, with kind of a gray tinge. Warts said her hair was like mixing "mud and refried beans," or an "old gingerbread cookie, which turned kind of grayish."

I tried to cheer her up, by saying her hair was like a graham cracker, animal cookie, milk chocolate, or walnut. To which Warts said, "Fuck walnut. I need it darker, like chestnut or macadamia nut."

One night, while we were sitting side-by-side on her bed, Warts leaned her head toward mine, with our ears and temples touching. She said something like, "While I'd be okay with going blonde, I'd really like to be like you - black!"

But when it comes to audio products, I don't like the color black. Thankfully, the outer jacket of Chord Company C-Stream Streaming Cable is off-white, kind of like if Warts had bleached her trench coat, then washed it with "whitening" detergent. The C-Stream Streaming Cable does not have any signal-flow arrows. Chord Company mark one of the plugs with a black dot, identifying the source end. At least with this particular sample, signal should flow in the direction of the writing. I shall write about the RJ45 plugs in a future post.

My three housemates and I moved into the UCSC Crown-Merrill apartments on September 20, 1992. By the late afternoon/early evening, I got a grip on my college stereo, which consisted of the Sony CDP-520ESII CD player; Adcom GTP-400 tuner/preamp and GFA-535 power amp; Monster Cable IL-400 and AQ Topaz interconnects; AQ F-14 speaker cable; and Pinnacle PN-5+ minimonitors. That moment of crystallization occurred, when some radio station played Patty Smyth & Don Henley's "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough." Though it was "only" FM, it sounded damn good, and indicated that this school year -- after three fairly miserable ones -- was going to kick ass.

Meanwhile, Ron had put together an IBM PC, and was hogging the phone line. You see, his computer used what was then new to us, a dial-up modem. It made a horrifying scream. But when Ron lost connection, he let out an even more blood-curdling scream. Clearly, a phone line was inadequate for moving computer data. Moreover, we could not have foreseen or predicted CAT5 Ethernet cable being used for audio purposes. Alas, here in the teens, that is indeed the case.

Finally, a few cable manufacturers are coming around, to making their own high-end audio Ethernet cables. As of this writing, the Chord Company's entry-level model is the so-called C-Stream Streaming Cable. It is only available in these fixed lengths: 0.75m, 1.5m, 3m, 5m, 10m, 15m, and 20m. Here in the US, pricing starts at $100 for the 0.75m length. I believe each longer length adds another $25.

In 1992, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot warned about our jobs being shipped overseas. And they were, of course, right. Unlike cables of 1992 being made in the US and UK, the C-Stream Streaming Cable is made in China. Actually, the packaging tries to mislead you, by saying, "Designed in England, assembled in China."

Back in 1992, $50 for the AQ Topaz hurt, was a lot of money for us unemployed college students. Working backwards, $100 for today's C-Stream Streaming Cable would have been.........$58.30 in 1992! My three housemates and I would have choked on $58.30 for a phone cable, especially one made in China.

Back in the early-90s, if you had said the word "streaming" to ACS, she would have stepped outside our Crown-Merrill apartment, stood on the moist grounds, pissed, and called that "streaming."

Nora had a quiet and introverted wannabe hippie female friend, who lived in another dorm, in the other quad. Perhaps 8 of us were hanging out in the corner lounge, which was adjacent to my dorm room. Someone complained that, perhaps because it was full of bodies, the room was "toasty."

Nora's friend, in a zen sort of way, said that she wished the room were hotter and steamy, just like her naked yoga class (!). And that was the first time I ever heard about "naked yoga."

I looked about the room, glanced at the students, and, under the influence of Nora's friend, pictured them doing naked yoga. Don't be steamed; mind over matter.

Okay, in order to use a Simaudio Mind 180, you need a router with wireless capability; a smartphone or tablet; a computer or network with music files; and a DAC. Assuming your wireless router is working, use your tablet to find the "Moon Mind" app.

A.) Make sure the Ethernet connection is made to/with the Mind 180.

B.) Now remove the power cable.

C.) Go to the back panel. Using a narrow pointy object, hold down on the dimpled "Update" countersunk button.

D.) Reinsert the power cable. Simaudio claim that the initialization or update process takes about 10 minutes. That was not the case, when my unit went through this process. IIRC, it took 15 long minutes. In that time, you could have done a nice, steamy, naked yoga session!

E.) Once the initialization/update is complete, remove the power cable for 3 seconds.

F.) Reinsert the power cable. If the LED flashes red (uh oh, college flashbacks!), something went wrong, and you have to restart this process. If the LED is green or extinguishes, congratulations, you are good to go!