Any Experience with Curious Cables

Cables
16

The Curious Cable was a marked improvement over my prior USB cable which was a WireWorld Silver Starlight. Every cable is an amalgamation of material and design. The core design feature of the Curious is the independently run the power bus outside of the data bus. However, there are still two points of power contact - one on each end of the USB cable. That said, I am certain the differences I heard between the WireWorld and the Curious were a product of my very resolving system which is the result of much effort in eliminating the “weak links.”

So, speaking specifically to the comparison between the WW cable and the Curious Cable, here are my thoughts…

  1. The Curious handled vocals beautifully (better). The presentation was clear, well defined within the soundstage, and presented more “believable.”
  2. Did not expect this, but the bass was distinctly better - punchier and tighter/faster.
  3. A slight improvement is detail - on certain tracks. With some tracks it was obvious and others it was not. So, this is a conditional observation as it was not an absolute, but still observed.

When I removed one point of contact with power on the USB cable by going with the AQVOX LPS at the DAC connection only AND the data-only USB cable, it literally elevated my streaming playback to that of i2S (via Matrix X-SPDIF-2). You can read the thousands of posts praising the Matrix so I won’t regurgitate the seemingly endless supply of user comments with regard to that specific device, but I will say that I could not discern the difference between my USB chain setup as I have described and the highly regarded i2S playback so many have come to experience and love. It simply did everything better. Most notable was the leading and trailing harmonics, especially with acoustic and piano tracks. The background detail was another area of observed improvement. The music was cohesive, harmonic, and the most life-like that I have ever experienced delivered via digital stream in my system to date.

That said, this is my experience, with my system, in my room.

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