Galen Carol Audio is out of stock on the Red clad so i ordered the Silver 7 , he gave me a decent discount plus the ability to return if the Mocha AQ is better.
Waiting for my WW silver 7 hdmi cable. Probably tomorrow will be here. I will post my impressions!
What will you be comparing against?
Blue Jeans hdmi cable
Looks like Wireworld is sold out of the Silver 7 also
Galen just cancelled my order as well. Maybe for the best > less variables in testing the Matrix. I am going to try:
1 Innuos MKII>Lush II>Matrix/USB Power>Generic HDMI>DS Sr
2 Matrix MKII>Lush II>Matrix/Uptone LPS 1.2>Generic HDMI>DS Sr
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Glad to see you post this Falling_Leaves.
I am a HUGE High Fidelity Cables Fan (HFC). I have a full loom of their cables. The ONLY cables in my system that aren’t HFC are cables they don’t make. USB and now HDMI. Now that I have the ability to try an HFC AES/EBU I was thinking about pulling the trigger. With your post, I most definitely will!
The Matrix is an awesome little box. It does bring some magic to the tunes that straight USB just cannot get there. I am using Bootzilla’s WW Starlight 7 (red clad). There is no doubt that it sounds VERY good, but with an HFC CT2 between the Matrix and the DS sr., I think I will find my audio nivana.
Thank you for getting me off that fence. I will let you know how she sounds…
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Well, you were right, it IS awesome !
Thank you so much for the wonderful tip !!
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Regarding the using of the Uptone UltraCap LPS1 or LPS1.2 to power a Matrix, I don’t get it. Isn’t the whole purpose of using a LPS to do away with SMPS’s yet this device uses a SMPS to power it :^ /
SMPS’s problems are many, but they are also very efficient and the savings can be used to mitigate their problems. The UltraCap LPS1.2 gets rid of any conducted SMPS noise which is a great start. It’s much easier these days to control the radiated noise out of a SMPS by making the high current loop area as small as possible. I sort of derided some other “Never connected” power supplies, and some other super cap power supply products but the UltraCap LPS1.2 seems to do a lot right.
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OK…thank you very much. I appreciate and value your input.
Tonight, David Salz, President of WireWorld and the man who designs the cables came to our local Minnesota Audiophile club. He did a demonstration to allow us to hear for ourselves the difference between five different Coax cables and then five different Ethernet cables. It was quite informative. I loved listening to him explain how he believes all of these things matter. He had a very interesting setup and in the end the group consensus was that we were able to hear and appreciate the differences. He used cable from other manufacturers as well as their own.
He was able to show us what the sound could be with “no cable”, then an inexpensive cable, then more expensive etc. The “no cable” always sounded the best, with the most expensive cable coming the closest. What was of interest to me was the audible difference between the Starlight and the Platinum Starlight cable. When he first played through the Starlight I was thinking, “mmm, this could work”. Then he played through the Platinum and I thought “damn, this is going to cost me some money”. I am now leaning toward a Platinum Starlight 8 AES/EBU cable as well as upgrading my XLR cables.
Can you elaborate on the “no cable” option…? Is that wi-fi of some kind…?
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This is very helpful Did he say when the Version 8 HDMI would be available?
Platinum Starlight 8 AES/EBU…Not HDMI…Very interesting…
And you will be running this through the Matrix correct?
Was the compare starlight to platinum. Or silver starlight to platinum ? What other mfg did he use. Just curious. Thanks for the note on this. Very cool.
Out of curiosity, has anyone compared toslink vs hdmi coming out of the Matrix?
As I recall, Ted using toslink to demo his DACs for people. Seems worth an exploration on the Matrix. I only have a very inexpensive toslink cable on hand.
He had some sort of a playback device with a USB thumb-drive attached as his music source. He explained that a USB drive is capable of adding less noise than any streaming device (PC, etc). To this he connected a BNC to BNC adapter about an inch long. That was connected to a very elaborate cable with what I believe was a transformer on the end of it. That fed the self-powered speakers. When it was time to feed a cable into the situation it would go in the place of the BNC to BNC adapter. I don’t completely understand the setup, but the end result was in the “No cable” setup, the sound was remarkable. Clean, detailed, wide and deep sound stage. Then he put in a Belden cable and it changed dramatically. He would play the “No cable” setup for a minute, then switch to the cable being tested, then back to the “no cable” version. He stepped up four times in cable quality and admitted himself that even when he got to his top of the line cable it still was not quite as good as the no cable version. It was pretty darned good though.
His theory was he tries to design a cable that does the least damage to a signal and he uses such testing to determine how effective his designs are. In each case you of course still heard music, but in each case something was not quite the same.
When he was doing the Ethernet testing he had a thumb-drive plugged into a router that was connected via the cable to be tested to the playback device. The “No cable” setup was just the thumb-drive into the playback device.
Sadly, he did not.
That is my plan.
Starlight to Platinum. When he was demonstrating the Ethernet cables he used a no name Cat6, and a Audioquest Vodka, then a Starlight and then a Platinum Starlight.
(I own Silver Starlight cables so I know the difference between Silver Starlight and red jacketed Starlights)
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Yes I did. With the covney and BJC HDMI vs cheap glass toslink cable(from amazon) it was pretty close - both good. The WW HDMI was better is every way than those 3.
Between the lines i come to conclusion of ordering WW Silver Starlight 7 hdmi for Matrix. I think it will be “good enough” at that point of the cable chain.