Rushing around a day before RMAF I went back and forth between meetings, my office, Music Room One—trying to squeeze as much work as possible before the show.
My task in Music Room One was to dust off scads of SACD and CD discs to select some for today's show.
Following a meeting, I nestled into the quiet of the music room, closed the door, and pressed play. Wow! This track sounded pretty good, better than I had remembered from the last session, not more than an hour ago. I went back and replayed several others. Something had changed.
I am used to the constant changes occurring in the room—a room that's both a lab and a reference. Upon inspection I noticed a new HDMI cable between DMP and the DSD DAC. Aha! I replaced it with my trusted AC12 to regain my reference, only to realize it now didn't sound as good.
WTF? This new cable was a nice HDMI we were trying out from a trusted supplier. It was intended to be the giveaway HDMI cable we include with DMP. Nothing too special, just the latest version of HDMI with attractive, well made connectors displaying our logo: adequate to the task, like the courtesy power cables we include.
Back and forth, back and forth, and there was no doubt. It blew away the expensive, trusted, AC12.
That put a smile on my face and we're using it now as the new reference.
We won't have them in time for beta testers, but we'll be sure and ship them one when the order comes in.
