RSX Technologies - Positive Feedback

Ye Olde Editor lighting one up, Happy Valley, OR, 2021 (Photograph and image processing by John Robinson)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Very few high-end audio products require (or deserve!) a The Brothers Karamazov treatment. Or Melville. Or Proust. Or Solzhenitsyn.

Very few.

And logorrhea is no virtue.

Piles of hyperbole, thickets of pretentiousness, and megatons of overstatement and pseudo-analysis just gets in the way of grasping the essentials of many fine audio designs.

So, let me avoid it, and cut to the chase over the next couple of months, as I move towards closing out my audio impressions in 2022.

There are a handful of components that have come my way whose quality needs to be recognized. Some came in a while back; some are recent. These are designs that I'm not tempted to write the great American novel about them, but you should be aware now that I have found them to be commendable. In some cases, you'll see that I've even given one of my 2022 Brutus Awards to particularly good work. Those you should pay particular attention to.

RSX Technologies Benchmark AC Power Cord

Roger Skoff, CEO of RSX Technologies, sent a couple of samples of his new Benchmark Power Cord to me here at PF Central early in the year. This isn't the first time that Roger has sent examples of his designs; back in 2021 I gave a major salute and a couple of Brutus Awards to his MAX Power Cable and Power8 AC distributor. You can read my comments from back then HERE.

RSX has always brought excellence to sonic performance at lower-than-expected price points.

His RSX Technologies Benchmark AC Power Cable, though, sets a really new price-performance standard, one that others will be hard pressed to match, I think.

For my summary evaluation, I can do no better than quote my email commentary that I sent to Roger after spending several months listening to the Benchmark.

"Yes, I've had a chance to listen at some length to your new RSX Technologies Benchmark AC Power Cords.

Since you sent two samples to me, I used them to supply our PS Audio PerfectWave SACD/CD Transport and our PS Audio DirectStream DAC stack. I run a lot of SACDs through there on a regular basis. The AC end was plugged into the very fine RSX Technologies Power8 Power Distributor, which in turn was fed with your Beyond AC Power Cable.

Given that the prior power cables were very expensive reference-level products, and considering the very low price (for audiophileland!) of $200.00 per cord, I was quite surprised that your Benchmark Power Cords did so well by comparison. They punched well above their price class, sounding more like AC power cables in the $1,000.00 – $2000.00 range than their actual (surprising) MSRP.

Right out of the box, it was clear that the Benchmarks were going to need some break-in. They sounded congested, bass-shy, and rolled off initially. 25-50 hours of break-in cured that first impression, however. They started to bloom about 10 hours in, and then really opened up by 50 hours…not bad at all for break-in.

Once shaken down, I got a clear picture of the Benchmark Power Cords. Dynamics were excellent. Transparency was good, which in turn led to solid performance in the areas of detail, imaging, and soundstaging. They also did a creditable job with harmonic structure…much better than I would have thought, frankly.

I'd say that audiophiles on a limited budget for AC power cables should be digging in on the RSX Technologies Benchmark.

At $200.00 per, this is one of those rare no-brainers in high-end audio.

Benchmark is a price-performance killer!"

Given its kaboom!-for-the-klams price-performance, it's about time that I gave the RSX Technologies Benchmark AC Power Cord the Brutus Award it deserves.

Done!

(See? You don't have to produce an ultra-expensive high-end audio product to get a Brutus Award. You just have to produce praiseworthy excellence at a given price-point.)

Stay tuned...I'll be writing about more notable products in 2022 ASAP.

Product photographs courtesy of RSX Technologies.