Marshall Nack, Author at Positive Feedback

New! HiFi-Tuning Diamond Fuses

Marshall Nack — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 20:42:06 +0000

Audiophiles spend thousands for a 39" (1 meter) power cord, only to follow it with an inch of conductor that costs around $3 at a local hardware store. That power cord may be highly rated, but current flow and sound quality will be constrained by the cheap fuse element at its tip. Surely, we can... Read More »

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Crystal Cable Infinity Power Cable

Marshall Nack — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:26:10 +0000

Mention Crystal Cable in an audiophile conversation, the adjectives that likely come to mind are thin, elegant, top-drawer fabrication, and expensive. With an unflinching eye on aesthetics, the color scheme has always featured silver, often accented with gold—the regal metals—in a visual palette resembling the colors of a painting. The association with luxury goods has... Read More »

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XACT USB and Ethernet Cables

Marshall Nack — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 16:24:45 +0000

I live on the fourteenth floor of an apartment building on a busy avenue in NYC. Even this high up with the windows closed, the sounds of the city—automobile horns, pulsating boom boxes, people arguing—filter in. It's annoying, especially when I'm having a session. Unexpectedly, though, I found it sets up a good test. If... Read More »

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XACT S1 Music Server

Marshall Nack — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 17:30:08 +0000

The brochure included with the XACT S1 music server hammered on the point again and again. Digital that doesn't sound like digital. More like vinyl. The single-minded focus caused me to reflect on the scene and our recent history. What began with Perfect Sound Forever in 1983 is now snubbed in 2024. The new standard... Read More »

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Taking Stock of the Da Vinci Power Cable from Crystal Cable

Marshall Nack — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:40:05 +0000

For many years I scoured the fleas and thrifts, scarfing up cheap classical and, to a lesser extent, jazz LPs. The getting was good and the leaning towers behind my speakers mushroomed, inevitably forcing the zero sum rule of collecting: if something comes in, something else goes out. It only works if you're rigorous about... Read More »

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Adventures with Desert Island Cables: the Da Vinci Interconnect from Crystal Cable

Marshall Nack — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 19:27:29 +0000

We had a pair of Row K center tickets for the Dover String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. Everyone knows that's the eleventh row, but we found ourselves settling in four rows from the stage. What happened? An usher informed us management had enlarged the stage for this event by removing a... Read More »

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Fono Acustica FAL-2 Cable Lift

Marshall Nack — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 16:16:14 +0000

There's no getting around it, cable lifts are controversial. With so many competing designs and theories all claiming to remediate the same issues—mechanical vibrations, interactions between wires, and RFI/EMI contamination—sorting them out can make your head spin. One company says the best RFI solution is lifting the cable with a minimum of mass, coming close... Read More »

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Linebacker SE Copper Passive Power Filter from PranaWire

Marshall Nack — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 15:32:36 +0000

When is enough, enough? That's a rhetorical question when posed to an audiophile, because in matters of the hi-end, we never cross the finish line. Just ask Joe Cohen, the proprietor and lead designer of PranaWire, for his take on the subject: "Common wisdom holds that there is a point beyond which continued effort and... Read More »

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Two from Purist Audio Design: Diamond Edition Dominus Power Cord and Dominus Interconnects

Marshall Nack — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 17:23:28 +0000

I was chatting with an exhibitor at last year's tiny NY Audio Show 2022 and mentioned I found the treble in his room had too much bite. I got no argument: "I like that. That's what I hear at concerts." Hmm…his comment made me pause before I continued with the rest of my list: boomy... Read More »

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Secrets of the Armónico Ethernet Cable from Fono Acustica

Marshall Nack — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 17:22:31 +0000

The last of the Fono Acustica cables had been sent back about six months ago. Already, their sonic profile was receding. It's difficult to retrieve what you can barely describe in words because sounds are not stored in long-term memory. So it was amazing and a testimony how fast that profile resurrected when the newly... Read More »

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Something New from audiodharma Cable Cooker: the Ground Breaker

Marshall Nack — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 20:22:41 +0000

I'll share a snippet from an email exchange with Alan Kafton, proprietor of audiodharma, the company that makes the Cable Cooker. The subject is the long anticipated, but now available, Ground Breaker adaptor set for the conditioning of power cables. Good morning, Alan I just finished cooking a pair of power cords. One PC used... Read More »

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New Cables for My Master Clock from Audience

Marshall Nack — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 22:20:15 +0000

Guys who own digital master clocks are very serious about extracting the most from digital sources. If a stock power cord came with the clock, very likely it's still unwrapped in the box, because that would be self-defeating. Audiophiles shooting for the max are OK with substantial outlays for after-market power cords—they've heard the solid... Read More »

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Van Gogh Loudspeaker Cable from Crystal Cable

Marshall Nack — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 16:49:14 +0000

In the brightly lit labs of the professional or the informal workshops of the DIYer, cable designers labor diligently, permuting materials, listening critically, then doing it again, ad infinitum. The process mandates a high degree of scientific rigor. With experience, the designer acquires an intimate understanding of their materials. They know when they tweak this... Read More »

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Nordost QNET Ethernet Switch

Marshall Nack — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 22:05:35 +0000

The natural order of things is to start low and aim high. Buy a low-cost product; get acquainted with it, even as you scan the horizon checking out options; become dissatisfied; then pull the trigger. That's what we do: the avid audiophile never stays put very long. Sure, you can jump-start the journey by handing... Read More »

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Stage III Ckahron Interconnect

Marshall Nack — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 16:33:56 +0000

Six years have passed since Stage III Concepts introduced their Medusa Speaker Cable, which the brand distributor claimed to be the world's first with a vacuum dielectric. This was no ordinary wire product. I gave it a Writers Choice Award in 2016. The Cerberus Speaker Cable, a new top model in the vacuum line, followed... Read More »

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Music Streaming with Fidelizer - the Nimitra2 Server + Nikola2 LPS + EtherStream Network Switch

Marshall Nack — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 20:21:22 +0000

When something is not as advertised, I have no problem calling it out. So it was when music streaming came along. I read reviews, heard the demos, and my ears told me it was a step backwards, plus it was always crashing. I stayed on the sidelines until about four years ago when my DAC... Read More »

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Audience aR12-T4 Power Conditioner

Marshall Nack — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 16:11:31 +0000

It was around the midpoint of my Hi-end audio journey when I heard my first passive power distributor and I can still recall the shock. At this time—I'm talking decades ago—the Hi-End embraced the philosophy less is more. Virtue lay in the fewest electronic devices and the shortest signal paths. Minimalism ruled. The goal of... Read More »

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Dominus Interconnect from Purist Audio Design

Marshall Nack — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 16:16:29 +0000

Last Sunday marked a return to Town Hall, New York City, for a concert by ECCO (the East Coast Chamber Orchestra), a group of 18 youthful, professional string players. These guys (actually, most were female and Asian) were really digging in, using the full bow when they had to and, alternately, approaching near silence in... Read More »

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Monet Power Cable from Crystal Cable - a Very Pleasant Surprise

Marshall Nack — Mon, 30 May 2022 14:51:03 +0000

When the Monet power cables from Crystal Cable were offered for review, first thing I went online for a look-see. The photos suggested a slimmed down cable with no surplus parts, nothing more than the elemental hardware required for the task at hand. The Monet is the thinnest power cables in the new Art series... Read More »

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Virtuoso Interconnect from Fono Acustica

Marshall Nack — Sun, 01 May 2022 16:45:46 +0000

Last year I spent quality time with the Armónico cable from Fono Acustica. The wires left a lingering impression of intense musicality, along with a desire to audition more of their products, including the top-of-the-line Virtuoso model. Felix Avalos, the proprietor of Fono Acustica, teased me along with, "The Virtuoso is a whole different cable... Read More »

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Nordost QPOINT Synchronizer

Marshall Nack — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 21:14:54 +0000

I came to the Nordost QPOINT Synchronizers in a roundabout manner. My primary interest was their QSOURCE Linear Power Supply. After auditioning a couple of low-price linear power supplies for my ethernet streaming front-end and coming away unsatisfied, I turned my gaze higher and spied the QSOURCE LPS. It exceeded my expectations and the review... Read More »

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Fono Acustica - Compás Speaker Ground System

Marshall Nack — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 17:13:17 +0000

As in days of olde when men strode forth to slay dragons (or chase windmills), the modern-day audiophile is on a crusade. This villain appeared relatively recently, coincident with the world economy's tectonic shift to the Information Age. As many have observed, Radio Frequency Interference wasn't an issue for audiophiles circa 1970. Nowadays, it might... Read More »

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Nordost QSOURCE Linear Power Supply

Marshall Nack — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 18:22:16 +0000

One of those wall-warts came with the Fidelizer EtherStream network switch I use for music streaming. These little switch-mode devices have known issues. It is not good for music streaming; even worse, it spews contagion throughout the electric grid. With the ethernet switch on, my primary sources were degraded: the CD transport sounded worse. I... Read More »

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Isolation Platforms from Marigo Audio Lab

Marshall Nack — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 20:57:29 +0000

The highlight bout begins with King Resolution dancing in his corner taunting Bishop Musicality across the ring, both egged on by PR guys with stakes in the outcome. The handicappers lay odds on the King. Why? Because resolution trumps all in the audiophile arena. These bouts occur regularly in my sound room. While I love... Read More »

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Nordost Premium QKORE Wire

Marshall Nack — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 16:39:37 +0000

A fellow-traveler who delights in extracting the max from his gear relayed this narrative the other day. "When guys come over for a listen, they often comment they never heard XYZ gear sound this good. Why is that? I tell them it is the attention paid to the little things—like premium fuses, RFI noise stopper... Read More »

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