Not sure if it helps but I compared my Silverstar 75 to an Analysis Plus Digital Oval a couple weeks back on my Schitt Yggdrasil and I put the Black Cat cable back in right away. It just simply let more music through and had a much more exciting presentation. I'm sure you can do better but the Black Cat is a great cable. |
I’d highly recommend this -- buy an Apogee Wyde Eye digital cable for 40 bucks off Amazon (buy the BNC-terminated cable and get BNC-to-RCA adapter if necessary -- this applies to any digital cable as they’re better terminated with BNC) and then compare other used cables to it. If you find one sounds better than the Wyde Eye you know you’ve got something. If not, you got a great digital interconnect for $40. https://www.amazon.com/Geistnotes-Apogee-Clock-Cable-WE-BB/dp/B01N6XL1XW/ref=sr_1_2?crid=20D2JJO46ZC... BTW, I had a Stereovox XV1 (same designer as Black Cat) in my system and found it too bright, thin, and etched versus the Wyde Eye, which by comparison sounded very detailed but more natural and organic. My XV1 sits unused on the floor. Not saying the Black Cat Silverstar 75 sounds the same as the XV1, but I’d think if the house sound continues it will be tilted toward the more detailed side of the audio ledger. My completely semi-educated guess would be that the Digital Oval will fall on the richer and more fuller-sounding side relative to the other two. Just my guess given the rest of the Analysis Plus house sound. I’d expect the Apogee to fall between the other two. So bottom line -- I’d highly recommend you spend the 40 bucks on an Apogee Wyde Eye digital cable and make something else knock it off the table. In the meantime, you’ll have a very solid and cheap interim solution and a good baseline for comparison with other cables. But beware, if you do get the Apogee by all means make sure you pay attention to the direction arrows. They’re very faint, and I installed mine backwards once and my whole system sounded like it was broken. Seriously. It was awful! BTW, John Atkinson of Stereophile used the Wyde Eye as his reference digital cable for a considerable time, so it’s a solid baseline cable on the cheap. Hope this helps and best of luck. |
Just in case someone gathers information from this older thread: I discovered after months with wyde eye between my AD clock and Etherregen installed "backwards" (arrows pointing toward the clock instead of toward the switch) which prompted me to go through an A-B comparison- long story short- for whatever reason, the reverse/"wrong" direction clearly sounded better in my specific set-up. Yet another example of how it sometimes helps to try both directions with critical position cables. |
