I was listening to music using Roon this morning using my Sablon Bochinno AES. I had not checked my Antipodes dashboards, but became aware of another AMS update to 3.11 from a forum post. After updates and Roon backups, I went back to listening. The presentation seemed flatter, not as vocally natural nor had the same spatial imaging and staging I had been getting. I wondered if the updates had somehow caused a regression in sound quality or whether the shut downs and restarts may require some further settling in of my K50.
It then occurred to me to check if the updates had changed my Player Output from Digital, using AES/EBU, to USB. Sure enough, that was what happened. Resetting to Digital on Player Output for my Sablon AES again provided the sound quality I previously had enjoyed. This was really noticeable to me. The USB cable in use was Wireworld Platinum Starlight. My opinion is sound quality with this Sablon is also continuing to improve.
I bought a second hand Final Touch Audio AES cable and very happy. I compared to USB and direct Ethernet to bridge on my Bricasti M12 and felt the AES was the best. I was surprised since I thought my direct Ethernet connection would be best.
After waiting for over a month there’s still no sign of the demonstration MIT Oracle MA-X AES/EBU. It was shipped, but mysteriously disappeared in transit between the U.S & U.K. Fortunately & with it being such an expensive cable it was fully insured & another has now been shipped via an alternative courier (though they all seem to be getting worse).
I have just switched to the Nordost Valhalla V2. I only realised how good it was when I switched back to my Atlas Mavros AES. The latter is a very good cable but the added detail from the Nordost cable was worth the investment.
I use Jorma digital cables both the RCA and AES/EBU on my K50. I find the AES has a bit better attack and dynamics but could live with either digital cable. I was using a Transparent Audio High Performance SPDIF prior to the Jorma. I much prefer the Jorma Design cables.
Well I finally got my hands on the MIT Oracle MA-X AES/EBU. It’s going to take a considerable amount of time to run in. According to MIT themselves it’s a full two weeks (336 hours). However first impressions & with relatively few hours are excellent & strongly suggest it could be a keeper (we shall see). It already considerably out performs my existing Audioquest Wild AES/EBU & Roon Radio will help massively with the running in process. Thank you to everyone that responded to my original query, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to do so.
The MIT MA-X has been on pretty much 24/7 since my last post on this thread & is now run in, at least by MIT’s own recommendations. I’ve no previous experience with their cables, so thanks for the heads up & you were correct by the way.
I’ve run in a great many cables over the years, but nothing quite like this. It started off very impressively, then went through a few small ups & downs, before going a full 3 days + of sounding absolutely horrendous (forward edgy & just plain nasty). Although I guessed that the cable was the culprit, I admit to still checking just to be on the safe side. Slowly but surely it started to balance out more & now everything is sounding better than ever.
I’m still not sure how a cable that basically carries one’s & zero’s can even affect the sound to such a degree, let alone fluctuate to such an extent, but this one sure as hell did. Now it’s got to other side fully, it’s most definitely a keeper.
It’s not actually ones and zeros but an analog waveform that varies between two voltage states that represent zero and one.
The MIT filter network aims to correct the impedance of the cable so that it presents only a resistive load. It does that correction over a number of poles representing individual frequencies as impedance varies based on the frequency. The filter that represents each pole burns in at its own pace so burn in goes through ups and downs until each filter has fully settled in. That’s my interpretation of what’s happening so it might not be entirely accurate.
Digital may be more sensitive to cables than analog because of how sensitive digital is to timing. The threshold representing one or zero must be crossed at exactly the right time. Antipodes does a good job of explaining it here: Noise & Bandwidth - Antipodes Audio
The MIT cable network helps to ensure high fidelity of this waveform, which is why you hear such a positive gain from it.
It’s a fabulous cable now, but you’d have to be totally deaf to miss that downturn mid way through. What I experienced would align at least to some extent with what Kennyb123 stated, because it became super bright & forward, then took a while for everything else to catch up.
That’s not what I said. The truth is I wouldn’t know whether you’re deaf or not, because you weren’t here. I on the other hand was & so was my wife.
The reason the sound changed so much tonally & part of the way through the running in process certainly wasn’t just because we’d both suddenly started listening too technically & at exactly the same time. The tonal imbalance for those few days was far from subtle & could easily be heard, even from another room.
That may not have been what you experienced with your own MA cable, but it was certainly what my wife & I experienced with the MA-X.
Sorry, I wasn’t serious.
I did not experienced that on the MA-X because i bought it second hand.
I experienced something similar with the Audioquest Carbon USB cable.
It takes weeks for me before i liked it, it was weird.
Therefore it is impossible to do A B comparison.
It takes time to settle.
The thing about this particular cable is that although I’ve had a reasonable amount of experience running in cables over the years, I’ve absolutely no previous experience with anything from the MIT stable before. They’re pretty rare in the U.K, partly because they suffer quite sizeable price hikes here compared to the U.S.
When Kennyb123 warned me MIT cables could be a bit of a rollercoaster ride during burn in, I have to admit I took the comment with a small pinch of salt (Sorry Kenny). I hadn’t had the MA-X long & it already sounded far better than my Audioquest Wild AES/EBU.
I was expecting the odd down turn which is a pretty common thing burning in cables. However, it turns out he was absolutely spot on describing burning in a MIT cable as taking you on a rollercoaster ride. Certainly burning in this one was anyway.
I’d originally seen very little of what he described apart from pretty minor shifts in balance & in general it was just getting better & better. Then all of a sudden it wasn’t, in fact for a few days it was absolutely awful with a shift in balance best described as being arc welder bright. It then stayed that way for a few days before slowly starting to become more even.
Roon radio was an absolute God send to assist with running in though & having now done so & with it sounding so good, I actually paid for it today.
As for the articulation control. At the moment I’ve just left it in the middle/standard position. I didn’t see much point in playing with it whilst I was running the cable in & nothing on earth would have helped during the horrid period. I’ll get around to playing with it sometime, but being as it’s already sounding so good I’m not in any particular hurry.
It can be discouraging - even if you know you to expect it. Their cables aren’t cheap so one is already at the edge of feeling buyer’s remorse. But then once the rollercoaster ride ends you are usually left convinced that you made a great move.
I understand Shunyata power cords used to go through this as well, which is why Shunyata developed their KPIP process to get them more quickly past that point. MIT can’t do something equivalent as their networks wouldn’t stand for that.
Hi
I am currently using I2s between my terminator and k50. Thinking of upgrading the wireworld silver hdmi to the concentus cable.
Could you describe what the concentus sounded like ?
I am kinda torn between getting a good AES or hdmi cable and I live in a place where I don’t really get demo cables to try on before purchase.
