Between Matt's cable and my stockers, the latter were clearly noisier. The sound was surrounded by pixilated micro hash. A bit of neon tint rather than vitamin D-producing sunlight. On right-handed piano—take Ryuichi Sakamoto's posthumous Opus for example—the factory leashes had more plink 'n' plonk rather than redolence. Their tonality favoured metal over wood, staccato damping over freer bloom and decay. The sound was more pinched and metallic. Meanwhile the piano's low registers were lighter. Inserting the fatter but super-flexi Forza gave more awareness of the piano's resonant tone-wood carcass around and beneath oscillating steel strings. Bass had more gravity. Tone colours were more saturated. If you agree that on the colour palette bass equals black, treble white, you won't be surprised that the C-MARC sounded blacker so darker. Contrast by way of transients which rose with higher dynamic charge too was superior. Think of what happens to a freshly cut lawn. At first it's all even. Flush. That's zero dynamic range. Boring sameness everywhere. Now add predictably regular Irish rain. Very soon the verdant surface regrows. As it does, some grassy blades, clover, buttercups and assorted weeds recover faster. Soon they stand proud. A few days more and the most vigorous growers really look down on the rest. With Matts' cable many leading edges and beats were such fast growers. For that I left Sakamoto's piano and returned to Andy Narell with his 1987 Windham Hill Legacy recording The Hammer. Its dynamically more boisterous behaviour with Matt's leash flashed on what at least according to armchair thinking is promised by seriously scaled-up conductor mass: greater dynamic range and more walloping bass.

The purple 'fish skeleton' shows this solo piano's recorded dynamic range. Were we to expand its scale to have one centimetre equal a second, we'd hope to see still more unevenness for superior microdynamics.

This segues neatly into our earlier date. If your pocket book won't stomach the loaded heap of a ~$5K Firewall, a Forza leash splits the difference rather smartly for about 1/4th the outlay. Half of the same action is in the cable! What's more, those who actually fancy a more forward than backward lean to their playback gestalt or inner attitude could prefer Matt's simpler cable connection.

Having shifted these virtual weights around and noticed the interconnected effects to sketch out the lay of today's land, let's plug the XLR4 end of my Forza cable on Susvara cans into sundry matching ports to see whether 'lesser' amps benefit more; or less. My first step down was the potentially largest, from SAEQ's €5.8K über amp to FiiO's €699 all-in-one R7, my Component of 2023. The associated tech translation is all-discrete circuity vs. chip-based power. It means very low distortion from very high current feedback for the ICs, much lower feedback but longer signal paths for the discrete topology with rare Germanium transistors plus classic silicon-based Fets and bipolars. Old school versus new school?

With the Firewall in the loop, Enleum's AMP-23R standing by.

In hifi's review space, using a website to publish written reviews as I do has become old school. Once we were the new thing, print reviews the old guard. Today the shiny new thing are YouTube channels whose operators bow to the almighty algorithm. It's how the wheel turns. It also does in our manufacturing space. SMD parts, op amps, software control, ever-faster switch-mode supplies and PWM outputs compete for dominance over classic thru-hole parts, point-to-point wiring, linear supplies and class A , A/B or G outputs. Integrated circuits chase discrete topologies. Touch screens and WiFi or Bluetooth replace manual knobs. Physical media diminish, cloud streaming rules. Soon diehard users of signal cable will be extinction-headed fossils. For now they still live. Wired passive headphones without active noise cancelling continue to sell. For now, Matt and his competition remain in business. So let's get on with that wiry business while time is still on our side.