My noise-busting care package included two RJ45 and one USB barrel plus the 60cm Ethernet cable. Here we see the Clean Lines' relative size against Nagra's small streamer. Nothing but cheap gutless plastic should capsize upon inserting these pinkie-sized bobs. Having no gutless hardware to hand, I aimed at my aluminium-encased network switches for the RJ45 sealers, my shiny iMac for the USB version. "Look ma, I'm wearing tails." Let's leave the black tie at the office and get comfortable in the listening chair. I expected much splitting of hairs and forehead creases like a sharpei. Should you nurse similar canine ambitions, check out this accessory review by Roy Gregory. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of by your hifi". Or as I wrote in a parallel review on a reclocking I²S generator, "many small things can compound into a bigger thing or trigger a threshold crossing. That's when like critical mass or the 100th monkey, we join a new layer of intelligibility and meaning. It's as though an elevator usually only reaching to the 5th floor suddenly spits us out on the 6th for better views and fancier interiors. Still speaking figuratively, it comes after we've done enough work on the 5th."
The trouble is, we never know when we've done enough until it happens. When experimenting with sundry accessories, we may notice little to nothing. But should we keep the faith to soldier on, it's not uncommon to trigger a sudden rather notable shift where lots of little things finally incinerate a blockage and obviously more goodness follows on. Having learnt this lesson, I'm now rather more hesitant to hand out "doesn't work" verdicts. Instead I feel obliged to say "didn't work for me" which becomes shorthand for my ears and systems being insufficiently keen and resolved.
As it turned out, I had 6th-floor results so unexpected clarity on changes. For the cable those moved just a bit to the right on the bright⇔dark axis. Without altering apparent detail count, the sonic climate felt a bit warmer or softer. Meanwhile for the Clear Lines particularly the USB, the treble became more informative. It's something the driver combo of 6" Satori papyrus widebander and Mundorf AMT both in dipole mode on Qualio's IQ 3-way responded to without a shade of doubt. Attempting subjective weighting on which bit did the most, I felt surprisingly crystal: the below USB Clear Line piggy-backed on the iMac's bum. It's a fact that paralleled USB ports interact through their controller chip. It might even assign different priorities depending on connected device. Perhaps this cluster scenario gave Furutech's barrel the longest lever to perform an audible course correction? Whatever the reason, my upper frequencies so decays and harmonics were the obvious beneficiary. Digital just 1s and 0s? Harsh reality begs to differ; loudly. Digital really is shockingly fussy. Anyone comparing legacy disc spinners with streamers can underwrite that like insurance companies do with small print. Today's easy experiment was merely another nail in the bit-perfect coffin of sonic finality. If nothing but error-free data transmission mattered, this device shouldn't have made one iota of difference. I can live just fine without understanding why it didn't get that memo. Reframed, stuff the stocking of your favourite audiophile who already has everything with Furutech's Clean Line USB if your man—isn't it always a man who obsesses over ultimate sound rather than music quality?—still rides the universal serial bus.
That Furutech's LAN cable would register at all was a surprise when my existing setup includes SOtM inline noise filters and commercial CAT8a links. It goes to show that once our overall system and hearing resolution are sufficiently polished, little things will telegraph. The real question becomes, do we care enough for a given expense? That question immediately begets another. What else could the same money buy; and would that give better results? At €145 for the short cable and €266 for each noise trap, my second question feels stumped for an answer. I can't come up with an equivalent digital gizmo. That acknowledges my lesser earlier experience with Furutech's analog noise traps for RCA/XLR sockets. My setup found the digital variants far more relevant now. It's back at the audiophile who already has everything. 'twas my way of pointing at fully mature systems. I suspect that especially those including a PC/Mac as transport aka server shall find ultra-high-frequency noise attenuation more important than our logical mind suspects; if it even allows for results.
I don't know about you but personally find it amusing when my ears override mental 'knowledge' to reinvoke the bard's Horatio admitting to many things which we don't know or understand. Furutech for Danish philosophers? Not quite. Sonic samurais is more like it. Let's simply close by saying that contrary to expectations, I found today's devices surprising in their audibility and reasonably priced. This being December 3rd, stocking stuffers indeed!
