At this juncture, the next press release hit: "Furutech announce the release of their top-range spade and banana connectors with anti-static anti-resonance Nano Crystal² Formula… the new CF-201 NCF and CF-202 NCF spade and banana features a damping collar for the spade, a damping ring for the banana. Both are formed with liquid crystal polymer resin which incorporates nylon, fiberglass, nano-sized crystalline piezo ceramic particles, carbon powder and NCF. NCF also features in both connectors' silver-plated carbon fibre housings. A pack of two spades retails for £180, two bananas for £230." The victory lap for NCF was set for a new round.

My next round came a few weeks later with the second shipment of one each male and female XLR. With the word 'samples' on the invoice, customs didn't bat an eyelid. Looking for the simplest rig that'd take all four sample plugs in one component for max effect, I opted for the iFi iDSD Pro Signature. It shows below with just the XLR plugs. This drove Meze 109 Pro 'phones to eliminate a separate amplifier.

Strength in numbers versus hierarchy? Should my personal results apply in general, AES/EBU and XLR are more critical so responsive than RCA/coax; and a mob of dead enders acts as multiplier regardless. More does make merrier but start off balanced. Where budget demands a choice between digital and analog kit, start digital. That's my takeaway. For the full picture, think of not just airborne noise which invades our components like cold air through a window crack. Also consider self-generated noise which runs along/atop our circuitry. Some of that internal noise now bleeds off into these UHF traps thanks to NCF. Our current home's rural location puts it out of range of a wireless broadband tower across and down the river. All that surrounds us are a few sporadic neighbors and their cellphones. I thus think that the second benefit—siphoning off self-generated noise—was the primary cause for my sonic results. In an inner-city flat with tens of overlapping WiFi networks, blocking external noise should become the very dominant factor. And that ought to increase the before/after gap over my setup which for such devices is virtually a worst-case scenario.

Just so, even our 'pristine' environment's sonic contrast ratio notched up by a few clicks. I found particularly DACs like our Auralic Vega, Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe, above iFi and Sonnet Pasithea responsive to this Furutech finery. In the grand scheme of fussing over a mature hifi like a weekend biker polishes chrome on a Harley, today's parts belong at the very end of the list of chores. They're for the audiophile who already has everything else; or for the seriously obsessive. They can be the final polish on a system that's otherwise fully loaded. If you mind your ps and qs, wait until you get to z for zebra. Then pounce like a well-fed lion with a few NCF Clear Line plugs. Never mind that this won't be giraffe-sized grub but more lizard like. It's still better sound with more focus and cleaner depth cues. And then more lizards pile up into bigger helpings.

That these bits also look the high-end part is par for the Furutech course. We'd have expected no less from a reputation like theirs. Come next stocking-stuffer season, you know whom to call. From ghost busters to noise killers in a single sentence…