First the coin toss from the boss. "Once again, I would mention that it is very important that the cables are completely produced by hand to require a large number of working hours and of course knowledge and experience. This year we decided to stop producing some models and spread out the new range across three lines. The basic is Lazarus which begins sales at the end of February. I don't have final calculations yet but the price will be slightly more than half of Statement. Lazarus is the successor to Vortex, Maduro C and Maduro S. Statement becomes our new mid line, Statement Special Edition the range topper. All specs will list on the website by month's end."

Statement speaker cables.

Next the material mix from the boss: "The AES/EBU and XLR analogue cables use high-purity annealed cryo-treated long-grain silver conductors in twin-layer Mulberry silk-tube dielectric with a 96% open tinned-copper braid for RF/EMI protection and grounding. Atmospheric protection is by silicone elastomer, anti-static protection by cotton. The outer sleeve in antique gold finish also is silk. Mechanical support is via single black PVC braid. The wooden box housing passive parts  to eliminate ground-loop effects particularly at HF is Burmese teak. The connectors are NC Black Neutrik with silver pins. The RCA cable is the same, its connectors are WBT 102ag silver pins. The speaker cable is a 40:60 mix of solid-core silver and mirror-polished copper of the same purity. The silk and silicone layers mirror the interconnects, spades are WBT 0681cu. Again Burmese teak shows up in the splitter and contains built-in resonance attenuation. All copper/silver processing and the silk and cotton elements are made exclusively by us as are the hand-crafted wood elements."

Packing was in three bio-degradable cardboard boxes, shipping via UPS. Whilst unabashedly dear, Maro at least doesn't spend our significant hifi investment in his best cables on expensive display boxes which past unpacking lose all utility to end up benched or worse, binned. Past Maro's portentous price reveal, I obviously wondered whether compared to our Kinki and sundy mixed looms, these manually involved Croats would be tyre or curb kickers. Not having received Croatian post before that I could recall, I was curious how UPS would route it. Online showed progress from Croatia to Slovenia then Italy then two stops in France before "significant weather events across the globe" impacted final delivery. But I recognized the second French depot from packages arriving from the Far East. It wouldn't be very long now. And yes, the weather just then was rather crap.

Then the clouds lifted, the celestial faucet closed, the fan of the furies stopped and a white van drove up. Playtime. Maro's cables unpacked from velcro ties and tubular barrel protectors to the thickness of my pinkie. The lot was dressed in a matching spiralling darker and lighter golden brown and finely finished olive-wood lozenges. On the interconnects those sit right in the middle where competitors might place a resonance damper. Like the wood on the speaker cables, that of the RCA features an engraved directional arrow which the XLR neither need nor have. The wood barrels on the high-level leashes become the final load-end splitter whence the pig tails emerge a pale white and pink terminated in my case with WBT spades. My small Croatian cable crowd looked finely made organic understatement not Dubai bling. Selfie poseurs looking to crowd-source affirmative support for a splendid spend won't gain much traction. These underground wires are far too demure to raise eyebrows or wowie emoticons; just right for those alienated by anaconda-sized hoses in bright-coloured sheaths.

To set the stage, why do we call boxed-up cones 'n' domes loudspeakers? Must they shout before we hear them properly? Ditto cables. Anything which must get loud before it communicates is deeply flawed. The quieter our playback hardware—the lower its noise floor, distortion and signal loss—the more gets through from source to ear. In that sense we want an ultimately silent cable where even at cosy rather than capital SPL, all the planktonic bits of recorded space register. We also need a fast cable whose dielectric and neighbouring materials don't cause signal reflections, resonance or absorption/release phenomena to inject fuzz and blur aka faux warmth. Obviously no cable makes sound after we hit 'stop'. Then they're all equally quiet. Yet once we hit 'play', swapping looms without touching the volume control invariably demonstrates some changes in resolution, tonal balance and more. Whilst cables don't make sound, they certainly influence the passing signal. Reviewers can't possibly know what cables sound like in isolation just as they can't with any other gear. It's only in the context of complete systems that sound happens. Then it's only by swapping out bits over time that we get to develop a sense for what each contributes. Swapping obviously is limited to what's on hand. That makes all conclusions conditional. It's very basic and obvious but still merits mention. Now we're ready to inhale us some mighty maro and perhaps get hei? Let's quickly jump that shark—hai is shark in German—and feed then swim with it. Blood in the water?