This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below

Tech wrapper. Wrapping my brain around the subject, I was left with these basics. Impedance matching becomes more critical as frequencies go up. Depending on media, analog audio signal cuts out at ~50kHz. Here transmission line effects don't occur at cable lengths we use in home hifi. Digital signal means far shorter wavelengths and shorter cable lengths too. That does get critical for our apps. The slower the cable the sooner this happens. In digital speed doesn't reference the speed of sound where air is the transmissive medium. Instead it's expressed as a percentage of the speed of light. A properly designed digital wire ups velocity to down onset of these effects with tightly matched constant impedance across the interface.
If we extrapolate from any of it a reason for USB's 5-meter limit, we'd be wrong though. Latency and timeouts are the true culprits (the USB.org developer's page has more information on the subject). Time to put the Silverstar USB leash to good use. It arrived in a big pizza-style box with foam liner and went into my usual system for a week of 24/7 action. Then it was time for comparisons.

On my work desk it went up against my usual Telos Audio Gold Reference. Its Taiwanese maker describes it as "4 x 26-gauge UPOCC high-purity single-crystal copper conductors with dual copper-mesh shields, Teflon dielectric and PVC outer jacket". Here USB fed an AURALiC Vega into a Gato Audio DIA-250 integrated into Gallo Strada 2 speakers with TR3-D subwoofer. In the regular music system cable comparators were Light Harmonic's LightSpeed double-header and an equivalent dual run of red not blue KingRex. For giggles I ran the Silverstar also against a generic to ground the discussion where we began - with a throwaway freebie that should be sufficient if all wires were the same and digital just 1s and 0s.


I love Spotify+. At 320kbps it does stream compressed but delivers endless new music. Fave finds get chased in uncompressed splendor via downloads from Qobuz & Co. Would reduced data density obscure or highlight USB cable differences? I cued up new find Karima Nayt and Quoi d'autre to find out. And it wasn't the same. Over the luxo Telos leash the Silverstar played it a bit fuller, smoother, rounder and more relaxed. This offset was very similar to how the €15'000 Aurender W20 leads my €3'000 iMac into the same DAC. Slight but real and of the same flavor. The decisive difference? I'd never pay €12'000 extra for the Aurender's small sonic advantage whilst throwing out the many conveniences my iMac has over it. The Silverstar meanwhile was considerably cheaper than the Gold Reference. That rather turned tables on Aurender's proposition.


To hone in on the difference here is easiest with bright edgy recordings which suffer from pixilation effects. If you've ever worked in Photoshop, you know how its 'sharpen' command increases edge contrast by upping lightness at the transitions. What should be gradual gets whitish. Overdo it and very quickly these transitions stand out most unnaturally like pimples on skin. On aural equivalents any reduction of hyper edging is heard easily. It telegraphs as the above fistful of attributes with their many relatives: smoother, rounder, mellower. A good catch-all for the overall effect is more organic. Back to Photoshop. Start out with a tripod-captured perfectly focused shot to give us high native resolution without any need for post-production fixes. Now the same sharpen command becomes much harder to spot. It's essentially redundant. The same goes for better recordings. That's why it's easiest to take 'dirty' tracks to familiarize oneself with this type of presentational difference. Once you know what to listen for—it's got nothing to do with frequency response—you'll also recognize it on better recordings. There it simply gets more subtle, contextual and gestalt rather than incident based.

In the big system and at 16/44.1 and higher resolution, how did the Silverstar stack up against the wildly costlier LightSpeed? I tried it between iMac and SOtM dx-USB HD/mBPS-d2s  USB bridge; and Aurender W20 and Metrum Hex. On mellow fellowship, the Black Cat belonged into the same posh club as the dual cables. Where the LightSpeed beat it was on audible space. With it the many tiny super-momentary halos and reflective flickers around tones where more insistent. They made for denser swarming if you will. The Silverstar had recorded space drier. More damped. Fewer fish in the water. Vis-à-vis DHT amps, the Silverstar applied some negative feedback. I deliberately picked simple tracks to get started. Think "Silent Stories" from Karim Baggili's Kali City or anything from the Tiny Island album. Once I had its number the same effect also applied to more complex fare.


The red KingRex UArt Y fell between Silverstar and LightSpeed. It applied some negative feedback over the latter's zero to be drier and less elastic but less so than the Black Cat. On timing flow, ease and focus however, Chris' budget effort was their full equal. As such it completely annihilated my generic whose many sins lived in pixilation city, cohabitating with questionable dessicated characters and thus occupying a far more two-dimensional cartoonish (un)reality.

Catnip. Sommovigo's experience and everyman focus have created a high-flying USB cable that does exactly what's claimed: perform at a high level even when compared to crème of the croppers. Where more remains possible is on ambient recovery. That requires highly resolving components, a low system noise floor and good recordings to begin with. With those elements in place, one might eventually consider far costlier cables. Since expense per se is zero guarantee that you're not being had by a blinged-out repurposed analog rather than proper digital cable, this Silverstar is the perfect keep-it-honest leash to have around. If a $700 cable can't beat it decisively, stay away. Many will. In the context of even a very good desktop system where one routinely indulges 320kbps and lives in a studio monitor-type nearfield, I actually see no good reason to pay a penny more than the Silverstar. That makes it a perfect Realsization highlight that's right up there with Funjoe's overachieving Clones Audio 25i integrated from Hong Kong or E.J. Sarmento's Wyred4Sound mINT. Sometimes truth in advertising really isn't an oxymoron but right on the money. That's the perfect phrase to exit stage left too!...
Stereomatic website