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The instant improvement from Furutech to Telos came as real surprise. I thus had to cough up remaining attitude. I'd clearly not expected much difference. If any. That meant I'd assumed that one passive with quality socketry—a Furutech IEC even factors in the Midas—would be as good as another. Or mere sideways move. I'd secretly believed that sheer mass, brute torque and pointy Titanium footers would have to be window dressing. Marketing spin.  
Acoustic Revive RTP-4 Ultimate

Busted? Unable to disassemble Jeff's recipe into isolated ingredients for cause/effect relations, I could only confess to the efficacy of the complete package. That was clearly a carefully tweaked and beautifully dialled thing. The questions now became academic whether the round shape was more than cosmetic statement; whether the deep-seated outlets effectively shielded power-cord plugs from RF or were sculptural only; whether lowering the bolts' torque or shaving off two kilos of heavy metal would be audibly detrimental; whether Oyaide's own $810 MTB-4 with the very same top-quality outlets couldn't accomplish the same [left]. None of it mattered. What did was that uninspected suspicions had been laid to rest. There was satisfactory upward sonic progress. On with it then.


One final thing. Do read Marja & Henk's slightly shocking and very eye-opening experiments with Blue Horizon's Mains Noise Analyzer. My review lacks that type of data and feedback. So it's good to reiterate that today's device isn't a filter or cleaner. That task remains for the power supplies of your components. Neither does it offer spike or surge protection nor regulation for under/over voltage conditions. It's simply a luxurious power strip. But that's not synonymous with having no audible benefit. Exactly why resonance control should have such an obvious effect on AC power delivery remains mysterious to me. Yet resonance control presumably is the major contributor of Midas' golden touch - er... death grip of aluminum and Titanium on microscopic vibrations.

Zu Audio's Event power cords sport cylindrical sleeves over their plugs to make for conceptual overlap with Telos' own

On the power amp. With my front-end components on the sidewall—one wall socket in the right corner feeds the hifi gear with the GigaWatt strip; another wall socket behind the glass display case supplies the iMac—the FirstWatt J2 stereo amp has its own wall socket behind the open-sided white cube. That's usually occupied by the Furutech RTP-6. In with Midas. The sound became instantly denser, warmer and more focused. The joint action of greater warmth plus higher focus made misunderstanding impossible. This wasn't about cozier softness. It wasn't what Germans call Gemütlichkeit. It wasn't what valve fans call more organic or round but detractors think of as a clear diminishing of dynamic contrasts and a minor fuzzification of the imagery.


Without sharpening, this particular effect notched up articulation (a bit) whilst body or material presence increased (more than a bit). This one-two punch reminded me of going from a stereo amp to two monos from the same house. The family sound remains but the beefier amps generate more sonic gravitas, soundstaging wins in clarity and articulation. Embedded here particularly at higher volumes was also an impression of more saturated colors. I often find that nearly synonymous with greater tone density or simply a different facet or aspect of it. Yet another way of saying it would be higher contrast or stronger image pop. All this points at the same easily heard observation. There was nothing esoteric or complicated about it. It was better and what was better was no litany of vagueness.


That established, I was curious. What might the Telos do for not just one component but three? Over to the sidewall it was and out with the GigaWatt. Whilst this exercise didn't have to involve the Esoteric/APL Hifi UX1/NWO-M—Eximus DP1 DAC and ModWright LS100 preamp plus iMac are the usual chain—I decided to include a CD transport. Spread things around further. Might this not multiply the effects? I had during my GigaWatt review concluded that it was a virtual stand-in for the passive Furutech RTP-6 which the Telos had just replaced on the amp. Because of that passive equality plus advanced surge/spike protection, the GigaWatt has tucked behind my front-end stack ever since.

The 15kg Telos QBT cable run-in machine delivers 24V signal with 0Hz-50kHz full-frequency sweeps every 2 seconds for RCA, XLR, BNC, USB, power sockets, speaker terminals and RS-232. Previously a proprietary in-house solution, this machine is now available for sale. All Telos cables and the power distributor undergo full break-in on such a unit before being shipped. Jeff Lin is quite vocal about the extent of improvement this treatment has and that domestic scenarios will never come close no matter how long or loud cables are played.

In Cyprus our beach house once suffered a massive lightning strike. It literally shook the ground. My ears rang for hours. The only thing saving my hifi from sudden death was the landlord's electrician-husband. He knew all about coastal thunder storms to have preemptively installed a very special master circuit breaker. That thing clamped down faster than the strike could propagate through the power line. Multiple telephones and answering machines were toast however. The phone line was not protected. When I bought three new telephones at my local computer shoppe the very next day, the owner grinned. He knew full well that I hadn't just moved there and explained that it was an annual occurrence very good for his business. Given that freak experience, I'd now rather have my source components protected from a second attempt at their expensive little lives.

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