Black Cat Cable – TRØN AES/EBU DIGITAL

Review by Kermit Heartsong – Audio Key Reviews

 Read Full Review Pages: 42-48

There are reviews, for all intents and purposes, that write themselves. This is to say that their impact is immediate, truly surprising, and outstanding.

There such products come immediately to mind – The Grimm Audio MU2 (pre-streamer, DAC), the STAX SR-X9000 (electrostatic headphones), and the Atma-Sphere MP-3 and S30 (preamplifier and amplifier). Each of these components broke through the existing high-fidelity ceiling soaring past like components with ease.

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Well there’s a new component in house, a wire/cable – the Black Cat TRØN AES/EBU – that has blazed the same trail in every respect and finds itself certainly head and shoulders above cables in its category – digital – at Casa Heartsong, no small trick given the lineup. But how good is the TRØN AES/EBU?

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THE SOUND AND SUCH

Like the Grimm Audio MU2 I placed the Black Cat TRØN AES/EBU in the system straight off the FedEx truck, cold, and with zero burn-in, between the Bricasti M1SE. I then sat for a curious listen.

Move over! This is what I thought, well within 2 minutes of listening to understand that the TRØN AES/EBU was an incredible digital cable. The previous quite expensive and well-known digital cable, which the TRØN AES/EBU had replaced, appeared to not have been passing along the same digital bits and bytes. The distinction was stark, immediate, and profound.

This was music and it was technically superb, engaging and musical to no end. It was revolving, open, and was incorporating the ambiance and the air, the weight and the extension, that somehow the previous cable had entirely overlooked. I know children who would have been able to gauge the difference from a single listen.

They would have asked, no doubt, with quenched and frowning faces, ‘Why does that other cable sound like that?’

It sounds like that because it’s trying desperately to do what the TRØN AES/EBU cable does with effortless ease – bring the music, entirely.

Again, it was with zero burn-in, fresh out of the FedEx cardboard box when I place the TRØN AES/EBU in system. That it could embarrass another well thought of cable so easily and quickly was shocking.

However, once fully burned-in it was as if the TRØN AES/EBU sat a couple of quantum shelves higher, which is to say, not even in the same league despite cost equivalence or even those cables more expensive. None of those other cables had left this impact. Everything improved as a sublime naturalness unfolded, while nuance and subtly were captured and weaved together in a whole-cloth display of coherency, and ambiance like that of the Grimm Audio MU2 and the STAXX SR-Z9000. And the TRØN AES/EBU’s ability to move past stereo reproduction and on to a performance was in league with the Atma-Sphere combo and this alone sets it apart not only from digital cables but from digital itself. Superb!

The Black Cat TRØN AES/EBU breathed life and vitality, naturalness and musicality, while crossing and dotting all the ’t’s and ‘I’d – soundstage, detail, transparency, resolution etc. – like a highly skilled and deft writer. What more can one say?

CONCLUSION

As mentioned above, there are reviews that write themselves. This review of the Black Cat TRØN AES/EBU digital cable is one of those reviews. So profound are its abilities and talents that the review simply flowed and I simply wrote that which the TRØN AES/EBU was telling me to write via a voice. And a truly superb voice it is.

Suffice to say, that the brevity of this review, I don’t generally write short reviews, speaks to the profound and immediate ability of the Black Cat TRØN AES/EBU digital cable.

Your music will be freed to be music. You will hear your music as though it was the synthesis of all that is good in both vinyl and digital formats. How then does a digital cable do this? I do not know. What I do know is that I purchased it immediately after I heard its burned-in voice and I’ve not looked back since.

The Black Cat TRØN AES/EBU digital cable is an endgame cable, at least, for me. As I have not met its rival regardless of cost. And that finds it easily meeting the criteria for our highest award – the DIAMOND AWARD – for excellence. I do not know if you will be as shocked as I was, though I think the probability quite high. Bravo!

Note: Perhaps next as pictured above the Black Cat TRØN SPDIF Digital Cable.

PAGES: 42 – 48
AUDIO KEY REVIEWS – KERMIT HEARTSONG