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Wow, it’s been over a year since my last post, and it has not been because of not wanting to. 2024 has been a rough year for my family with several significant events, mostly related to health but I don’t want to get into much detail. The last event I for sure want to mention it here since it basically changed what I thought about life since I was basically born again that morning.

October 1, 2024, 8:43AM AST, I had just finished a conference call with a peer in India when I noticed a red flash to my right. Thinking it was a lightning I shrugged my shoulders, stood up, and a few milliseconds later a destructive expansion wave came crashing thru the window to my right and the one behind me, including flying debris. At that moment I though so many things, that a lightning had struck my house and my generator propane tank had exploded, or even that a plane had crashed on top of us. I was thrown over a few feet away and ended up standing in my home office door looking at my master bedroom towards my bed. My wife, who at that moment was laying in the bed checking her emails was screaming asking what had happened, and at that same time my eldest son came to the room asking the same and screaming. The floors were all covered in shattered glass and debris and we all were bare feet. Carefully I moved around and found my tennis shoes and looked out thru one of the blown away windows. My back door neighbor’s house had exploded and the structure had collapsed.

The picture above was taken from my home roof the day after the explosion. Regrettably my neighbor passed away due to the injuries incurred when the roof fell in top of her. 22 homes suffered some kind of damage including mine, which lost almost all its windows and external doors. Thankfully we were not severely injured but we had to undergo physical therapy due to the impact of the expansion wave. In the end a gas leak was the root cause of the explosion. She was an odor candle lover and seems she did not notice the bad smell of rotten eggs while lightning up one candle.

This Thanksgiving Day I want to gives thanks that my family and me are still alive. Material things can be recovered, but life once lost is gone.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Hi!

Long time since my last post. Been working long weeks for several months in a cloud migration project but just found some time to post about an interesting topic which I’m familiar with, network cables. For those who don’t know me, I have over 35 years of experience in IT infrastructure design and support (besides other specialties) in the financial, private, and public sector industries.

Also known as patch cords, network cables allow you to connect networked devices to a switch or patch panel, allowing network traffic to flow to/from between networked devices. Today, almost everyone has at least one patch cord in their house/business which allows you to connect more than one networked device (PC, printer, server, streamer, tv, etc.) to the internet.

One question I frequently get from friends and customers is if they should spend their hard earned cash in expensive patch cords / network cables for their streamers (Wi-fi only devices do not apply here), and my recommendation has always been to get a well built and certified cable, but do not spend hundreds, or even thousands of dollars in them. In my humble opinion it is a waste of money.

For example, banks have huge amounts of network devices and must ensure that networked data traffic is not affected by data packet losses which will affect networking performance which could cost them millions of dollars, but will not spend thousands, or even million of dollars in fancy network cables since they will ensure each network cable is certified by the installer. Large network installations usually get a fixed price per certified patch cord no matter its length (usually from $100 to $150 each). Network cable certification ensures that it performs to an certain standard specification (Cat5e, Cat6, Cat7, Catx) which has been more than proven in the industry. Speeds over 1Gbps (gigabits per second) can be achieved by most of these standards but are not required to stream music at all. In fact, 100Mbps is more than enough to stream a High Definition music file from a local source or from the internet.

On standards, the Ethernet port in which the patch cord connect is is galvanically isolated (as per the 802.3 standard) which ensures no interference or noise is propagated, and the TCPIP protocol has robust error correction algorithms which have been in place since its inception more than 40 years ago, and will ensure any corrupted data packet gets retransmitted and reassembled in the correct order.

This URL links to a document from Linn Products, manufacturer of one of the most acclaimed cost no object digital streamers, and their recommendation on network cables.

https://docs.linn.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Network_cable_definition

As they say in the above document,

‘Using higher spec cables will make no difference in the sound quality, but may be useful if the local network cable installation is going to be used with high bandwidth video streaming devices.‘

In summary, get a good certified network cable, but don’t spend ridiculous amounts of money on it.

Enjoy!

Vic

Well it’s been a long time since my last post!!! As you may know my main source of income is as a Mainframe Solutions Architect for a U.S. corporation, and I’ve been working in several projects which have taken much of my time, but I’m back!

What have I been doing in the audio world? Well, turntable setups are still strong, some audio gear repair attempts (some successful, others not), and one interesting development was that I went to my first Audio Show ever, the Capital Audio Fest in Washington D.C., the weekend of November 11, 2022. My friend José Ramirez, aka Dr. Vinyl, asked me if I could help him managing one of his four demo rooms and I gladly obliged! José and me have been friends since he was my customer back in the mid-late 80s while I worked in precision Audio, so we go a long way back.

The room we set up had the following gear:

Reed Muse 3c turntable
True-Glider tonearm
DS Audio DS-3W optical phono cartridge with equalizer
Backert Labs Rhythm preamplifier
McGary Audio SA-1E amplifier
Usher Labs ML-801 speakers

Here is a picture of the setup in the demo room.

Those of you who know me, I’m not a tube gear guy, and I was really impressed by this system!!! Price? Over $75,000 USD, expensive for some of us but not for some big rollers that visited the room and were ready to open their checkbooks to purchase it.

My personal highlight of this setup was the Reed turntable, True-Glider tonearm, and DS Audio optical cartridge. This combination is one of the most musical, tuneful, and dynamic I’ve ever listened to, and it goes against all I have learned in my over 40 years as a vinyl lover. Contrary to gimbaled or uni-pivot tonearms this one just hangs from a string, there is no bias/antiskating to set and it wobbles!!! The friction levels are so low that the force created by the friction between the stylus and the record is enough to force the tonearm to basically align itself to the record allowing it to track it in a way similar to a tangential arm. Seriously it goes against everything I’ve learned but I was really impressed by it.

On the phono cartridge, the DS Audio DS-3W, instead of using coils or magnets as generators, it use light variations to determine the signal levels to be sent to the equalizer/phono stage. There is a pair of light emitters and light sensors, and between them there is a shading plate that is attached to the boron cantilever. This shading plate is a lot lighter than both coils or magnets, it is made of beryllium, and allows the stylus/cantilever assembly to react more quickly to groove variations.

On a personal note, I had the opportunity to met several well know audio personalities but the one I enjoyed the most was Carl Marchisotto, the famous speaker designer for Dalquist, and now designer and owner of NOLA speakers. Really enjoyed the time I spent talking to him, his wife, and daughter, specially the few hours we spent at José Ramirez house and demo room. Carl is a pleasure to talk with and an avid music lover.

I’m looking forward to this year’s Capital Audio Fest show!!!

Enjoy!

Vic