Still playing vinyl like mad and I appreciated a slightly earlier arrival time home today than usual. Next attempt to explain what this cable does: playing Santana's seminal Abraxas.

As the wind chimes enter on 'Singing Winds, Crying Beasts' there is an additional shimmer and harmonic complexity to their sound. Nothing as crude as brighter treble, just more insight into multiple metal chimes with complex harmonics. Then comes Carlos' electric guitar, way louder and really pushing the dynamic envelope. There is more distortion than before and it takes me a moment to realise that the cable brings out more of the overload effects from his guitar amp. It's reproducing the distortion better! Now in comes a keyboard (Vibraphone?) which occupies its own space, lovely early use of synth. Over everything are clash cymbals being panned left and right. Low level bongos come in with the leading edge slap sound clearly audible. Each instrument is in focus, the overall volume level is low except for guitar which is piercingly loud. No wonder this has always been a bugger to reproduce well.

I compared it with the SACD of the same album: this is one of the best SACDs I have but it's a hopeless comparison once I realise that it simply cannot emulate that incredible dynamic range of a good LP, nor can it reach quite the nth degree of realism.

Burn-in continues. Hunky Dory is sounding rather good now.