Transparent Cable interconnects

Transparent Cable - The Music Link interconnects

The Trasparent Cables are well known to the audiophile community for their strange appearance: almost every cable by this Company is equipped with a mysterious black box, called the Transparent Network which is a passive network used to optimize, as we'll see later, the performance of the cable.
The Transparent Cable audio production line can be divided, roughly speaking, into three main sections: the budget-oriented series called Performance, the mid-priced Premium and the hi-end one called Reference.

Some tech spec

The Transparent philosophy can be summarized as follows: each audio cable acts more or less like an antenna and every unwanted signal that passes through the cable can affect the quality of the musical reproduction.
For this reason it could be useful to limit the bandwidth of the cable with a passive network, called, in this case, the Transparent Network.
And, of course, besides this network, the guys at Transparent pay a great attention to every other detail of the construction of the cable: OFHC copper conductors, hi-quality dielectrics and special stranding techniques.
The Transparent Network is used even to optimize the performance of the cable for a given lenght, hence every single network is designed and built to properly fit the lenght of every cable.
Transparent makes cables to suit everyone's needs, from the budget-oriented to the top-notch hi-end.
The cable under test is the Music Link interconnect, a signal cable of the (High) Performance series, that costs, here in Italy, something around 180 $ (1 meter). Please note that prices may vary from Country to Country.

The Transparent Sound

The Music Link is a no-compromise cable, in the sense that it doesn't try to please everyone.
Hence, it seems to me that some parameter has been optimized better than others and, given the fact that the Music Link can be still considered, after all, a budget cable, this does have a meaning to me: if you can't have it all, try to maximize some performance.

The Music Link has a dry mid-range with a slight tendency to a forward sound.
The high range, open and transparent (what else? :-) ) is a perfect match for this mid-range performance, so that you have the feeling of a very open and detailed sound.
Now, with dark chains this could be a healthy touch, but with already dry systems the use of the Music Link should be carefully studied and tested before buying. And so the use of the Music Link with very low-budget systems has to be carefully evaluated, since the transparency of this interconnect can easily reveal the drawbacks of the components.
The mid-bass and the bass range are full bodied and give a very strong impact to the musical reproduction.
Only sometimes the lower bass seems slightly *gummy* and uncontrolled. This happens especially with discs with a heavy energetic content of bass frequencies.
One of the big pluses of this interconnect is the overall dynamics: probably the Transparent Network, filtering out any unwanted signal, leaves the amplifier to deliver its power just to the musical program.
Hence the sound through this cable is plenty of power and fast, very fast.
Another big plus is the 3D imaging: the soundstage is very wide, well beyond the loudspeakers, back and forth, from left to right.
Actually it is the soundstage width that amazes but don't expect larger than life musical instruments: no! This interconnect does reproduce a wide soundstage but the instruments and the singers still retain their normal and natural *size*.
If this level of performance has been reached even with a budget cable one should expect the high-end models to make wonders.

Conclusions

I don't know if the Transparent Network works as claimed but I DO know that this cable sounds exceptionally good regarding certain aspects, especially if your system is muddy and (too) warm, the Music Link could bring some *light* and life into it.
If soundstaging and dynamics are a must for you, you should try this Music Link interconnect, it could well suit your needs.

How to print this article