Stay away from these unless your system sounds terribly bright and you want to warm things up. Speaker cables with boxes on them I do not recommend anyway.
Transparent Balanced Interconnects and their generations
Could someone give me details of the various Transparent Cables over the years and the year they were introduced.
XL, MM, MM2, Generation 5
Which models to stay away from and which ones to buy if buying used older models.
XL, MM, MM2, Generation 5
Which models to stay away from and which ones to buy if buying used older models.
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Stay away from these unless your system sounds terribly bright and you want to warm things up.My experience does not reflect this conclusion whatsoever. And warmth and brightness are independent characteristics in the system. Warmth typically identifies a slight over-emphasis in the lower-mid to mids, with perhaps a reduction in detail to give a more euphonic presentation. A severe peak here would imply fatigue and not brightness. A dealer shipped two TA interconnects for me to try between the line stage and amps. See my system for details. I use long cables in this link and fortunately the longer TA cables are only marginally more costly than the same model's 1m prices. The two models on trial here were in the MM2 (more on this in a bit) line: the Ref XL "with MM2 technology" and the Ref MM2. My system is not remotely close to what anyone would identify as bright.....NOT EVEN CLOSE. Inserting either of these did not suddenly destroy the extension or openness of the top frequency detail. And there was not this huge cloud of bloom or lower-mid extension. The XL was surprisingly dimensionally flat compared to the other cables (Silent Source Ref, Stealth Indra, Jade Ref, CH Acoustic X20) I have had great success here. Switching to the MM2 was nearly identical tonal balance, frequency extension, that I would likely have failed to identify through a blind test. But the MM2 brought on that level of harmonic overtones, decays, that gave far more believable musical presentation. After listening to many tracks here, and then going back to the XL, there was no way I could keep the XL after hearing the MM2. For systems that excel in many sonic attributes, but fail miserable in the portrayal of space, the difference between these two might not even be heard. But it was significant in my system. As for the various lines and generations of TA cables, I find this to be crazy confusing. Case in point: In the MM2 line, there is the Reference with MM2 technology, which is one model below the Reference XL with MM2 Technology. Come on TA, is all of this complicated naming so bloody necessary? Many people carelessly or purposely identify the Reference with MM2 technology as Reference MM2 when they are for sale. Fortunately the "network" box shows "Transparent Reference" on one side and some engraving of "MM2" on the other side. The "real" Reference MM2 is shown as "Transparent Reference MM2" on the one side. The difference is KEY here. Why? Because if the MM2 so significantly outperforms the "Reference XL with MM2 Technology", it has to downright destroy the "Reference with MM2 Technology". This is poor poor marketing and labeling as far as I am concerned. I asked the TA dealer and he could not articulate the product line wither. One TA claim is that with a new generation product, a model here is equal to or outperforms the next model up in the previous generation. I would have to hear the 3D performance between the two before I accepted this claim at face value. Even with all this nonsense model naming, the real Reference MM2 is outstanding as an IC to retain the 3D properties within the music. I am curious to hear an IC in the Opus lineup. But I suspect the Ref MM2 is the sweet spot for value in the TA line. Speaker cables with boxes on them I do not recommend anyway.The OP was asking for ICs and not speaker cables. But I would think of this simply as giving any such cable a fair shot in a system, whether or not it has magnets, boxes, low-voltage stimulation, etc. If a box is full of frog legs, jalapeño peppers, or buckshot, and it takes my system to the next level of musical performance over my previous references, then that's fine with me. |
I purchased TA speaker cables to go between ARC REF110 or REF150SE and Martin-Logan CLSs or CLXs. At the time, I was told by several dealers that the Gen5 series were approximately equivalent to a 1.5 step increase up the MM2 series, suggesting this information came from TA centrally, and/or is true. I do not know what the jump was between the older series. I started with Gen5 Plus on the REF110/CLS system. Then after a year or so moved up to the Gen5 Super on the same system, and it was an immediately noticeable upgrade, like from the first note. About a year after I moved to the REF150SE/CLX system, I upgraded again to Gen5 Ultra (all were purchased used), again they were significantly better, but not as big a jump from Super>Ultra and Plus>Super, although there is a rough doubling in cost with each move up with TA speaker cables. At this point I was worried about speaker cables with boxes, so I bought a pair of Clarus Crimson cables and switched back and forth for weeks at a time over the period of months. Ultimately, I decided the TA cables were a slightly better fit with my system, but they were very, very close. I could see the preference for the Clarus in a different system. I should really sell those, come to think about it. FYI Transparent Audio has an upgrade program now that could be favorable for moving from their earlier cables to Gen5, on their website. https://www.transparentcable.com/pages/support-upgrade-program |
The Super model is the sweet spot for Transparent Audio cabling.I got the Plus M2 generation for a good price front the dealer. The detail in the treble is more visible . The dynamics have improved. Definitely worth the money as Music is more enjoyable. |
The cables are excellent, made a huge difference to the sound in every aspect.The bass is going deeper and hitting hard even on jazz albums.The tone is much more correct.There is definitely increase in dynamics, the system seems to have come alive.There is more decay to the instruments.The treble detail has improved and so has the imaging and instrument separation. |