[TreAdidas]

Does anyone know of a place that has.... or better yet has anyone ever let curiosity get the best of them and popped open one of those transparent network boxes? What is inside of them?

The whole secretive thing is killing me.

 

[gotchaforce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TreAdidas /img/forum/go_quote.gif Does anyone know of a place that has.... or better yet has anyone ever let curiosity get the best of them and popped open one of those transparent network boxes? What is inside of them? The whole secretive thing is killing me.

There was a foreign forum i saw that showed it opened up. Ill try to look for it, it might be on the AVS forum if i remember correctly. (no promises though)

 

[rb67]

Transparent network box?

 

[milkpowder]

He's talking about the big ellipse shaped carbon fibre box in the middle of the cable:

This is the famous Transparent Cable Opus MM speaker cable. An eight foot pair retails for $31.5k. 25' will cost $40k. I think a lot of the cost goes into the network box considering the price doesn't go up by three-fold even though the length does. That's just a random guess so don't take it as fact.

"Housed within those distinctive "black boxes" on our audio cable are special passive electrical networks that reject noise. The networks also tune that specific length and type of cable to provide exactly the right balance of electrical properties for the use of the cable within the music or film system."

 

[rsaavedra]

From Transparent Cable's webpage:
http://www.transparentcable.com/news...ins_audio.html

Quote:

However, the carbon fiber process used in all OPUS products involves extreme levels of hand work and costly materials, which must be reflected in the retail price.

No idea what's in that ellipsoid, but when a cable + its manufacturing can allegedly cost more than several top notch components and speakers, hmm... I don't know, maybe it's another case of "misplaced expensiveness" -a politically correct way I like to use to describe, for example, iPod earbuds made of platinum and with encrusted diamonds.

 

[derekbmn]

Sorry couldn't resist.

 

[Icarium]

Those cables frighten me. Need patrick to get on these stat.

 

[chroot]

Honestly? It's probably some $20 inductors or an RF choke.

- Warren

 

[snowball_rx-7]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icarium /img/forum/go_quote.gif Those cables frighten me. Need patrick to get on these stat.

he would just recable them with valhalla.

 

[milkpowder]

He doesn't need speaker cables though. The Opus MM XLR interconnects only retail for $16.9k a foot. If you need 2', that's only $18k. Chump change compared to the speaker cable

Then wrap them in ERS paper and you're all set.

 

[gotchaforce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by derekbmn /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sorry couldn't resist.

You arent that far off.

From what i remember it looks like they spliced two cables together and wrapped some paper around it (and im talking about their $500-$1000 speaker cables!).

http://www.faktiskt.se/modules.php?n...er=asc&start=0

heres the thread, but of course all the screwing pictures are gone!

Sweet, some of those dead links in the thread were on archive.org!

Heres the good stuff:
http://web.archive.org/web/200512270...com/whymit.asp

 

[hYdrociTy]

people think carbon fiber is the new gold- it is ranked the most exotic material and with it astronomical costs are justified. That is a whole load of bull because cf is no more harder to work with than wood. I work with cf all the time and I have a harder time sanding a block of wood than shaping a cf tube around my pen...

that oval shape is easier to fabricate than a tube... I hate how they slap on little cf tubes on plugs and then tout them as 'reference' this and that. CF does a lot less than emi paper, and having a ring around a power plug or interconnect end isn't going to do anything.

Anyone want a giant egg shaped block to be covered in pretty cf, Ill do it for 40 bucks materials an maybe two days work...

 

[sc53]

Someone on Audiogon once opened up a Transparent network box too (when they were oblong with a gold metal plaque on them, rather than ovoid and carbon) but I don't remember what the comments were. Didn't look like much, as I recall. It's a very expensive proposition to open up ANY of the Transparent cable boxes, even the "cheaper" ones.

 

[TreAdidas]

Thanks for the research all. This all started as I looked into power cables... curiosity snowballed and I could not find any info. Heh Fairy Dust.. that's awesome!

I own and have been overall happy with a pair of 1 meter MusicLink interconnects and a pair of 10' MusicWave cables that I bought in 2002 while in school. I bought them due to some positive reviews I read, one of them being from a reviewer I trusted. Prior to this I was using gold ol' rat shack gold and 12 awg Home Depot speaker cable specials.

What sokd them for me was ".. One simple, but often overlooked, method of minimizing noise in a system is to limit the system bandwidth to that required by the signal. Use of a circuit bandwidth greater than that required by the signal allows additional noise frequencies to enter the circuit." -www.transparentcable.com Seems to make sense. The idea of specializing a cable for a specific purpose. If you'r einterested in carrying say only water from point A to point B you don't build a truck that can also carry new cars. It just doesn't make sense. So if one can prevent a cable from carryign excessive signal, wouldn't the cable be better at carrying only the intended signal? Makes sense to me.

Curiosity was just killing me as a good chunk of cable companies give you an insight into their technology and Transparent just gives you a tease about their secrets. Plus if the cables are indeed as high technology as transparent alludes to being, then their line seems kind of stale. The more I thought about it the more my BS-o-meter started going off.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chroot /img/forum/go_quote.gif Honestly? It's probably some $20 inductors or an RF choke. - Warren

A lot of what you're paying for in cables, hell in high end audio in general, is the R&D that goes into building the cables or equipment. I can't imagine the materials for any of these high end cables climbing to more than a small fraction of their asking price.

 

[TreAdidas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sc53 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Someone on Audiogon once opened up a Transparent network box too (when they were oblong with a gold metal plaque on them, rather than ovoid and carbon) but I don't remember what the comments were. Didn't look like much, as I recall. It's a very expensive proposition to open up ANY of the Transparent cable boxes, even the "cheaper" ones.

Agreed... I sat there with a utility knife and my speaker cables (currently not being used in lieu of headphones and crammed living situation) but a quick look at the going rate for those babies on eBay made me think otherwise.