Sneak Previewexcerpted from an article by Jonathan ValinFi, July/August 1996. Reproduced with permission"On the subject of Transparent Reference, I simply have to note that there is -- or is about to be -- a new arrival in the Transparent family, Reference XL. So far I've only had the opportunity to audition the XL speaker cable, but, folks, even on short acquaintance this stuff is obviously as good as it gets. No processing here. No cookie-cutter imaging. Just the transparency, neutrality, and astonishing inner detailing that the Sumners' line is famous for combined with the dynamic ease, nuance, and bloom that Siltech previously had an exclusive patent on. Unfortunately, the Reference XL is as expensive as it is good-sounding. At $10,000 for an eight foot pair, not many of us are likely to be shopping this niche of the market (in spite of a lifetime warranty, which includes automatic updating, a dollar-for-dollar trade-in allowance for previous owners of Transparent Reference MusicWave and MusicLink, and hand-tuning of cable and network to match your amplifier.) When I raved in my Kegon review about the way that amp upped the ante when it came to conventional notions of recorded "realism," I was also raving about the Transparent Reference XL, which alone allowed the Kegon to reach this level of verisimilitude. Price considerations aside, let it be noted that you heard it here first: Transparent Reference XL is the new king of the high-end cables." |
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