you complete me

in the movie "the dark knight", joker uttered to batman these corny borrowed-from-jerry-mcquire words - "you complete me", words that i thought i want to reserve for my future woman but alas, i have to use it here to draw attention.

close friends know why i have been silent on the hifi front - i am queitly and patiently breaking in my stage III concepts ASP gryphon interconnects.

to add anymore superlatives to my experience would tantamount to selling out and that's not my style. but i must open the eyes (and ears) of those who steadfastly hold on to the belief that cables are only accessories and are to be taken as an after-thought.

i have said many times how real and complete the soundscape created by the gryphon is, compared to the rest of the cables i tried. its presence in the system is highlighted by its absence. or to phrase it another way - a good cable is like no cable. you only get drown in the music. is this the highest accolade a cable can get? u bet it is.

as it is slowing opening up, the gryphon adds plenty of juices and headroom to my 110-watter triode amp. you may think i exaggerate but it turbo-charges my ARC tube amp and makes it sounds like a 300-watter. and those who didn't consider maggie as their choice speaker because "it doesn't have enough bass" or "it can't rock and roll", you are more than welcome to come to listen to my maggie (at a later stage when the gryphon fully breaks in) and eat your large piece of humble pie.

liew, the distributor of stage III concepts in malaysia, said that the bass from my maggie is even better than his behemoth focus audio top-model floorstander driven by krell evolution combi, fed by dCs scarlatti cd combi. i don't need to doubt liew for he has no reasons to polish my shoes. even master yong once said my maggie's low bass is better than his ATC, and that was before i have the gryphon. but why is that many maggie owners can't coax the bass out of their maggie (and ended up giving up this gem of a speaker)? and those in the rest of the world who always preach that maggie needs powerhouse solid-state amplifications to sound good, you are just dead wrong! if i had my way, i would like to bring jim winey to my house and share with him his pride and joy!

RM24K per pair is a crazy amount of money in trying times like these. it would especially leave a bad taste on those who are not earning much in low-wage malaysia. i would like to apologize if i have offended those lower-income audiophiles. i have never meant to brag or blow my own trumpet. even if i were to buy this cable, i would need to pay by installments. it is just part of my quest for perfection and my desire to share good things with your readers. hifi is rewarding because it drives us to be a better person. at least, i am motivated enough to work hard to earn the moolah to feed my hobby. we all need to work hard if we need to get good things in life.

which leads me to think hard - how could cables make so much difference to a system? how could cables make the amp sound so much more powerful than it is? and if i were not to spend on these exorbitant cables, i would never realize the full potential of my system. not only that, i would never know that a mid-fi system can sound that convincing! in fact, i haven't paid liew yet; he gave me 3 months to audition. at the same time, i am being offered a used meridian 808 at RM24K by another friend. i don't need to hesitate for a minute - i would invest on the gryphon and not the 808. 808 wouldn't give me the quantum leap that gryphon would.

to those cable naysayers (and there are many of you here!), i urge you to be more open-minded and give yourself a chance to explore good cables along your journey. of course, your system must be fundamentally right first before any good cables would make a positive difference. hifi kaki is never a cable investor but now he is a convert because i showed him the way.

i am always a believer but this time, the gryphon makes a cult out of me ;-)