god of cookery

the last time i cooked a "real" dish was more than 15 years ago for my parents. i remember it was spaghetti bolognaise (that i learned in my varsity days) and my parents didn't quite like it.

if it was not because of my readers here, i wouldn't know that such thing called a cable cooker exists. sorry la, i don't read stereophile's recommend components ; -) so if i am not a good spaghetti cook, am i a good hifi cook? certainly. i cooked an interconnect as thick as a 10 gauge power cord in just 3.5 days! the aural dish is so delicious that i can eat it on its own....

operating alan kafton's cable cooker is a piece of cake. it is so simple that there's no way you can go wrong. i like his 12v dc powered concept - it makes the cable cooker universal in handling power requirements in different countries. what a genius, alan. nevertheless, i have yet to figure out how to cook a power line conditioner like my shunyata. ck will know, he is going to cook his audio magic stealth xxx soon.

you know what's the hardest part about cable cooking? it is knowing exactly when it is cooked, overcooked and simply uncooked. i have told you that i already had 400+ hours on my stage III gryphon and the sound still left me wanting, so i decided to adopt a 12-hour per cooking session to gauge the readiness of the "aural dish". here's how it went:

1. first 12 hours - audible improvement. the bass finally came out, but still not quite there.
2. 12-24 hours - yet more improvement but not quite drastic. not there yet.
3. 24-48 hours - wow, completely transformed! the stage 3 charges the music with so much energy and headroom, but i wasn't satisfied that the details and highs haven't come out fully yet
4. 48-60 - it sounded dull and lifeless. i was scratching my head
5. 60-72 - still dull. getting impatient now. ok, cook it for another 12 hours and hoping for a quantum leap
6. 72-84 - absolutely no improvement! time to stop cooking and investigate.

on the 4th day, after i have chalked in 84 hours on the cooker, it suddenly dawned on me that i could have overcooked my stage 3. i could have stopped at the 48th hour when it was already quite good. my eagerness got the better of me. let me describe to you the sound of an "overcooked" cable. it sounded dreadful; it was like the cable was having a bad cold; the highs were missing and the music was tense and unnatural.

calmly, i switched off the cable cooker and let my stage 3 "rest" physically without playing them. that's when miracle happened. 5 hours passed, i switched on my system again ... voila! it actually sounded much better than its previous state! convinced that "resting" will restore/undo the overcooking, i let them rest for further 8 hours.

8 hours later, i am jubilant, elated and smiling like a silly kid. i even danced like a champion, if only you could see me doing that. the cold is subsiding and like a recovering patient, the stage 3 started singing marvelously. and do i need to tell you how the fully broken-in gryphon performs in my system? no need la. i am prone to superlatives so take it with a pinch of salt. but if you insist, the gryphon is the best thing since hifi slice bread.... see, didn't i say i am prone to superlatives?

the cable cooker works 100% as it claimed, but not perfectly in the operation sense. if only alan kafton could take the guess work out of the cooking by building a "ready" switch that ejects like that in a rice cooker then i am sure it would cause less anxiety in neurotic audiophiles like me. just joking, alan. but rest assured, overcooking is totally harmless, that i can testify to you. i have heard that many audiophiles/dealers in malaysia are worried about overcooking and hence damaging their cables. trust me, it is only a myth.

but it is worth the admission price? yes, only if you share it like we do. yes, if you play many cables like we do. yes, only if you can tell the difference a cable makes in your system! for the rest of you who can't afford buying one, we are going to offer this cooking service to everyone for a small fee.

expediting your cooking skills from a novice to the god of cookery? audiodharma's cable cooker is your best solution!

now, excuse me, i am going to eat my music...