I’ve always wanted a mentor. For as long as I can remember, the idea of someone who’s accumulated knowledge and experience gave them perspective that I didn’t have but could be groomed and guided by has seemed like the ultimate luxury.

The audio mentor seems for me, also, the penultimate of mentors. This is the person who knows every detail of my system. They know all of its strengths and weaknesses and they understand how to optimize the former and fix the later. Best of all the audio mentor knows how to do all of this with the minimum cost necessary to achieve the highest possible level of sound.

Early in audio I had, what I thought at the time, was just such a mentor. He knew things of which I had no inkling – which cartridge would best suit my tonearm and turntable; and which amp would be the best match for my speakers; and which interconnects would take my system to the next level. He guided me through those early years in the audiophile world and for that I am grateful.

He also was co-owner of an audio store and has been in the business a long time. In fact, he’s still in business and I have continued working with him over the years, taking his advice and allowing him to guide my system forward.

Only it turns out, as I’ve just recently realized, that he wasn’t guiding my system forward but rather off on an endless path of upgrades and modifications that moved me slowly but surely down the road to audio nowhere. If you’re reading this then I’m willing to bet that you’ve either been on this road before or, as is more likely, are on it now.

When we’re on this road it’s nearly impossible to recognize it. Every “upgrade” we make: the new amp, the new cables, the new cartridge and so on and so forth – they all make a difference. Everything we add to our system on this road gives us something new, sometimes something exciting, and if we’re lucky, a better version of what we currently have. What we fail to see as we move further and further along this road is that we are not necessarily “upgrading” but rather adding further modifications, sometimes enhancements, to what is an already heavily modified and fundamentally flawed system.

Fortunately I’ve found my way off of this road. Suddenly, the way forward is clearer and more straightforward than I ever imagined. It’s astonishing to me HOW clear, and HOW straightforward it is!. Now that I’m on this surer, swifter and ultimately more satisfying path I find myself reflecting on how I got so far down that road and how I managed to exit at just the right moment.

It all started with a pair of phono cables. My “audio guru,” as I liked to call him, had promised he had THE phono cables for me, and that they were JUST the ticket to the next level of performance for my analog front end. He had me impatiently waiting for weeks until they finally arrived and he presented them to me with an unexpectedly whopping price tag of $1600.

How each of us responds to the thought of $1600 phono cables is surely to vary.  Some of you reading this might think it absurd to spend that much money on interconnects, while some of you might think it a rather modest investment, in the grand scheme of audio things. When I tried these cables out in my system they made such a HUGE difference to me that, even though I had never even considered spending that sum on a pair of cables before, I found I now HAD to. I simply could not go back to my old ones.

I was, in fact, so enamored with the sound of those phono cables, Transparent Gen. 5 Ultra’s, that I decide to find a pair of Transparent Ultra interconnects to connect my preamp to my amp. At the time I was using a pair of Highwire cables I’d bought from my audio guru decades earlier, and this second pair of Transparent Ultra interconnects, an MM2 generation version I found used for about $600, also made a big difference in the sound of my system.

A while later I was discussing upgrading my speaker cable with a gentleman at The Cable Company and he advised me to install Transparent throughout my system. So I went back to my audio guru (The Cable Company does not sell Transparent) and asked about Transparent speaker cable. Again I was steered toward the Ultra’s, but I eventually settled on the Super’s as they were all I could afford at the time.

The Transparent Super speaker cable still set me back 2 grand and were, once again, a big step up from my entry level Synergistic Research cable which I had paid $500 for not more than a few years earlier. I had really hoped to have Transparent Ultra wire throughout out my system, but the Super speaker cable would have to do until I could afford to upgrade again.

Can you see where all this is going? No doubt if you’ve been in this audiophile racket for a while you’ve been right there where I was. Perhaps you ARE there right now! And if you are in fact THERE NOW, you already know that as you start to hear things in your system that you don’t like you start to think about the next upgrade.

Last summer I went out looking for a new pair of speakers. With the help of a fellow audiophile I learned about the Verity Parsifals, which I am using now. I found a guy about 50 miles from me who had a used pair for sale at a great price and he agreed to let me come over and demo them.

I don’t hear a lot of other systems and when I do I’m often disappointed. Maybe I’m just so used to the way mine sounds that other systems just never seem to measure up. In the case of Steve, who sold me the Parsifals, it was just the opposite. His system sounded GREAT to me! I noticed his speaker cable and asked about it. He was running Audience AU24 sx and also using their interconnects. I told him I was using Transparent cable.

Steve told me he had had Transparent before but switched to the Audience after finding it more transparent and with tighter, more sold bass. From what I heard in his system I had to agree, but what would it sound like in my system combined with my Transparent cable? I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford to upgrade ALL my wires at once, and therefore needed the Audience to fit in well with my current set up.

Steve was kind enough to loan me a set of his Audience interconnects and it didn’t take me long to hear it was the direction I wanted to go. Just as I had heard on his system they were more transparent, more open and with the tighter, more solid bass that my system was sorely lacking. A one meter length of Audience AU24 sx interconnects retails for $2k, but they do come up for sale used sometimes and I got a pair for $900.

The Audience replaced the Transparent MM2 Ultra’s and I started thinking about how I could get Audience phono and speaker cables as well. Then some unusual circumstances led to the acquisition of a new turntable and I let the wire be while I took that journey.

Fast forward 6 months and I’m having an email exchange with a friend who’d been giving me some very interesting and unconventional advice on system modifications. I’d been trying some of the things he’d suggested and found each and every one of them to be exceedingly helpful, so I asked him what interconnects he recommended. He said most of them sucked and that I had to just try different ones and see which ones I liked best.

So I pulled out the pile of interconnects that I had still lying around and started to go through them, all the while thinking that my Audience cables were going to be VERY hard to beat. I still had my Highwire, which my Transparent MM2 Ultra’s had bested. And since my Audience cables had bested those I was skeptical the Highwire would be an improvement. I also had a pair of Audio Stream Gold’s that I’d used before getting the Highwire so those seemed an even more unlikely step up.

Finally I decided to start with the very first pair of “audiophile” interconnects I’d ever bought back in the mid-80’s, a very unremarkable pair of MIT PC squared. I hadn’t used these in years and had absolutely no recollection of what they sounded like, and even if I had my system had changed so much since it was unlikely those memories would be of much use.

So I took off my Audience cables and put on the MIT PC squared. Then, on my friend’s advice, I unscrewed the termination housing and pulled it back to expose the wire underneath. I did this at both my amp and my preamp. Then I put on a record.

I know this is going to sound completely insane and like the musings of a man whose just fallen off the audiophile deep end, but damn if those old MIT cables didn’t beat the pants off of my $2k Audience AU24 sx interconnects! I’ve gone back and forth several times since and every time they are clearly better. They are even more transparent and open and with the same deep, tight bass I love in the Audience.

Part of the reason is this tweak of unscrewing and pulling back the termination housings. As I’ve switched cables around several times, a couple of those times I’ve forgotten to do this with the MIT’s and immediately noticed a glare to the sound, particularly evident with horns, vocals and piano, and not at all pleasant. Pulling back the termination housing, for the most part, removes this glare.

I can’t help but wonder if I were able to expose the termination wires on the Audience cables like I can with the MIT’s if they wouldn’t sound better than they do, but I it’s not clear to me how to do that with the Audience cables and I don’t want to damage them. Regardless, I’m not sure that tweak would net enough improvement for them to be a clear favorite against the MIT’s. The MIT’s sound THAT good!

I don’t remember what I paid for the MIT cables. I didn’t have a lot of money back then and don’t imagine they were much more than 100 bucks. Probably less. In anticipation of needing another set of interconnects I found and bought a used 2m length pair on EBay for $49 + shipping. I made an offer on those and probably could have gotten them for even less as I seriously doubt there’s even one other person on the planet looking for these things.

But look they, and you, should. These MIT cables are truly impressive and, more importantly, they’ve opened my eyes even wider than they were before my recent discovery that the stock power cords for my amp and preamp sounded dramatically better than the Transparent Premium Power Cords I’d been running the past couple of years. You can read more about that here.

There’s not doubt this insane audiophile hobby is an expensive one, but audiophiles like myself and, I believe, the entire industry, have bought into an approach to better sound that requires a never ending string of “upgrades,” each an attempt to solve the problems created by the other “upgraded” components in our systems. We have all traveled so far down this road that we don’t even know we’re on it anymore.

So am I saying that you can forgo spending BIG$ to get a great pair of interconnects? Am I saying you can get a $49 pair on EBay that will will sound better than a $2k pair? Well, yes and no. I’m not sure if you’ve been crunching the numbers here but I had to spend a whole lot more than $49 to land a great pair of interconnects. I’d say I had to spend several thousand dollars to get these MIT’s. I just had no idea that all that spending would take me straight back to where I started.

Next up: Speaker cable!