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Cable Asylum Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys. |
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During my sophomore year (1990-91) at UCSC, a white girl in my dorm, Petra, would smile, and say that she was Asian.
During a multi-culti event, you were attracted to a girl who was in Eastern European garb, donned a colorful plastic wreath used as a crown, and tied dull-colored ribbons to that wreath. Then you realized that this girl was Petra. She smiled, and joked, "Aw, so you like me better as an ethnic chick?"
Petra was one of the few in the dorm, who liked to shower at night. But she liked folk-based music, which wasn't conducive to singing in the shower. She and I had a tough time, coming up with songs we both knew and liked. It turned out that she liked the Scorpions' power ballad, "Send Me An Angel." But first, we had to meet in our rooms or corner lounge, and learn the words!
There, she explained that, though her immediate family was in New York, both sides actually hailed from areas in and near Yekaterinburg. So while Petra was ethnically Russian, she playfully teased, "Technically, I'm Asian."
To which her roommate counter-argued, "No, you're a New Yorker. And that's not Asia!"
The sonic personality of the Pranawire Nataraja line-level interconnect reminds me of Michelangelo's paintings (not necessarily sculptures and architecture). Petra was taking an art history class, and had a somewhat negative assessment about Michelangelo. When I stated that I, like Michelangelo, was Catholic, that added fuel to Petra's fire.
The Nataraja does make you think of the anachronism, "What if Michelangelo had visited me and Petra in the early-90s?" Petra and I raised subjects, like:
- How would "Mikey," as Petra called him, take to being a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?
- Did he ever leave Italy?
- He must have known or heard about the New World.
- He never heard Beethoven's Ninth, let alone a power ballad, like "Send Me An Angel"
- Mikey definitely was not a foodie; how would he feel about today's Instagram photos of food?
- In 1990/91, when I went home to San Francisco, my family went to Mass at Star Of The Sea, which had a few East Asian, Filipino, African, and Hispanic parishioners. And that was in addition to the myriad Caucasian ethnicities. Having never left Italy, was Michelangelo aware of all these different ethnicities?
- Mikey seemed to turn a blind eye to women. Petra said he'd take a male figure, and then slap on boobs, to make a woman.
Petra then had a revelation, "Without an ice box or freezer, did that Italian staple, gelato, exist in Mikey's time?"
With its ribbon-like flow and continuity, the Nataraja makes you think of the "What ifs" hypothetically. Assuming your sources are of sufficient quality, the Nataraja will not break up the music into bits. It's like seeing the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling, not just The Creation Of Adam.
In the early-90s, our video game consoles had 16-bit graphics. The Nataraja does not pixelate the images or vivify the colors. If anything, the Nataraja is like Michelangelo hopping down to Lowe's and selecting understated colors, to paint the inside of your house.
So the Nataraja has a short list of flaws. You may wish for more contrast between music and background silence. You may wish for the colors to show more dynamic pop. But for us popular music fans, the Nataraja's Achilles heel is the diminution of drums' snap, punch, and pop. The Nataraja prefers to give you the texture of the drum. It's almost as though you can feel and taste the drum wall's wood or carbon.
Yet, I know many rock-leaning audiophiles, who prefer this type of sound. It prevents raucous and harsh recordings from getting too jangling and overwhelming.
In the early-to-mid 90s, the original XLO Reference interconnects were hot. These sound quite different, from the Pranawire Nataraja. With its unambiguous and razor-sharp image outlines, the XLO Ref causes to you to pop out the "What ifs," no matter how ridiculous they are. It's like today's high-rez video games, versus Michelangelo's marble relief sculpture, Madonna Of The Stairs. And if that means bringing Michelangelo to San Francisco's Carnaval, bring it on!
The XLO Ref is definitely not a Michelangelo fresco. It is like walking the streets of San Francisco, and coming across sharply-painted murals. Nah, I don't think Mikey would have drawn something like the one above, which reminds you of a modern, glammed-up Petra in Eastern European garb.
But back to the Pranawire Nataraja. Its lithe, feminine, continuous, seamless presentation should find a home in certain systems. At the bottom, it worked well with 1990s Proceed gear. It was synergistic with the ethereal and gossamer-like dCS Puccini [you might really love the Scorpions' "Send Me And Angel" here]. But its forgiving nature is a godsend on vinyl-based rigs. It has a way of not calling out vinyl's flaws. And at the same time, it seems to leave most of vinyl's sense of "that's a performer" intact. If you do not need Michelangelo to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and like his frescoes, the Nataraja then nicely segues to his Battle Of The Centaurs, which kinda looks like a death metal album cover. Given that Pranawire themselves utilized a custom vinyl rig, it makes sense that the Nataraja works well on carefully selected and setup vinyl rigs, including entry-level models from Music Hall, Pro-Ject, Rega, Thorens, VPI, et. al.
-Lummy The Loch Monster
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Topic - Pranawire Nataraja, Part 22 - Luminator 13:08:06 09/11/20 (0)
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