Luminous Audio Allegro Digital Interconnects

Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

A short while back, I posted an article stating that the digital interconnect was probably the most-important part of a two-box digital rig. I talked about the three main parameters in digital cables- Impedance match, bandwidth, and RFI bleedthrough. And I finally stated the best digital interconnects out there were at the two major price extremes- Apogee and NBS. The Monitor 0 AES/EBU being the best of the best, at the time.
Well I was able to dig up an old friend from the past- The Luminous Audio Allegro digital interconnect. I have the RCA non-Signature version, and both the bandwidth and impedance characteristics are *excellent* with this cable- Like the NBS Monitor 0, maybe even to a greater degree, there is a sense of space with real instruments playing. But the NBS still has the edge with RFI bleedthrough, but I think it could be due to the fact the AES/EBU interface generally performs better in that regard than S/PDIF. But the bleedthrough performance of Luminous cable is still very good for an S/PDIF cable. So for short-term listening, I actually prefer the Luminous Allegro, while the NBS Monitor 0 is still champ for extended listening.
Shootout to come: I just so happened to order the AES/EBU version of the Luminous Audio Allegro Signature. A reasonably-priced $270 digital cable at 1.5 meters. The shootout will be this cable against the ($3000 retail) NBS Monitor 0. Hopefully, I may have found a digital interconnect of superior performance that is priced for the masses. And if one has had satisfaction with the S/PDIF RCA interface, this could already be the ticket.
BTW- I now feel damned lucky that when I did my 14-DAC shootout about five years ago, that Luminous cable happened to be one of the digital cables I was using. In a system not nearly as resolute as the one I have now. (In fact, the late Steve Zipser made an issue that the system may have been inadequate for doing such an extravagant DAC shootout.) I never realized how good this digital cable was until I slapped it back in the main system. (After listening to a *plethora* of digital cables in the main system that failed to deliver- some miserably.) The fact that today I still use the DAC that won the shootout five years ago, the Prism DA-1: This should have been an indication that in spite of the less-resolute system at that time, something right must have been going on in regard to the ancillary digital equipment. (And remember my comment at the beginning about the importance of the digital cable.)

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Topic - Luminous Audio Allegro Digital Interconnects - Todd Krieger 22:14:51 02/23/01 (5)

Re: Luminous Audio Allegro Digital Interconnects - Todd Krieger 22:47:41 02/27/01 (0)

Re: Electra Glide signature & cardas L-15 - blazter 18:27:50 02/27/01 (0)

The Three Digital Cable Parameters and Related Sonics - Todd Krieger 02:11:35 02/26/01 (0)

Hmmmmm.... - Chris Garrett 00:29:49 02/24/01 (1)

Re: Hmmmmm.... - Todd Krieger 01:44:06 02/24/01 (0)

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