I also put John Barry's sumptuous but predictable score to Dances With Wolves [Epic ZK 46982] into the CD tray and pressed Play. What emerged from the speakers was a believable, scaled-down representation of the entire 95-member orchestra and 12-member chorus. On the track "Pawnee Attack" especially, the increased dynamics, speed and detail brought to life the terrifying sound of the slapped drums. Turning to Sia’s 2004 album Colour the Small One [Astralwerks ASW 48103], I was stunned by the clarity of this Bob Ludwig-mastered recording. Track nine, "Moon," especially caught my attention with its sparse instrumentation and boundless soundscape.

Up to this point, I was playing CDs only. Moving to analog, I cued up a favorite Jackson Browne LP, Late for the Sky [Asylum 7E-1017]. I have listened to this album many, many times and thought I knew it well. Wrong! With the Shunyata cables in place, I was hearing subtle layering of background voices only hinted at before. This discovery made me sit up and take notice. Additionally, each song had a richness that I found compelling. The twenty-six-year-old Browne's voice still had the angst of youth and projected a youthful innocence as his songs documented the self-doubt and mystery of growing up. It now projected a maturity surfacing out of that innocence.

Another favorite LP of mine (and of many other audiophiles) is the Hungaroton recording of the List Ferenc Chamber Orchestra's performances of Antonio Vivaldi's Lute Concertos & Trios [Hungaroton SLPX 11978]. This is noble and magnificent music, captured in one of the finest recordings of its kind. This music took on new life -- richer, with instrumental timbres more clearly defined and the sense of venue enhanced -- with the Shunyata cables in the system. Listening became a luminous, highly enjoyable experience. The only thing missing was a glass of toney red wine and some artisan cheese.

Finally, I grabbed my Bob Ludwig-mastered copy of Keith Jarrett’s Survivors’ Suite [ECM-1-1085] and cued it up. "The Beginning" flooded the room with all manner of percussive sounds scattered across the soundstage captured in typical lean ECM fashion. In addition to crystal-clear rendering of the instruments, the Shunyata cables allowed me to visualize the interior of the studio and the musicians within.

I attributed much of what I describe above to the Venom power cords, especially the Venom HC. My head bobbed to the music more after I swapped power cords than at any other time. I could not get over how much of an improvement these power cords made in my system. The music had assumed new meaning and urgency. I’ve come to believe there is a lot more music embedded in the pits and grooves than one would expect, and the Shunyata power cords allowed the upstream components to extract it.

Things were nearly as vital with the Venom speaker cables, which instantly alerted me to a level of detail, energy and finesse similar in scope to what I heard from the power cords. Back to the Black Hawk Down soundtrack, on "Still," Baaba Maal’s voice was suspended on a cushion of reverb as various low-level ambient sounds come and go. I could easily hear this powerful, organic music-making with the Venom speaker cables. The music became more compelling and much less "flat" with the upgrade. I felt connected to the music more intimately than ever before. "Bakara," was especially stunning in its immediacy and presence. We regularly have helicopters fly overhead in the evening and it was the house-shaking sound of the rotors that was evoked by the soft bass notes at the beginning of "Ashes to Ashes." On the stunningly beautiful "Gortoz A Ran - J’ Attends," first the flute and then the harp are heard clearly behind the vocalists weaving poignant counterpoints. Lisa Gerrard’s inimitable voice became even more heartbreaking. Finally, on "Minstrel Boy," the separation of the voices of Joe Strummer and the members of the Mescaleros was tangible and localized. Toward the end of the track, as the song picks up intensity and volume, there was no congestion or distortion.

I find abstract electronic/dance music often quite stimulating and a good elixir to clear the psyche after too much instrument-derived music. British musician Richard D. James -- aka, Aphex Twin -- released his first album destined for these shores in 1993 under the moniker Polygon Window. Titled (Surfing On Sine Waves) [Warp CD7] and falling into the category loosely labeled IDM (intelligent dance music), it can easily serve as a test disc. The variety of electronic sounds, effects, textures and timbres James draws out of his synths, sequencers, samplers and drum machines is staggering. Unraveling them and reassembling them into coherent music can pose challenges for even the best systems. Before I installed the Shunyata speaker cables I was totally enjoying the experience of "surfing on sine waves" with Mr. James. After, my journey took on new meaning as each electronic bleep, blip and blat was revealed with crack-of-the-whip speed, enhanced character, texture and spatiality.

With that revelation, I was getting antsy to give the new cables a listen in the biamped, DSP’d system, so I pulled more boxes of cable out of their shipping carton. I was soon looking at two more Venom HC power cords and another set of Venom speaker cables -- it would only be a matter of minutes before I had them connected. With the svelte strains of the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo LP [Columbia CS 9670] cascading around the room, my ears quickly told me my system had reached a new plateau of excellence and sophistication. What had been a convincing presentation of the music on a believable soundstage suddenly became holographic. When the music warranted it, images left the confines of my not-so-diminutive Emerald Physics speakers and took up residence at various locations in the room. This was especially apparent on electronic dance music such as track "Kein Trink Wasser" from Orbital’s 1994 album Snivilisation [FFRR 8285362 ]. Mesmerizing.

My sincerest apologies to Abraham Maslow, whose "hierarchy of need" paradigm I’ve borrowed and twisted to suit my own mandate for these products based on what I feel are their contribution to the listening experience. At the highest level and, in my opinion, the most important are the power cords. Their effect on my system was profound, immediate and unmistakable. At the next level are the speaker cables, which carry over the signal integrity set by the power cords into the domain of the loudspeakers and, ultimately, your ears. They contributed an immediate and audible improvement. The next level is occupied by the interconnects. These can be the most problematic for some, as it is tempting to use interconnects as tone controls, altering the sound at the whim of the listener. I prefer a clearer view of the music and thus preferred the copper Shunyata interconnects to my reference silver interconnects.

I grew very accustomed to the sound of my system with the Shunyata cables over the course of this review and took great pleasure in the music they so faithfully conveyed. Before beginning to write, though, I wanted to return to the pre-Shunyata configuration to confirm my listening impressions. So, with some hesitancy, I replaced the Shunyata cables with my previous reference wires. After the recabling was complete, I played Black Hawk Down again. As I expected, the sound suddenly lost degrees of palpability, depth, transparency and dynamic range. The menacing tone of "Hunger" was lessened, and there was a reduction in the microdynamics swirling around within the mix and a damping of the energy and drift of the music. I concluded that my reference silver interconnects in particular homogenized the sound, making it pleasant instead of right. But I didn’t expect a sudden lack of involvement in music I was immersed in just a few minutes earlier.

If it sounds like I’m gushing over Shunyata Research's Venom cables, I am. Rarely have I used products that had such immediate, profound and long-lasting sonic impact. Stereophile contributing editor and close friend Tom Norton said recently that " . . . the most important part of any great recording, apart from the performance, will always be the engineering behind it, not the format." With Shunyata cable products, the truth behind that statement is easily grasped.