CES 2015 • Hot Product

Audio products of all kinds, from speakers to phono cartridges, are almost always introduced one at a time. For Transparent Audio and each of its half-dozen cables lines, when their core technologies are updated, all of the cables are reintroduced as well. That is the case with Transparent's new Generation 5 cables -- from top-of-the-line Magnum Opus (shown above, $21,000 to $35,000/pair for interconnects, $65,000/pair for speaker cables), to . . .

. . . to Opus ($13,000 to $22,000/pair for interconnects,  $39.000/pair for speaker cables) . . . ,

. . . to Reference ($3200 to $5600/pair for interconnects, $7800/pair for speaker cables).

Each of the models has been completely reworked, but common to them all are new cable "with far more attention paid to the pitch and uniformity of every winding," according to Transparent, new networks with "a degree of precision that is roughly 10 times more exact than their MM2 Technology predecessors," and new network housings with greater mechanical stability and lower resonance. Sonically speaking, these enhancements translate to "a much greater measure of musical realism -- more low-level information, more musical palpability at the frequency extremes, and a much greater measure of the dynamic range contained within the source material."