Can the JundoStream be worth all that care and attention, compared to a stock cable, let alone an alternative (and more conventional) audiophile network cable? The short answer is, “Yes.” The slightly longer answer adds, “- and how!” I got to use the JundoStream with both Reiki and SOtM switches and streaming solutions from Wadax (the Ref Server and Studio Player), CH Precision and Grimm. It would be nice to simply report that the results were consistent across all platforms and, I guess, in one way they were: In each case, the JundoStream helped the streamer to be a better version of itself. But – perhaps more importantly – the better the streamer, the bigger the difference that was apparent over other cables.
My network infrastructure has taken some serious steps forward in the last year, benefiting from the arrival of the Reiki Switch gear and Optical Bridge, revised cabling and access to several very effective noise reduction devices, the Aardvark Elite, CAD Ethernet Control and the Telos Macro G. The SOtM switches have been relegated to secondary usage, either as network hubs as required, or with lower-priced streaming applications where the Reiki switches and top-flight cabling (RakuStream+, Nordost V2 or Chord Co. Music) are inappropriate – often costing more than the streamer/DAC itself. Those changes have meant that I’ve spending a lot more time with file replay, both for reviewing reasons but also for the sheer musical access it has always promised (yet so rarely actually delivered). The arrival of the Wadax Studio Player has increased that still further, originally in its Roon enabled guise but now with the advent of Qobuz connect. The JundoStream has been used to feed all of the equipment listed above, but the vast majority of my time with it has involved the Wadax streaming solutions, the Reference Server and Studio Player – the best cable being at home with the best equipment.
Using a high-res file of Víkingur Ólafsson’s familiar and testing Debusy-Rameau, the advantages of the JundoStream over even the best of the rest were clear. The piano gained significant, body, weight and dimensionality, a solid, complex, richly harmonic presence, locked in space, within an inky silent acoustic. Note-weight, attack, the shape of phrases and the musical impetus through them instilled by the musician’s expressive input weren’t just more apparent, they were actually apparent where they’d been almost absent before. The increased sense of a real person playing a real instrument (as opposed to a flattened, reduced and bleached, synthetic facsimile) was remarkable, representing a huge step forward in making streaming and file replay a valid alternative to discs.
The Wadax components major on body, colour and musical flow, musical attributes that the JundoStream certainly emphasises. But use it in the context of the CH Precision C1.2 and you’ll hear it deliver increased separation, articulation, focus and clarity – all of the things that the C1.2 is recognised for. In the case of the Grimm MU2, with its softer, rounder sound, the JundoStream at once adds to the instrumental and vocal warmth, while also reducing the tendency to clogging or slowing that afflicts any product that treads this path. It’s an interesting observation that the Reiki cable allows each component to sound more like itself: bad news if you are expecting some sort of corrective tendency – a cloaking or heightening in the presentation – but it’s certainly suggestive of increased signal integrity, a cleanliness in the data stream that allows the streamer, whichever streamer you use, to simply get on with its job.
