Comparing across cables, it’s also notable that the Reiki grounding protocol carries its own cumulative benefits. The Nordost V2, Heimdall and the AudioQuest cables that I have are all Cat 8 configuration, with their outer shields connected at both ends. Both the RakuStream+ (which like its stable-mate, the JundoStream, is grounded at the send/switch end only) and the Chord Co. Music network cable, with its floating, Farraday cage shielding, come closer in terms of presentation and noise-floor, to the JundoStream’s musical presence spatial and temporal coherence. Both cables have some of the warmth, colour and body that goes with the big Reiki cable, but neither has anything like the same degree of presence, separation, dimensionality or the finely shaded dynamic response. But if we step back one link in the chain – in this case the cable linking the Optical Bridge to the SuperSwitch, then either cable offers a significant benefit over the various CAT 8 configured options. As Reiki are apt to state, network performance is all about noise: noise that intrudes on the cable and connections from outside, noise that’s generated and transmitted inside. Even with linear supplies throughout the audio network, breaking the continuous ground path that’s created by the Cat 8 standard shows obvious benefits in terms of reducing the noise-floor, grain and ‘pixelation’ of the sound – all symptoms that infect the vast majority of streaming set-ups and hold back their ultimate musical performance.
Running the RakuStream+/JundoStream combination delivered the best overall results. Playing the recent Isabelle Faust/Francis-Xavier Roth recording of the Ligeti Violin Concerto (a 24/96 file from Harmonia Mundi) the Reiki combination didn’t just bring more shape and structure to the abstract opening bars, it actually made them make musical sense, with a pattern of interlocking layers that underpin and contrast with the body and attack of the solo instrument. What was previously noise has become an arresting, fascinating, evolving soundscape. Just as the Reiki switches and Optical Bridge eclipsed the musical performance of previously well-regarded audiophile network components, so the JundoStream adds structural clarity and another, substantial layer of engaging, natural communication to the musical performance of network replay. With the JundoStream in line, streamed music and file replay take on a significantly more organic, fluid, expressive and just downright human presentation.
This ability to kill the noise that clogs the incoming stream brings clarity not just to the sparse and the spiky, but also to larger scale, more sumptuous works. It encompasses and projects the drama, colour and scale of the Batiashvili/Barenboim, Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (DGG 24/96), the deftly weighted accompaniment and Batiashvili’s powerful combination of poise and swagger, a romantic statement in this most romantic of works. Likewise, it captures the drama and intensity in the Mravinsky/Leningrad P.O. Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 (Denon 16/44) holding together the sporadic orchestral elements as the piece builds, bringing substance and power to the burgeoning crescendos. In terms of musical presence, impact, scale, dynamic and expressive range, tonality and harmonic resolution, it’s tempting to describe the JundoStream as in a class of its own: except that you can’t listen to a cable. You can only listen to a system. What the JundoStream does is make that system a whole lot more listenable!
