Externally, the aforementioned metal shrouds on the cables attract the eye, each of which is firmly enclosing the cable at both of its ends. At Siltech, these are called barrels. For one thing, they show representatively the cable’s type designation, but their real purpose lies somewhere very different: These mass elements serve to dampen resonances that have an impact on a cable from the exterior and to suppress microphonic effects. Each of them is made of brass, with a shiny polished aluminum finish on the Explorer and Classic Anniversary, while the light champagne finish of the two Royal Signature barrels results from a nickel coating of the brass.

All this entails not only efforts in terms of construction, but also in the manufacturing. That's why many steps are carried out by special machines at the Dutch company, while others can be done better by hand. Equal care is taken in the selection of the plugs used, as a lot of the quality of a high-grade cable can be lost at this mechanical and electrical threshold, for example if the interfaces do not have the appropriate contact quality. Siltech deploys selected connectors from renowned manufacturers here. Finally, each individual cable is checked with a Tektronix 70-gigahertz DR real-time oscilloscope, which is capable of analyzing with high resolution up to the limits of what can be measured.

At the time the three high-quality, but not overly luxuriously packaged Siltech cables entered my listening room, it was first a matter of breaking in the cables before stepping over to a comparison with my Habst Ultra-3 USB, with which I have been enjoying music for a good year perfectly and contentedly. First, I devoted myself to gathering information for this review and listened to the cables in this phase mainly casually. In doing so, I did not notice any serious sonic changes even after completing several days of burning-in time. Sometimes one, sometimes the other Siltech USB cable did its job on one of the music computers. I admit to having preferred the Royal Signature during this time, simply because it intrigued me right from the start. An openness not previously experienced in my digital setup, spatial depth enriched by a simultaneously filigree tonal palette, and an unexpected gain in dynamics were simply impossible to ignore. For the listening test I then used my Dell computer equipped with AudiophileOptimizer and the current Audirvana, in order to create for as many readers as possible comprehensible conditions regarding the sound source. The fact that I use the Siltech USBs with the Mutec M-3+ Smartclock USB instead of directly feeding the signal into the D/A converter is due to the superior sound quality of the USB reclocker and certainly isn’t going to falsify the result.