Sound & Vision • Hot Product

Roksan and TMsystems designer Touraj Moghaddam’s cable line is a force to be reckoned with, now that he has named it -- Vertere -- and expanded its range down into the upper regions of real-world pricing. D-Fi is a cable series that’s designed to reveal the potential of iPods and PCs to the music-loving public at large. Prices therefore start low, at $100 for a 3.5mm mini-jack to mini-jack cable, which Touraj demonstrated to startling effect with an iPod. He used three systems to make his point, the first consisting of a beer-budget Marantz PM5004 and some equally affordable Dali Zensor stand-mounted speakers. When connected to an iPod with D-Fi, this system was surprisingly coherent, dynamic and vital.

Touraj also demonstrated the differences between standard USB and his own cables to equally impressive effect via a system at around $1500, featuring a Sony laptop at the front-end and his TMsystems turntable, Roksan amplification and PMC twenty.24 floorstanders. This naturally made the sweetest sound of the lot, but at a considerably higher price.

Touraj makes a very good case for using decent cables with inexpensive hardware, but whether it’s one that the iPod user on the street will get to hear is the $64,000 question.