The Absolute Sound's Muse Kastanovich evaluated AudioQuest's Lone Ranger speaker cables, Black Beauty interconnects, and Pegasus interconnects for the magazine's July/August 2026 issue.
Listening to a wide range of modern classical, avant jazz, ambient, and classic rock, Muse consistently heard seductively beautiful music that had him "binge-listening into the wee hours."
Muse went on to admire his system's newfound "timbral bloom" and "spectral richness" before concluding of our cables, "What a glorious sound, natural, great rhythmic life, with plenty of inner glow."
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In a special sidebar to Muse's formal review, TAS editor, Robert Harley, reflects on his own pivotal experience with AudioQuest cables, explaining that AQ's founder, Bill Low, had visited him in the mid-1990s with a armful of speaker cables and a boombox.
This was Bill's famed "Boombox Demo," recounted later in a piece by TAS's Steven Stone. For Robert Harley, the experience "made an indelible impression" for three specific reasons: It showed that even a humble boombox could reveal differences between cables — neither so-called "golden ears" nor reference-quality system needed. Second, he discovered that every element of the cable's design contributed meaningfully to overall performance. Last, the experience demonstrated Bill's own precise understanding of those elements and their impact on the cables' design.
"And consider that this was about 30 years ago, and that the technology and sound quality of AudioQuest's cables have advanced astronomically since then," Robert Harley concludes.
