WAY cables hail from Serbia. Dominic Marsh checks out two of their offerings in the form of their Silver 2 and Silver 4 Interconnects.  

Goodness me, I bet you are thinking right now “Oh no, not another cable review”, but a major function of Hifi Pig is to show and highlight the latest products, it so happens then that cables are part of the rich pageant that all things Hifi encompasses and their exclusion therefore is not on our agenda.  As a reviewer then, you get to see a whole raft of cables appearing on the market and after a while you can become a tad blasé when an endless parade of co-axial based black meshed cables arrives on your doorstep to be evaluated, so when something different comes along that breaks the mould you are certainly intrigued. It doesn’t have to have a massive price tag either to pique the interest and that spurs you on to look a bit further into what the product does.

Way Silver 4 Interconnects

Cue then the WAY Silver 2 and Silver 4 interconnects to be evaluated here.

WAY who? Indeed.  This is a recently launched company headquartered in Belgrade in Serbia and like all new start up businesses they are bursting with passion and raw enthusiasm, so it was exactly that trait which I admired so much because they are happy to take criticism and appreciate praise where it’s due.

When the cables arrived they were in a sturdy wooden box with plenty of bubble wrap and each box was positively embalmed in cling film and I mean EMBALMED, so much so it took me 30 minutes for each box with a razor sharp craft knife just to remove it all.  That’s what you call packing safely for transit.  Incidentally, they were shipped from the Berlin branch and they have other distributors already established around Eastern Europe.

CONSTRUCTION 

I have encountered some really flexible cables in my time, but never as flexible as the WAY Silver interconnects are. They are quite a chunky cable with an outside diameter of 12mm or so, but they drape across a finger like a dead snake or worm, with both verticals hanging perfectly parallel beneath the finger they are draped over.  Both cables have cotton outer sleeving, the Silver 2 is dressed in a natural white, while the Silver 4 has a deep red colour coat. Terminations are in the form of KLE Harmony RCA connectors, the Silver 2 having silver plated copper plugs, while the Silver 4 sports the ‘Absolute’ pure silver variant of this connector family.  Betwixt plug and cable we find silver corded whipping of around 2cm or so which makes no secret of the fact that these cables are made purely by hand with no machine involvement at all. This is further evidenced by tied on “name tags” of small rectangular strips denoting the model and serial numbers.  Allowed to roam freely up and down the cable is a natural bamboo cylinder just a tiny bit larger than the cable’s diameter which is carved with the name “WAY” on it, which you think is about to fall off an end but never does. If ever you had a vision of a bespoke cable hand built from the ground up instead of being chopped off a bulk 100+ metre reel of the stuff, then this is it personified. This is further enforced by a hand written summary of the cable’s, model, length and the builder on a leaflet inside the box and the box itself is also hand made with the WAY logo imprinted into the lid.

Way Silver 2 Interconnects

As befits the model names, the Silver 2 has 99.99% pure silver conductors of 23 AWG or 0.26 mm² if you prefer, while the Silver 4 is wired with 99.99% pure silver at 20 AWG or 0.52 mm² conductors.  Insulation and dielectric material is pure cotton fibre, said to be closest to the permittivity of a vacuum or free air, so the company says.

Prices at time of testing are Silver 2 for a 1 m pair with KLEI COPPER Harmony RCA: 199 €
and the Silver 4 for a 1 m pair with KLEI Silver ABSOLUTE Harmony RCA: 499 €

Other lengths and connectors are available at time of ordering and I believe you can order by quarter metre increments too to save money.

SOUND QUALITY 

I was informed by WAY that the Silver 2 cable already has some usage while the Silver 4 was straight off production so would need a burn in period of 200 hours or so.  Gulp.  Armed with that information I began the evaluation with the Silver 2 cable, while the Silver 4 was left  cooking away slowly on another spare system.

When I initially connected the Silver 2 cables it sounded a bit shut in and cloudy so I assumed that the “some usage” WAY had mentioned wasn’t sufficient for full burn in, so that too got another 20 hours on another system.  After that period the sound had opened up and the cloudiness had vanished so I began some serious critical listening.

The Silver 2 gave a good account of itself with nothing in the sonic palette I could level any serious criticism at. Sure, it couldn’t compete with other more expensive cable confections with it’s detail resolution, clarity and bass heft, but amongst similar priced and specified cables it could hold it’s head up, with pride too I might add.  It had enough bounciness and vitality to hold the interest and it certainly didn’t spill over at any time into being bland or dull, so a cable that has my close scrutiny for several hours per day over a week or so for the evaluation, without offending or annoying, gets a good rating regardless. It had a commendably quiet low noise background so the details it revealed were not masked or blurred, but the extreme top-end was rolled off, as was the extreme lower registers.  Midband was this cable’s real forte and female vocals in particular which had no congestion or fuzziness at all.

Moving on to the Silver 4 cable now and the sound quality moved upwards commensurate with its price differential to the Silver 2.

Whereas the Silver 2 never did engage me completely, the Silver 4 certainly did from the first bar onwards. Powerful solid bass, a sweet and mellifluous top-end with no shortage of nuances and insights, the sound just flowed freely from the speakers.  It was that ease of listening that I enjoyed the most with the Silver 4 and many was the time the listening sessions went on way past my normal bed time, because that effect of drawing me into the music made the hours seem to just fly by.

Of course, I had to show the WAY Silver 4 cables a couple of my torture tracks to see where the limitations were in the sound, so into the CD drawer went Porcupine Tree’s “Deadwing” album, which although isn’t the last word in mangling the sound beyond recognition as some music classed as “torture tracks” can be, nevertheless it presents a decent obstacle course for any system to traverse unscathed, because the better the system is, the worse it sounds I have found. With the WAY Silver 4 cable installed, it was actually a rather pleasant listen, which tells me that while the Silver 4 can reveal a plethora of details, they don’t suffer from turning the sound into a relentless, fatiguing, unforgiving kind of sound when they are severely provoked by a raw recording such as this.

CONCLUSION 

So what can we conclude from this review?  The Silver 2 cable offers very good value for its asking price.  Neither the last word in detail resolution, nor the last word in plumbing the lower registers either, but for all that it remained constant in its performance with no shocks or surprises to be concerned over.

The Silver 4 cable was in another league entirely so it’s higher cost over the Silver 2 seemed justified.   They never once offended; they did a grand job of drawing me into the music and the way they sailed their way through the Porcupine Tree album sums up all their strengths that they could provide a good rendition of what music was playing through them without spilling over into being analytical and harsh.

SILVER 2

Build quality: 9.0/10

Sound quality: 7.7/10

Value for money: 8.6/10

Overall:    8.3/10 

SILVER 4

Build quality: 9.0/10

Sound quality: 8.3/10

Value for money: 8.3/10

Overall:    8.5/10

Dominic Marsh

At the time of review an overall score of above 8.5 (now 9) meant that the Silver 4 cables had to go on for second review. Ian Ringstead continues. 

I was asked to do a follow up review to Dominic’s on these cables as he had been rather impressed by them. Now cables to me are obviously essential in a hi-fi system, but I have often felt they can be a Pandora’s Box when it comes to evaluating them. I know another well known hi-fi reviewer who hates reviewing cables because they are hard to pin down. One of my best friends is an electronics and PA speaker designer who designs large PA rigs for a company and he eschews any fancy cables and power supplies etc. as utter rubbish. I write this review with his words ringing in my ears and that he will ridicule me if I write something he doesn’t agree with. He believes copper is copper and that as long as it is pure which nearly all copper should be, then it makes no difference what fancy designs are made, and sold at extortionate prices, as he sees no justification in it and that companies are just profiteering.

You have to be an enthusiast to even consider spending a lot of money on hi-fi and especially bits of wire to connect the components together. I started out 40 years ago using just decent copper leads and gold plated connections sometimes and thought nothing more about it. Then magazines started to pick up on the importance of good connectors and cables. Some companies like Linn and Naim insisted on only using their cables as they worked best with their equipment and wouldn’t recommend other manufacturers. In fact they warned customers and dealers that they wouldn’t be liable for damage or problems if other cables were used. Now this might seem rather puritanical these days, but it was a serious issue back in the eighties.

Way use the highest purity silver (99.99%) they can obtain, sourced from here in the UK as we are the only country in the world to guarantee its purity and have stringent quality controls and regulations. Way cables currently feel silver is the best conductor to use, but are open to other materials if they find them to be better in the future. They use pure cotton as the only dielectric and outer jacket material for all their cables. This cotton is produced to their specification (density, thickness and structure). They are proud of their Unique extreme damping system™ from sound vibrations, noise and RFI/EMI interferences, and Way cables are very flexible despite the fact that they have solid-core conductors. This flexibility I feel is unique to their cables and they feel nothing like any other cable I have come across before. Like my colleague Dominic said they are like a worm when you handle them being incredibly flexible and light in weight.

The cables take at least eight hours per cable to manufacture by hand, I’m told and then they are fully tested and checked out..

I initially tried the cheaper basic model Silver 2 between my CD player and passive pre amp, and then the Silver 4. The Silver 2 was very good and certainly opened up the sound of my system with what appeared to be a much lower noise floor. The Silver 4 built on the qualities of the 2 and was even more refined and clearer with a beautiful presentation and incredible detail. I listened to CDs I thought I knew inside out, but was amazed at the extra detail and clues in the recordings I had previously not heard, or had been disguised in some way. I then used the Silver 4 between my CD player and the passive pre and the Silver 2 between my pre and the power amp.

I tried several CDs of differing music and they all sounded superb. My ears were not lying to me and my wife also commented on how good they sounded in comparison to my usual cheaper cables. This is not a criticism of these other brands which I find to be very good value at under about a £100, but the Way cables were in a different league.

Compared to any other cable I have heard in my system the Way cables are definitely the best I have come across and offer real value for money. I reckon they are the Way forward! (Pun intended)

Silver 4

Sound Quality: 8.9 /10

Build Quality: 9/10

Value for money: 8.5/10

Overall rating: 8.8/10

Ian Ringstead

DC on the mains supply has been a hot topic in the last few years as audiophiles understand the importance of a “clean” supply. Ian Ringstead fits the MCRU Excelsior DC Blocker to his system to see what effect it has. 

Mains power is something most people take for granted and never give it a second thought unless there is a power cut. Now as a hifi enthusiast I’ve known for a long time how important a good power supply is to the quality of the sound an amplifier or source component produces, but it wasn’t until more recently that I read articles on the quality of one’s mains power and how it is affected by many outside influences. Dirty mains can cause transformers to hum because the laminates rattle due to interference on the power supply with mains voltage variations or from industrial plants etc. Also our home is full of mains borne pollution from switch mode power supplies in our computers, routers etc. 

Life is therefore quite hard for a decent hifi system to perform at its best if mains pollution is bad in your home. The wiring in your home is usually on a ring main (or radial) and this means many sockets can be joined together on a common circuit. Anything plugged into that circuit will therefore be affected by a component when it is plugged into that circuit and will interfere with the circuit as a whole. I decided to get around this problem by installing a dedicated circuit isolated from my house’s mains by having a separate consumer unit, using 30 amp wiring and a dedicated earth spike buried outside my house in the garden to provide a separate earth point. This may sound extreme to some readers and I have been scoffed at by some friends, but the effort in my view was well worth it. I got a lot less interference from things like my fridge freezer or central heating thermostat switching on and off and the bass was a lot better.

I have also invested time and money in buying or making up good quality mains leads and have a good quality mains block. The socket my hifi plugs into on the wall is silver plated, again for better contact and it enhances the performance. I think anyone who spends a reasonable amount of money on hifi and listens to music a lot should try to do what I have. It is up to individuals how much they spend on doing this and thousands can be spent on exotic mains conditioners, leads and cables, but this does not guarantee good results.

The reason for this lengthy introduction is because I was recently asked to try out a new mains product by Huddersfield based company Mains Cables Are Us (MCRU). David Brook the proprietor and down to earth Yorkshire man contacted me to see how I wanted my DC mains blocker configuring. Basically this is a very high quality mains lead that has a filter placed between the mains plug and the other end of the lead that plugs into your mains block to supply current to your equipment. Mine came fitted with a Furutech mains plug (others countries are available) and 16 amp IEC socket to plug into my mains block.

Sophisticated technology has been used to produce a mains power lead unlike any other manufactured and designed to block the DC that occurs in the mains supply. Manufactured using the best available materials the Excelsior Mains Lead utilises substantial OFC mains cable with 4mm sq individual conductors which are terminated with a gold plated audiophile mains plug and gold plated IEC connector (either the standard C15 IEC or C19 high current) and used solely on their own this would be a formidable mains power lead in its own right.

MCRU have taken the design further and housed a powerful mains filter in the centre of the cable, the aluminium enclosure houses a specially designed DC blocker. As mentioned earlier DC (direct current) occurs in the mains supply from house-hold appliances and has been present in the supply but not correctly addressed or acknowledged until recently.

Transformer hum is as a result of DC in the mains. MCRU state their power cord will remove it and also improve the overall sound quality from your system. The power lead has been tested to prove its effectiveness on a live mains supply and also in a computer simulation programme specifically for this task. Standard length is 3 metres overall, but longer lengths can be made to order.

Now I know for a fact what mains hum can do to power amps in particular. Back in the 80’s when I sold Naim amplifiers we would every so often get a customer who would ring up or call in to say their amp was buzzing badly. We would try it in the shop and have no problem, but as soon as they took it back home it would buzz again. We contacted the manufacturer who said it could only be bad /dirty mains causing the trouble. If it persisted we would change the amp as part of our good customer service, just in case that particular transformer was sensitive to dirty mains. At the time mains filters weren’t really talked about and better quality mains leads were not considered necessary. Then in the 90’s this problem of dirty mains was talked about far more and companies started to sell mains filters, power blocks and leads that they claimed would dramatically improve the sound of your hifi system.

The sceptics amongst you might still think this is all snake oil and how or why should good mains cabling and isolation products make any difference. Well I for one have definitely reaped the benefits of taking care with my system and using good components to address the issues. I haven’t gone crazy and spent thousands, but just been sensible; I like anyone else have become sceptical of wild claims for cables and other products transforming your system, especially when these items cost a lot of money. David just said to me try it in your system and if it sounds better then great.

CONCLUSION

Having used the Excelsior DC Blocker now for a few weeks I can say it has just sat there and done what it is supposed to do, improve your systems sound. It isn’t a “wow what an amazing change has been made” type of experience, simply my system sounds great and I can really appreciate what the units are doing and all my music is highly enjoyable. Sound staging is solid and clear and there are no nasty harsh higher frequencies. I have had several different components I have been evaluating over the last few weeks and they have all worked flawlessly with no mains pops or the sound being grungy. Often when I listen to the system during the day it can sound variable and they say your system will always sound at its best late at night when most people are in bed and industrial plants are running down.

All I can say is that MCRU Excelsior DC Blocker works. It is very well made and unobtrusive. The fact David will make it to whatever specification you want is a bonus and at £599, although not cheap due to the quality of components used, I feel offers good value compared to the other items I have either had or tried over the years.

Sound Quality – 8.6/10

Build Quality – 8.7/10

Value for money – 8.5/10

Overall – 8.6

Pros:

Great build quality, easy to install and unobtrusive. Your system will sound better.

Cons:

Not cheap but if you want to try it David will happily let you buy on a trial basis so nothing is lost.

Ian Ringsted

Designer’s Comments

The Excelsior started life as an idea aimed at owners of amplifiers that hum loudly. Customers were contacting us asking if the hum could be eradicated, we explained it’s not really the amp humming its the transformer inside the amplifier. Usually caused by DC present on the mains. Eradicating DC kills the hum and improves system performance.

​DC offset can be introduced into your mains supply by both other devices in your house and from other houses in the street, or light industry that you are unlucky in sharing a phase with.
Another way of considering DC offset is asymmetric mains waveform, the peaks one way are smaller than the other.

DC offset on the mains will cause the transformers in your equipment to saturate.  Saturating transformers work far less efficiently and generate a lot of noise both physical and electrical.

The DC blocker removes the offset from your mains, while maintaining the low impedance supply to your equipment.​

As well as blocking DC we wanted the Excelsior to function as a high end power lead so even if the dc blocker was not present it would still improve sound quality when compared to kettle leads, we think we have achieved that by using audiophile grade plugs and connectors and an often over looked item, the mains fuse which we up-grade.

The final pieces in the jigsaw are mains cable with 4mm sq conductors housed in a special carbon infused braiding to prevent pick up of RFI.

David Brook

Dominic Marsh plugs in the Purple Rain series of speaker cables from Polish manufacturer Melodika (€71.00 for 2.5m pair). 

Here we have you another cable maker emerging from our Polish cousins in the shape of Melodika, founded in the year 2010.  Unlike most others though, they not only sell you the finished product, they will also sell you cable off the reel and the plugs to go with it, so the budget conscious audiophiles that can wield a soldering iron can build their own cables and save some cash.  Melodika also have a small speaker range in their catalogue consisting of 2 floor standing models, 2 stand mount models, a subwoofer and a “dual mode” surround speaker.  I notice the driver arrays for these speakers look remarkably similar to those found in the early Roth Audio models sold here in the UK.

The cables are manufactured in Poland by one of their largest cable manufacturers to Melodika’s exacting specifications.  The majority of their products seem to be centred around this “Purple Rain” design in various gauges and configurations for producing interconnects (analogue and digital), loudspeaker cables and power cords and also various AV connections.

CONSTRUCTION

The pair of speaker cables provided for the review were 2.5 metres in length, fitted with gold plated “Z” type 4mm banana plugs.  The model designation (All their cables have one for precise ordering) is MDSC4025 priced at €71.00, although that price varies depending upon the country where the purchaser resides.

Metallurgy of the Purple Rain series is Oxygen Free Copper (OFC) of 99.99% purity so their website informs me and, unusually, more than one diameter of wire is utilised with 110 strands of 0.15mm and 1 x 0.85mm, presumably to utilise the best sound attributes of both gauges as gauge thickness also has an effect on sound quality. Insulation is by way of 2 layers of PVC sleeving, giving it a tough outer coat to enable the cable to be used in professional installations where the cables are likely to be buried in walls or under floorboards.  The colour of the outer sleeve is commensurate with its name of course, being a nice shade of purple which either pleases or not, according to personal taste.

Outside diameter is around 11mm and internal construction is by twisted pair cores bound inside a single sheath, bifurcated at each end of the cables into two short tails of around 7cm with a rubberoid ‘boot’ at the junction.

SOUND QUALITY

Fresh out of the packaging they sounded rather thin in the bass registers and that seemed to throw a spotlight onto the treble registers which had a glossy polish to them.  Within a matter of only a few hours though they filled out in the bass and the treble was less prominent from then on because of that transition, so I would advise letting them run in for a while before the first listening session.  Once that initial burn in was completed they sounded well balanced, so I began my listening sessions with these cables.

Considering their relatively modest cost, there wasn’t any aspect of their performance that I could throw any real criticism at.  Sure, they couldn’t quite render the high treble registers as other more expensive cable confections can muster and I wouldn’t expect that level of performance from the Melodikas anyway, but nonetheless what treble was there was clean, insightful and free of any hash.  Midband was uncoloured and also very clean, much to my surprise as that is one area that inexpensive cables seem to fall down on, with congestion and fog hanging over the sound, but not so at all with these Melodika Purple Rain cables, they were refreshingly clean and articulate. Bass was taut and controlled rather than full bodied and fleshed out down in the lowest of bass registers and I’m pleased to report that I heard no boom or overhang either.

I played Fink’s “Wheels Turn Beneath My Feet” live album and noted that the venue ambiences for each track should all sound different because they were each recorded at different locations, but the Melodika Purple Rains couldn’t quite capture that particular distinguishing essence from this album, as although I could hear the venue ambience as a whole on the album, the individuality of the various ambiences was lost.  Let me say that too is no criticism of their performance, as the cables that can capture and fully recreate that trait cost some 15 times more than the Melodikas.  In the track called “Sort of Revolution” we can hear the drummer driving down hard with his Floor Tom strikes which does reverberate powerfully around my listening room and really does show up any loose or flabby bass immediately when it occurs.  The drive and impact of those drum hits were delivered with enough weight, although that anticipated resounding energy I expected was a tad diluted and less powerful than more expensive cables can deliver.  Still a credible and noteworthy performance from what is after all classed as a ‘budget’ level cable.

Next to be played was Roger Waters “In The Flesh” CD which again is also a live recording.  I love this album as the recording is full of tonal richness and coupled with great musicianship thrown in for good measure.  One of my favourite tracks is called “Perfect Sense” which by the way is the track Sony chose to include on their SACD only demonstration CD to showcase the format and rightly deserved to be included too I say, as the tonal colours are simply superb to listen to.  The Melodika cables left nothing at all out of this CD and there are a lot more instruments hiding in there than a first hearing would lead you to believe, so listen carefully.  In “Perfect Sense” for example there is several background noises running concurrently; cicadas and what sounds like heavy breathing, hi-hat cymbals and other weird noises, plus cat calls and whistles from the audience too and any cable that cannot give those will displease me.

CONCLUSION

So  what conclusions can we draw from this review?  Firstly, I like them, not for what they can’t do, but for what they can do.  They do not offend in any way, so top marks on that score.  Next, they have a clear and lucid mid-band and that area of the sound more than any other will come to the fore with inexpensive cables, but not with the Melodika Purple Rain.

Free of fog or congestion, they compliment female vocals well  and demonstrate how you can find rich timbres in the female voice.  Bass, while not plumbing the lowest registers managed to stay controlled and taut.  Treble didn’t climb to the topmost rungs of the treble registers either, but in some systems that could be a blessing in disguise.  Note I didn’t write the words “rolled off” because that would suggest the treble tapered off quite early up the scale, but that was not the case as they could recreate cymbals and triangle very accurately with no bloom or sheen.

In short then, the Melodika Purple Rain speaker cables managed to tick an awful lot of boxes along the way with me and when you also take into account the relatively modest cost, plus you can buy the same cable un-terminated form to build your own, makes it rather a worthy candidate to be included in any shortlist within that same price range.

Build quality: 7.7/10
Sound quality: 8.7/10
Value for money: 8.9/10

Overall: 8.4/10

For:  A good sounding budget cable that has no real vices to mention.  Available un-terminated for DIYers

Against:  Colour won’t appeal to some tastes.

Dominic Marsh

Black Cat cables are the brainchild of Chris Sommovigo and are handmade in Japan. Dave Robson takes a listen to the company’s Redlevel Tube speaker cable ($450 for a 1.5m pair) and RCA interconnects ($350 for 1m).

Black Cat Redlevel Tube Speaker Cable.

It must be near Christmas, vacuum cleaner, carpet cleaner and iron have all packed in! I’ve been waiting desperately for the Postman to arrive to bring my replacement Steam Iron; crinkly work shirts are annoying me!  This morning the knock arrives! Methinks a rather large box for an iron. It’s heavy to one end, no worries. It’s at this point a notice that this box has been shipped from japan! From Kanagawa no doubt, from Black Cat Audio Cables, (High Fidelity Partners).

For those like myself who are not familiar with Black Cat Audio Cables, these are high end, Audiophile Analogue and Digital hifi cables. These are designed and made by Chris Sommovigo himself, a passionate music lover and cable designer who is known for the Morpheus and NeoMorpheus cables among others.

Chris has moved his home and workshop this year from the USA to Japan. Recent communications with Chris with regards to his new speaker cable design and how he has created his new cable has left me wondering if I ever went to school at all. His knowledge and passion for what he creates is immense. Not a traditional construction, these cables use a Tube style pure copper inner core; this is designed to reduce skin effect. This and several other innovations by Chris have led to the development of his new cable design. Retailing at $450 1.5 metre pair or $750 for a 3 metre pair.

OUT OF THE BOX

The speaker cables out of the box are beautifully made. Nice and flexible, the use of thick, but flexible shrink wrap to cover the terminal ends to the 4mm banana plugs offer reassuring quality. The multifilament nylon, black and red outer covering looks and feels quality and durable. It’s not garish in colour at all. These speaker cables are available in 1.5m and 3m lengths at the moment. A bi-wire variant is not available at this time of writing.

Either end of the cable there is an RCA style aluminium outer casing where at this point the cable splits into its long red/black +/- terminations. This connector is covered in a thick, clear length of shrink wrap.  This holds everything securely in place. The 4mm banana plugs are a new design to me. They are shorter than regular plugs I’m familiar with and are engineered to a good standard and gold plated. They fit nice and securely with their associated sheathing not getting in the way of the sockets. Chris can supply 4mm banana and spade end terminations.

I hook up the cables and start out by leaving them connected with repeat playing on the CD player. I’m quite lucky to have a separate annexe to my living room to use for my hifi and home A/V system. I purposely try not to listen in the music room for the first few days as I believe all cables take a few days to settle and burn in. Some may disagree with this method or belief, but I don’t want to pick up any bad vibes at this point, although from what I do hear there is nothing to speak of except an increase in bass. I have the house to myself for the next 2 days so let’s say the neighbours may not be enjoying the burn in process during this time as much as I am!!!

SOUND

After 10 days of having these cables running in, sometimes on constantly for several hours and overnight, I’m happy that enough signal has passed through them and any variations in sound quality will have ironed itself out. There may be slight changes with more use but I’m confident this would be minimal.

Initial listening over the last week or so, I have noticed a rise in the bass quality and quantity over my own cables. There is more detail and more information getting to the speakers. It’s a quality bass not boom and bang. This isn’t as much a night and day scenario, more of an enrichment.

Time to Rock and Roll!

Loading in disc1 of Fleetwood Mac’s Very Best I flick to “Dreams”. The intro of the rhythmic bass, drums and tick of the cymbals trip out with confidence. The bass is tight, not tubby or loose.  It’s not bleeding into other areas either, which can sometimes happen as bass rises. Stevie Nicks vocals coming over honey like, smooth and warm, allowing you to settle into the track and immediately making you feel comfortable. There is added space around instruments, an inky black space giving an open, wide soundstage allowing a living area to the music. Moving onto “You Make Loving Fun” it’s becoming apparent that the “old” arc of my soundstage has changed somewhat. All the instruments are there, but some have lessened or increased in their volume and intensity. This gives the impression of greater depth from front to back; Christine McVie’s vocals have gained an edge and pushing forward from the recording with more insight into her vocal talents. Running through other Mac tracks on the album percussion and drums are very well presented, metal cymbals, guitar strings and bells come through with a definite edge, very realistic, not crashy or smashy, with the decay from cymbals lasting that micro second longer, a nice smooth decay to the notes bringing a “live” feeling to the instruments.

You can hear the rattle and vibration from plucked strings. These may have been subliminally there before but they are now outed and adding to the atmosphere on tracks like “The Chain”. The well documented affairs within Fleetwood Mac while Rumours was being recorded to me comes to light on “Go Your Own Way”, Mick Fleetwood’s anger and emotions spilling into his drumming on the track, the Tube cables bringing the bite and attack on the skins out beautifully. One of my favourite Fleetwood Mac tracks is “World Turning” it’s an older recording from their first album (I think). With the Black Cat Tube cables in place, the vocals which once lay slightly in the back ground are now wrapped around the room. I feel I’m inside the music and its cosseting me and holding my focus. There is a point where the music pauses and the bass drum kicks in, the wallop that comes out of my small floorstanding speakers is like being at a rock concert! A tight and punchy sound, it’s not overdone or overbearing in any way. What these cables can drag out from the amplifier and instruct your speakers to do is amazing and beyond what you would expect.

Changing CDs to Supertramp’s Crime Of The Century album and “Bloody well Right”, the piano intro has no electronic buzz, fizz or unpleasant resonance that can be heard from electric piano notes. There is also a lot of space around the instruments and musicians and this gives the impression that the soundstage is stretched to as far as my room and equipment can take it. It stays surefooted, and as the music gets complicated keeps its composed without getting ruffled or shouty. The same can be said for “Asylum” the more complicated sections of music with other set ups has tripped itself up, not with the Black Cat Redline Tube cables in place. All nicely controlled without holding the music back.

These cables are very revealing. Which as your probably aware is a slight double edged sword, bringing great satisfaction to good recordings, but showing up poor recordings too. Throwing “Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong on the “Verve” label into the drive is like sitting in a room with the pair of old masters. Ella’s fantastic voice standing out proud and hearing Louis throaty grumbles before he has even started singing (this was not noticeable before with other lesser cables) showing this cable brings detail to your speakers that you may not have realised that they were capable of.

My final test disc is a new artist to me which was given to me by Alan Clark of Kralk Audio (see last months speaker review). An excellent album, if not a little different to mainstream music by Scott Wainwright. Titled “Every Man Has His Critics”. The album is recorded leaving instruments quite raw and forward. This is great to hear how individual instruments interact and sound on your speakers. Drums, cymbals, harmonicas, strings, whistles, bells and even a tuba makes an appearance! Recorded with little faffing to the sound, piano finely weighted and detailed, the Black Cat cables leaving you in no doubt what each instrument should sound like. Scott’s growling vocals offset by the sweet, sweet female co-singers. All the feelings and emotions tripping out on a musical parade with lyrics cleanly layered and portrayed.

CONCLUSION

These are great cables. The technology and attention to detail in their construction is far more than your run of the mill multi-strand copper gubbins. The hand crafted quality comes in at a relatively premium price, but if your equipment warrants this level then these are a must audition listing.

If you want to hear the absolute maximum that your speakers are capable of you need to hear these. It may seem like a silly notion to add a cable that may be a similar price to your speakers themselves, but Black Cat Redlevel Tube speaker cables will give you everything you need to push the performance capabilities of your equipment to its limits and show you exactly what you may have been missing. The only real downside I can speak of is that they won’t massage or dress up a poor recording. If the drums have been recorded like plastic topped yogurt pots, then they will sound like plastic topped yogurt pots, if the vocals have been badly recorded then this is what you will hear. There is a very slight warmth to the sound and bass is brought out tight and strong. If the acoustics of your listening room or your system is a little boomy then a careful audition is required. The cables took a good 10 days to fully bed in and settle. The wait was worth it.

Build Quality: 8.75     

Sound Quality: 8.9

Value for money: 8.75

Overall: 8.8

Pros/ Great sound, realistic and faithful, with good bass and detail. Well made, flexible with great terminations/banana plugs.

Cons. May sound a little warm vocally with some types of recordings. Won’t hide poor recordings.

Black Cat Redlevel “Tube” RCA Interconnects.

The cables arrive in a smart flat box, emblazoned with the “Redlevel” motif on the top leaf.

Out the box, these like Chris Sommovigo’s “Tube”speaker cables (see later in this review) are well made and attractive looking cables. The custom, handmade finish is good and again the same red and black shielding looks tough and durable.

The custom “Lovecraft” RCA connectors are made specifically to Chris’s specifications and look the business -an alloy outer, with a gold plated gripping inner core. All solidly held in place with tough but flexible red / black shrink-wrap, covered over with a thick, clear shrink-wrap. The cables are nicely flexible, and I’m assured by Chris himself that he has tested the durability of the tube style copper cores by twisting and bending them without the tube structure failing or kinking, even after being wound around a screwdriver shaft! It is good to know that their ability to take some abuse has been tested at source. Holding the cables in your hands they do feel like quality items.

This description is taken from Chris’s website:

“”The Tube” is based upon an evolution of our very first and most enduring product concept: Morpheus (and NeoMorpheus). In this latest iteration, we use the same form-factor as our exception “Coeur” interconnect, and then use the air-filled PTFE tube to run an air-filled pure copper tube (CuTube™) down the centre. Lower dielectric constant, higher velocity, lower capacitance, the skin effect profile of a 32 awg wire with the low resistance of a 22 awg wire”.

I’ve decided to audition the RCA cable with my own speaker cable in place so I have an accurate idea of their capabilities and sound style, and knowing my own sound will help this. I will review both the tube speaker and RCA cables together later on.

I connect the lovecraft RCA connectors to the Audiolab CDQ, they slide on easily. Some may like a tighter fit, they are not loose by any means and there is no play in the connection but a stray hand may just dislodge them.

Again after several days of running in with different kinds of music playing, giving 50-75 hours of use, I’m happy to sit down and give them a proper audition.

THE SOUND

Sliding in Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” CD and hitting play on “19” brings out the Black Cats tight, powerful bass lines. Deep and smooth, not flabby or uncouth. Vocals come through nice and clear with a smooth honey like quality. The sound comes through with speedy and rhythmical timing. “Time Out Of Mind” is selected next, cymbal and percussion is sharp and clear with just the right amount of crispness without being harsh. Piano is weighted just right with a wide and controlled soundstage to boot. Throughout the other tracks on this album I note that some vocals before adding the Black Cat Tube cable into my set up can have a slight “Lispyness” to them. This isn’t the case with it now. There is no harshness to the “SSSSS” sounds, all very rounded and smooth. Again like the other cables Chris supplied, these seem neutral and very detailed, and very easy to listen to… maybe a slight warmth, but unless you have an overly warm system it will only enhance your listening pleasure, thus, to the point I keep having to go back to the beginning of the track as I’ve been lulled into a very relaxed state and I’ve just forgotten to be critical! These RCA’s are a bit more forgiving of poor recordings too. Some music I found to be unlistenable or fatiguing in the past is a bit more palatable.

And so to something a bit more upbeat. Foreigner “4”. Time to separate the men from the boys! This album can be a little muddled with the driving drums and percussion, which can put your nerves on edge while listening at times. I’m happy to announce that the vocals and other sounds are kept well apart. The drums on “Juke Box Hero” are kept at the rear, still defined and driving the track. The backing vocals too, sitting in the gods up out the way of lead vocals. Soundstage front to back is a deep experience. It’s not immediately apparent until you actually go looking (listening) for it. You realise that the music isn’t so much to your left or right, but it’s surrounding you. You’re in a bit of a Black Cat vortex. Turning the volume up to unhealthy levels, it’s as close to being there as you can imagine.

Phil Collins comes to visit! Not in person (he is busy coming out of retirement), in the guise of his “Face Value” album. “In The air Tonight” just has to be turned up for the drums, the strike of the sticks on the skins is so just right, the power smacking you hard but never distorted or overdone. ”The Roof Is Leaking” starts with the sound of Crickets. These are usually above the speakers, today they are in my head, chirping away merrily. There is also a sound I’ve never heard before, just before the piano starts somebody shifts bodyweight and mumbles something. I’ve never heard this before, or it’s never been noticeable. The “Tube” cable brings out the finest detail your equipment can muster mister, that’s a fact.

CONCLUSION

A fine product from Chris Sommovigo’s workshop in Japan. These Redlevel “Tube” RCA’s retail for $350 per Metre and with a maximum of 3m. The cables are quite neutral, maybe adding a little warmth to some systems. They bring out and convey great detail to music doing nothing negative to your listening experience. There was a little rounding off on some percussion sounds but that was recording specific and not something across all music. A fast and tight sound producing good timing and rhythms, thus inducing great foot tapping sessions. There are some camps that say you don’t need expensive cables (see “Cable Wars” article ). It’s my opinion that spending on high quality cables like these is not just a way to upgrade your equipment it’s more of an investment. A rock or springboard as to which you can judge all future upgrades and make lifetime purchase decisions on.

Build Quality: 8.5

Sound Quality: 8.8     

Value for Money: 8.6

Overall: 8.6

Pros/ neutral sound, should fit into any system.

Cons/ RCA plugs could do with being a little tighter.

Black Cat Redlevel “Tube” Speaker and RCA. Used Simultaneously.

Cables have always proved a bit of a minefield for me. They are the final piece of the jigsaw when assembling a hifi system, giving their accent to what comes out of the speakers. This final acquisition doesn’t necessarily have to be very costly, but getting enough cables to try out can be a difficult situation to be in, especially if your using a new hifi retailer or your new to the game. The 10% rule of thumb was always a good place to start for me…£1000 system and £100 on cables…but using these Black Cat “Tube” cables has slightly altered my perspective on this. If your prepared to push that %%% rule higher then you can really hear what your system is capable of.

Having added the “tube” speaker cables into the mix I was expecting certain things to be multiplied up. Earlier in the reviews I mentioned that some tracks showed a warmer side and I was expecting to have to report that they got overly warm or perhaps too smooth. This isn’t the case. Everything is just right. I’ve tried to catch the Black Cats out with poor compilation type recordings, with bass heavy tracks and multi-layered material.

Together the Redlevel cables just now seem to smooth over any cracks and strip back any harshness. Detail is still there, nothing has been lost. The innovative construction Chris Sommovigo has put into his cables gives the smoothness of a multi-core copper cable with the deep bass and sweet mid-upper of pure silver cables. Stereo imaging is pin sharp, depth perspective is good, giving the musicians a very definite place in the soundstage. Music leaves the speakers and travels around your listening space, bringing you into contact with the instruments in a more intimate “feeling” way. It is like being there. My only real criticism and it is only on a miniscule number of recordings I’ve listened to over the last 2-3 weeks, is that some bass heavy male vocals can seem a little warm and could do with being a bit more forward. This though is far outweighed by the number of tracks I once found irritating but now find enjoyable. They do take quite a few hours to burn in and settle down but the wait is worth it.

FINAL SAY

These cables should fit virtually any system, improving or enhancing your listening pleasure. Ask your dealer to get some in, Pronto.

Overall Verdict: 8.7

Dave Robson

The gordian from Lab 12 is hand built in Greece and is a multifunction power distributor/conditioner with a host of functions to measure the quality of your power supply. It costs 1398€ and Stuart Smith bought a special Hifi Pig edition for this review. 

I first met the guys from Greek company Lab 12 a couple of years ago at the Munich High-End show and have been following their progress and products with interest since then. They make a valve integrated amp, a couple of tube power amps, a DAC, a preamplifier, a headphone amplifier, a passive attenuator and the subject to this review, the gordian “multifunction power distributor/conditioner”.  

gordian is basically speaking, and this will of no surprise, a product that will supposedly clean up the juice getting to your rig as well as offering distribution of the power to several pieces of kit. But it’s a little bit cleverer than that and that’s why I ordered one at last year’s Munich show…in Hifi Pig pink no less. The Designer’s Notes after this review will tell you more about the techy bits and pieces, but basically what you have here is a unit that is designed to clean up your mains supply without affecting the dynamics of the system. It also cleverly analyses your power supply and gives “live” readings via the front mounted OLED display – this is great fun. It measures frequency (accurate to 0.0005%), THD (accurate to 0.005%), RMS Voltage/Current, Power Consumption, Power Factor, FFT (frequency analysis) and DC Voltage and you can play with the amount of filtering the unit is applying too…or you can let gordian get on with it all on its own. gordian will also let you know if your ground/earth and polarity are in order.

On the front panel you have two large knobs. The one on the left navigates you around the various parameters you can play with, whilst the knob on the right controls the display itself. Both are chunky and responsive and feel purposeful and solid. Round the back you have four filtered outputs and two “mains” out sockets that are also filtered but intended for kit that is more power hungry. The sockets are industrial looking and, as you’d expect, very well made with the feeling that the unit was built to industrial standards…this is a good thing for a product like this I reckon. At the moment gordian is available with European and US sockets with a UK version planned in the very near future. At this point I ought to mention that gordian is CE and RoHS certified/stamped which again is important for this kind of unit. gordian comes with a well made 20A KNACK power cord measuring 1.5M. Overall it is a sturdy and well made unit that feels carefully put together by Lab 12.

SOUND

I had a play with the various filters and messed with the degree of filtering gordian applied, but to be honest I found that the best results were to be had with the unit in automatic mode where it continually analyses your electrics and kit and filters accordingly. Again, read the Designer’s Notes after this review as I’m no scientist and interested only in the end result and the music that comes out the speakers.

I had amps plugged into the high output sockets and DAC, CD, phonostage and (when using an active pre) preamplifier in the remaining sockets.

We live in a very old house and the electrics are a bit wayward, we also live at the end of the line with farm buildings before us and the “quality” of the juice coming into the house has always been a bit of a concern at the back of my mind…and this is what led me to buy gordian from the off. And so what does gordian do? Well it does what it says really, with there being an immediate sense that unwanted noise in the system is lowered, which in turn allows you to hear more of what is going on in the music.

In quieter sections of music there is a feeling that you are able to hear more of the micro detail present in a recording. It’s difficult to describe but there’s also a sense of there being more spatial information available… this is most evident on acoustic tracks like my copy of Concerto De Aranjuez, with guitar feeling a touch more lifelike and “there” in the hall… like I say it’s hard to describe, but it is certainly a “better” effect/sound than with the unit out of the circuit.

One of the main criticisms of units that claim to “condition” the power being supplied to your system is that dynamics are affected, but I can categorically state that this is just not the case with gordian. The system still feels as fast and lithe as it always has and nothing in the frequency spectrum feels constrained or limited.

CONCLUSION

There’s not really a lot to say about the unit in all honesty other than this reduction in the overall “noise” on the line and the sense of you being able to hear more detail and more of what is going on in the track with a “cleaner” sound overall. I could warble on about a whole host of tracks that I listened to but the effect of gordian in the system remained constantly positive and consistent and so I see little point in doing this.

I’ve had the unit in the system for around three months now and in the first month I occasionally removed it for a few days to see what happened and found I consistently missed it being there. Basically gordian is a fit and forget bit of kit. Yes you can play with the settings which I’m sure many will want to do, but whack it on autopilot and let it do its thing and you’ll be well happy.

I did initially enjoy being able to see the analytics of the power supply (particularly the power draw when turning on bits of kit) and having a play around with that and I’m sure this will be a useful tool for those interested in knowing this kind of thing, but for the last couple of months Gordian has just sat there, quietly getting on with whatever it is that it does and I can heartily recommend it.

Sound Quality: 8.75/10 (difficult to quantify this really but definitely positive!)

Value for Money: 8.75/10

Build Quality: 9.0/10

Overall: 8.83/10 

Pros:

Fit and forget

A great tool for seeing what is actually going on in your system and with your power supply

Positive effect on sound 

Cons:

No UK version at the moment

Stuart Smith

Read more reviews

Designer’s Notes

gordian combines a powerful industrial grade power analyzer, a smart and adaptive power line conditioner, a power factor corrector and a robust power distributor. It aims at providing valuable information about our main power supply quality and gently improving the quality of our system’s power without affecting the positive characteristics of our system (e.g. dynamics) .

The analogue part of its powerful analyzer consists of 8 high precision measuring modules that continuously monitor frequency, AC voltage, DC voltage, high level current, low level current, EMI noise, ground resistance and power connection polarity. The output of these modules is routed to 8 ADC components which gather 256 samples per cycle for each measurement. As a result the main processor of gordian is fed with 2048 quality measurements per cycle of your power line.

Based on these measurements gordian also performs frequency analysis (Fourier transformation) of your system’s voltage and current. In other words, it analyses your system voltage and current and finds out the amount of noise that lives in various frequency ranges. Furthermore, it calculates the total harmonic distortion (THD) of your system’s voltage and current. THD is the most fundamental indicator of our power quality. It reveals how “pure” and sinusoidal our power signal is. Moreover, it calculates the power consumption and power factor of your system which indicates how effectively your system absorbs power from the electrical network.

All this valuable information (Frequency, AC Voltage, DC Voltage, Current, EMI Noise Level, Ground Quality, Connection Polarity, Frequency analysis, THD, Power Consumption, Power Factor, THD) is accessible through a big and legible OLED display and a simple and convenient menu navigation knob. Especially for the frequency analysis, the owner of gordian may observe a nice plot with a moving cursor for exploring the noise content in the various frequencies of the voltage spectrum. This is a really cool and unique feature that cannot be found in other power conditioning systems of this category. If you find the OLED display disturbing in the night you can adjust its brightness, turn it off or let Gordian detect when your system is inactive and automatically switch off the display.

All this impressive functionality is only about the power analyzing part of gordian. We have not touched yet the power filtering capabilities of this great device. Behind the scenes an adaptive network of passive elements (capacitors and inductors) undertakes the critical work of gently cleaning up your power. And it really IS adaptive and genteel. Every single piece of information that the analyzer gathers is taken into account for automatically adjusting the filter configuration to match the characteristics of your power line optimally. The filter can be configured in 4 different setups. It can be soft or aggressive, it can target to noise that lives in both our phase and neutral wires (Common Mode Filtering) or to noise that lives between the wires (Differential Mode Filtering) or to both of them. The correct decision will be taken by the gordian main processor or you can experiment with the different configurations and manually select the preferred setup. This is equivalent to having 4 different power conditioners and always using the one that best matches the characteristics of your power line.

gordian also performs power factor correction! Our audio or multimedia systems tend to behave like inductive loads. Inductive loads usually demonstrate a low Power Factor. This means that are not good at effectively absorbing the power of our electrical networks. This can be fixed by connecting a “bank” of large capacitors to our load and make it behave more like a resistance than an inductor. Some, power conditioning systems offers this functionality as a feature but it also can be a real disaster for our power quality, because if the connected capacitance is larger than the required one, this can damage further the power factor of our system. However, Gordian will automatically calculate and connect the optimal amount of capacitance to get the Power Factor of our system to the maximum feasible level. It will automatically detect the best capacitance option among the four available but the owner may also experiment and manually setup the Power Factor Correction module. Last but not least we have to add the overvoltage protection that Gordian incorporates to protect our devices from high voltage peaks.

Stratos Vichos

The Chord Company

When we were initially discussing this review by Dave Robson with The Chord Company we wanted to see what the company’s ‘loom’ would bring to the table ‘off the shelf’ and “untailored” to the specific system being used. Chord offer a service they call The Cable Doctor in which they tailor a combination of cables specifically to what they feel your system would benefit the most from. However, we wanted this first of two reviews to set a benchmark and in the coming weeks we will be conducting a second review using cables supplied by Chord after us using the Cable Doctor service. This will allow us to compare and contrast the bog standard, ‘of the shelf’ cables with a more bespoke set up. 

The Chord Company C-Line RCA (1M) (ARAY)

Yup, feels like Christmas!! I’ve been sent a full “loom” of Chord Companies C-Line and Clearway cables to review over the festive season. These consist of the C-Line RCA 1m (£45), Clearway Digital 1m (£100), C-Stream Streaming Cable 10m (£90) and Clearway Speaker Cable 2x3m pair (£10pm unterminated).

The C-Line RCA out of the box is a nice flexible cable; moulded pale blue RCA’s cover a gold plated inner grip. These connectors look tough and hardwearing and there are little arrows on the cable showing that the wires are directional…one of those subjects that can get end in a heated debate when discussed but personally I believe it’s good to know that the research has been done by Chord and a critical decision has been made. Even if you’re not a believer then at least you can connect your RCAs the same way every time. The cables come separately which is a good thing as some electrical equipment connections are set wide apart and I have struggled in the past to get some joined cables to fit. The ARAY Technology has been used in the past on Chords high-end cables with great results. This uses very high quality copper fibres in conjunction with foil shielding incorporated within the construction of the cable with the intention of improving the sound quality of this relatively inexpensive cable. I was advised by Chord that the burn in would take approx 48hrs before the cables were fully settled. My past experiences with cables from around this price point is that usually they try too hard in one area or another, getting stuff “nearly” right but very rarely getting it completely balanced. I have seemed to accumulate RCA cables a bit like motorcycle gloves and compilation CDs  over the years and have far too many of them… I’m always willing to take a punt when something is reasonably priced!

Onward with the review. A bit of all round goodness in the guise of Dire Straits (as it’s nearly xmas and I will be by January). On “Money For Nothing” Sting’s vocal intro’ comes out of the blackness followed by the famous drumming, bouncing from side to side. Well weighted drum slam followed by the clean guitar riff we all know. The separation of the instruments and vocals are clear and not congested or woody as I’ve heard Mr Knopffler’s vocal to sound with other cables. Next up is “Walk Of Life” with the electric organ coming to the fore and with a good lively vibe to it. Again I hear good slap on the skins and kick from the bass drum. The tick tick of the cymbals could do with being a little more forward and crisp for me, but it’s all there and it’s not offensive or harsh in any way. These C-Line cables are foot tappingly rhythmical and detailed enough to be able to distinguish all the vocals and the instruments spread out in a nice arc over and across the speakers. The following tracks on the Brothers In Arms album show this cable to be quite capable of holding its own with offerings several times its price point. Whether this is good engineering, good luck or the ARAY technology at work, the C-Line puts in a good show.

Moving from the male vocals to the female side of things and “Relish” by Joan Osbourne is slid into the CD slot. St Theresa, the first track on the album, starts with thumping bass and clanky guitar sounds, the soundstage is wide and defined, each instrument in its own space forward of the speakers slightly. Ms Osbourne’s voice central to the music, this track can trip up equipment as her voice can get quite painfully sibilant on the more powerful high notes but the C-Line holds the vocals within their grasp, not letting her get out of hand. These cables show definite control and grip on the music and on vocals especially. “One Of Us”, Joan Osbourne’s 1995 UK No.6 hit single, shows her vocals hold feeling and expression with her words hanging out in front of the speakers with good detail and weight, communicating well with the listener. I now change CDs to Duffy and “Rockferry” knowing that this album throws up several challenges. The first being on the CDs title track with the pseudo raw 60’s sound which, if let to get out of hand, can sound a bit rough and amateurish – it seems to be recorded with a lot of distortion in place. The Chord C-Line is up to the job though, not letting the music become congested or too sibilant. The tambourine is kept quite separate to the music and to the far right of the soundstage and it’s defined, crisp and clear.  “Warwick Avenue” to me has a “live” club style quality to the recording with Duffy’s tuneful singing holding nicely in the middle of the soundstage. There is enough detail within the track and this is conveyed by the Chord cables to give the atmosphere of a personal concert in an intimate club scenario.

CONCLUSION

The Chord C-Line RCA’s are a surefooted way onto the audiophile path. They are a rugged no frills cable. Holding its worth on the inside, the ARAY Technology works within the make-up of the wires and their construction. Soundwise they don’t taint the music with anything untoward and are quite transparent. Bass lines are easily followed and treble never gets unruly and is held in check. Vocals within the midrange are weighty and detailed enough to carry through the emotion of the singer. Separation within the soundstage is good. Definition of instruments to the left and right is solid and precise. Depth front to back isn’t massive but it puts in a good effort. The C-Line majors in rhythmical timing and will make your musical party bounce along and won’t become tiresome or irritating. If you’re looking to spend less than £50 on a cable, whether it’s your first foray into the upgrade path or your looking to add one to a new bit of equipment, the C-Line RCA is a thoroughly safe bet.

Build Quality: 8.2/10

Sound Quality: 8.5/10

Value for Money: 8.9/10

Overall: 8.5

Chord Clearway Digital RCA 1m (£100).

This Digital version of The Chord Companies ARAY cable looks and feels like a quality item. Its flexible blue ABS outer casing feels like it would bend easily around your other kit or curl up nicely in your pocket if you were using it on the move. I like the fact that the cable is directional too as this gives consistency to your connecting up. This from Chords website describes it in detail:

“Fitted with Chord VEE 3 RCA plugs, including PTFE insulation between signal/return contacts. The ABS outer shell and direct silver-plating process improve signal transfer. The ARAY conductor design reduces interference and internal reflections. This new construction method prevents any direct compression on the signal conductor, eliminating changes to impedance. The cable also benefits from a solid core, oxygen free copper signal conductor, low loss, high performance, gas foamed polyethylene insulation, high density braided shield and ARAY conductor. The outer jacket seals and protects the signal conductor from mechanical interference. This cable is available in custom lengths and can be terminated with RCA, BNC and mini-jack connectors.”… A far better description than I could assemble!

I let the cable bed in for 48 hrs giving it time to settle. I’m not 100% sure digital cable requires this burn in process, but as the connection has never been used on my test equipment I thought it best to let it breathe awhile.

Running through steely Dan’s “Gaucho” CD I immediately feel at ease with this cable and first impressions are that it has quite a smooth sound to it. Playing “19” the track bounces along nicely and it’s a detailed and quite neutral rendition, erring on the brighter side of things… not acidic or sharp, but (reviewers’ cliché alert) like a thin veil has been lifted from the speakers. Spinning “Time Out Of Mind”, the track itself lends itself to a great intro for getting the timing just right, bass drum tripping out, easily identifiable, electric piano with pronounced weight and feeling, cymbals carrying good detail and not becoming splashy and causing vocals to lose definition.

Swapping CDs to a relative newcomer to my collection of Supertramp albums is “Some Things Never Change” which is a great recording with plenty to keep you listening. The initial track “It’s A Hard Life” starts with several sound effects to test your system, including a wobble board and chimes, then breaking into deep bass rhythms. The Digital Clearway bringing all these sounds very clearly and cleanly to the party. I note a big, wide and deep soundstage across my listening space giving each instrument plenty of room to make itself known, the trumpet towards the end of the track poking its rasp forward into the room. The other tracks on the album have a similar story. The Chord Clearway Digital is a very neutral cable with a signature of being clean and rhythmical and not colouring the music with any untoward effects. There is a slight hint of the silver construction giving a shimmering treble and tuneful deep bass.

Swapping back to a no frills digital cable for comparison makes the music sound like I’ve downgraded every component and renders the sound very amateurish and clouded. I also connected to a Pure i20 iPhone dock and apart from the obvious drop in the quality to the Mp3 files, the music remained uncoloured and as it should be.

CONCLUSION

The Chord Clearway Digital is the real deal. It seems to transfer the digital signal without fuss or colouration. This cable would be a good upgrade to a budget cable, or if you’re going down the separate DAC/headphone amp route this will make your head-fi sing for you.

Build Quality: 8.8

Sound Quality: 8.7

Value for Money: 8.9

Overall: 8.8/10

Chord Clearway Speaker Cable 2x3m (£60 unterminated, + £40 for banana plug termination) = (£100)

Out the box, the Clearway cable is quite a thick and hefty bundle. There’s a space age look to the Clearway with a clear plastic FEP (like polythene) derived from PTFE outer, with two contra wound silver foil sheathings beneath to eliminate interference with high frequencies. The cable has been designed with a lot of emphasis upon the insulation and shielding to give a neutral presentation. The cables sent for test were terminated with two banana plugs on either end, although bare wires or spades can be specified. Things didn’t get off to a great start. The 4mm Banana plugs fitted to my test sample are a bit of a bug bear with me I’m afraid, being the type with a single sprung bar. I have found these to be quite fiddly to fit in the past and, out of the eight plugs I had to fit, three needed to be inserted with the help of a set of pliers. It didn’t help that the shrink wrap holding the banana plug was quite small around the 14 AWG wires. If the round edge of the sprung bar doesn’t go into its receptacle cleanly then it takes a good bit of pressure to insert them and nobody likes forcing things into their prized possessions. On the positive side once in then you know they are secure and to be fair it’s not a connection that you have to connect or reconnect very often.

Chord recommended letting these burn in for about 24hrs but I felt that a little longer was required and I played these for about a week or so before I was happy that the sound had levelled out.

First up is Ben Howard’s “Every Kingdom” CD. “Old Pine” starts with some nicely played acoustic guitar and the strings are clear and well weighted, with good detail and feel. The sound is powerful and room filling and there is a warmer tone to the music that gives it an easy-on-the-ear feel. On “Wolves” the initial haunting vocal demonstrates good sound-depth and clarity and the snare drum raps out with a clear crisp sound that is never harsh or too hard. Onto a faster paced track “The Fear” the bass drum again has good thump and I notice a slight rounding off to bass notes resulting in loss of a little detail. There is a similar effect at the top of the spectrum too and the rounding off of the treble sound is pushing the warmth outward. However it’s not overly obvious as the midrange has feel and detail. These cables, like the others from Chord, have great timing and rhythm. Julia Fordham’s self-titled album is popped in to see how the bass would affect a deeper female singing voice and I’m glad to say it remains sweet on tracks like “My Lovers Keeper” and “Cocooned”  with the vocals never becoming overly warm or reverberantly dull. The soundstage is a wide and expressive place, giving good atmosphere to all the recordings played and instruments are well placed. “Woman Of The 80’s” bounces along with true pop verve, never getting harsh or muddled when things get complicated.

Heading for some 70’s rock and Boston’s self-titled outing, the classic “More Than A Feeling” hits out with concert like punch! Driving  drums and percussion, cymbals crisp and not too splashy, the classic vocals coming across with power and feeling. Considering the age of the recording it still has great detail. My favourite track from the album is “Foreplay/LongTime”, a track of two halves with a pseudo prog-rock instrumental start and electronic organ and piano with heavy crashing drums. The Clearway speaker cable is doing its best trying to keep it all together, only letting the fast, loud drumming get a little muddled and confused, but at the rate the skins and cymbals are getting struck it’s not surprising it lets slip a little. Part two of the track is more 70’s classic rock with a bounding bass rhythm leading the proceedings and with Brad Delp’s singing taking the lyrics to the fans. Soundstage with the Clearway has good width and depth with a nothing seeming out of place or un-natural.

CONCLUSION

This is a decent enough speaker cable from The Chord Company. It’s sturdily built with the ARAY technology from its more expensive range added. My only gripe in its construction is the type of banana plugs used and the added cost of termination seems excessive given its moderate price unterminated. The sound of the cable is on the warm, rounded side and it can lose a little focus and detail when things get complicated and so may not appeal to the heavy rock fans out there.

Build Quality: 8.5 (ignoring the plugs I don’t like)

Sound Quality: 8.0

Value For Money: 7.8 (as tested, terminated. Cost of termination seems disproportionate to cable cost)

Overall: 8.1

The Chord Company “Loom” Inc C-stream Streaming Cable

Adding the full selection of Chord Company cables to my system brought about the benefits of all the cables added together. Using all the cables ARAY technology in one hit gave the music great drive and verve.

Music from Jess Glynne’s I Cry When I Laugh CD allowed the music to sing out with good timing and foot tapping rhythms, the warmer presentation doing wonders to smooth off the usual modern hardness I hear with many digital recordings. “Take Me Home” has great space around her fine vocal talents with instruments staying in the background, letting her voice project forward and giving the music an “alive” feeling. “Hold My Hand” pumps out with true disco diva bounce and funk – a powerful presentation, without becoming yobbish with the ARAY influence working together to bring about its benefits in timing and drive.

The C-Stream (10m) streaming cable was a bit of a conundrum for me to test properly. As I’m a bit outmoded when it comes to technology I don’t “stream” as such. So best I could do was attach the C-Stream to my modem and Sony Blu-Ray player and connect it to my digital pre-amp via the Chord Digital coax. Playing various music videos and concerts via the  Amazon Prime Service, the connection stayed stable and music had a good level of detail, picture quality via TV was good, colours rich and deep as was the music. Although I’m sure this Ethernet cable would really show its worth via a better dedicated streamer and using a high quality feed from the likes of Tidal/Spotify/Deezer etc… I must add one of these weird futuristic devices to my Christmas list next time round!!

CONCLUSION

The Chord Company cables supplied are of good quality in their construction and build technology. The Phono RCA and Digital interconnects are possibly of a greater sonic quality than the Clearway speaker cable, although only for the fact that I believe both the RCA and Digital cable will suit more systems given their neutrality and I believe they would shine brighter with the next step up in speaker cables offered by Chord.

Overall. 8.2/10

David Robson

Designer’s Notes

C-line RCA (1M) (ARAY)

The Chord C-line was developed to see if we could use an ARAY conductor configuration in an affordable interconnect.  The ARAY conductor configuration was developed around the same time that we were working on the Tuned ARAY configuration that we originally used on our – at the time – flagship Sarum interconnects.  Traditionally, most Chord interconnects adopted a pseudo-balanced design.  This means that rather than using a coaxial cable where the central conductor carries the signal and the return is made by the outer shield, the pseudo-balanced design uses two identical conductors – one for signal and one for return.  By doing this, we are able to take the shield out of the signal path and currently our Crimson VEE 3 and Cobra VEE 3 cables use this configuration.

The ARAY conductor configuration is different.  There are three conductor runs within the cable and quite how these are connected remains a company secret.  The reason for doing this is that during the development of the Tuned ARAY cables, we were quite astonished at just how coherent and musically involving digital music could be made to sound.  The ARAY version has a similar effect.  The big discovery with Tuned ARAY was really just how much cables got in the way of a system to produce properly coherent music.

The C-line is also the first analogue interconnect that Chord have had produced outside of the company.  Although the RCA plug is a moulded design, the gold-plated components are the same as the ones we use on our VEE 3 series plugs.  This means a direct gold-plating process.  Conductors are oxygen free copper and multi-stranded.  Shielding comprises of two over-wound foil braids.

Clearway Digital RCA 1m 

The Clearway Digital cable is another good example of how designs originally created for our high end cables can be used in more cost effective designs.  The Chord Prodac has been our go-to affordable digital cable for many years.  It was, like many digital cables, a coaxial design.  The Tuned ARAY conductor configuration was first developed as an attempt to reduce reflections and minimise noise within digital cables.  It was the success of the Tuned ARAY configuration that made us take the design principle and apply it to both analogue and other digital cables as well as power cables.  Once again, it’s about coherence.

The Chord Clearway Digital is our entry level digital cable to use the Tuned ARAY configuration.  The design of the cable is outwardly relatively conventional.  Internally there is a high quality oxygen free copper conductor coaxial cable, featuring gas foamed polyethylene insulation as well as a combination foil and braid shield.  What sets it apart is the introduction of a Tuned ARAY conductor.  What it does mean though is that like all Tuned ARAY cables, the Clearway Digital has to be assembled by hand and because the application of Tuned ARAY is absolutely critical, we use specialist cutting machines to provide a consistent accuracy.

We think that the Tuned ARAY configuration is extremely profound because of the level of performance, particularly in a musical sense, which it brings to digital systems.

Clearway Speaker Cable 

Chord have been producing shielded speaker cables since 2003.  The reason for doing so goes back to the late 90s.  Back then, several things were happening.  First of all, switch mode power supplies were beginning to appear.  More and more homes were beginning to use personal computers and also connection to the internet was rapidly increasing.  This meant that homes and living spaces were beginning to fill with high frequency interference.  A combination of personal experiences and conversations with dealers led to the realisation that high frequency interference appeared to be having a detrimental effect on the ability of systems to produce really coherent and involving music.  What was particularly frightening about this was that whilst you can make a good argument that CD players of that time didn’t do very well with producing coherent music, vinyl systems were also suffering.

The first response to this was to start experimenting with high frequency effective shields and the first cable to be produced using high frequency effective shielding was the Chord Signature.  At that point though, it felt like we should start experimenting with shielding on speaker cables.  Several early prototypes were produced and eventually we released the Chord Signature speaker cable – our first speaker cable to feature high frequency shielding.

The challenge then was to take the principle and apply it to other speaker cables throughout the range.  The Chord Clearway is a replacement for the Chord Carnival SilverScreen.  Carnival SilverScreen was a very successful cable and Chord Clearway is a fairly similar design.  The chief differences are that Clearway features a heavier gauge stranded conductor (oxygen free copper) and critically, FEP conductor insulation.  The choice of conductor insulation has a profound effect on the performance of any cable; perhaps more markedly so with speaker cable than with interconnects.

FEP is a variation on PTFE.  It has extremely similar performance characteristics.  Our experience is that the choice of insulation material doesn’t just influence the ability of the cable to carry a signal accurately; it also has a pronounced effect on the tonal characteristic of the cable.  In truth, I suspect every cable designer sets out to produce a cable with as little tonal characteristic as possible.  However, the fact is that most cable designs do have some influence on the tonal characteristics of the speakers it is connected to.

There is an interesting point here.  When people change speaker cables, they often make judgements with a speaker in the position that had been optimised for the speaker cable they were using.  It is always worthwhile to experiment with the positioning of a speaker when a new speaker cable is introduced.  It is very unlikely that the speaker will need to be moved more than a couple of inches in either direction but experimenting with this will help to produce the most coherent performance.

The two FEP insulated conductors are then encased in a PVC jacket – the idea being to reduce the effect of mechanical noise – before a two-layer foil shield is added and finally a protective outer jacket.

It’s often very easy to be pleased and excited about high end, high performance cables.  The really exciting thing though is to take the design principles used on high end cables and work out how to apply them to more cost effective cables where material choices are constrained by cost.  This we feel is what makes Clearway so special.

Nigel Finn

Dominic Marsh takes a look at the £180, silver plated power block from MCRU.

Mains Cables R Us (MCRU for short) have been specialising in mains cable products for a good number of years now and in addition to selling products from manufacturers such as Furutech, Black Rhodium and Tellurium Q, they also sell products under their own brand name and this mains block is one of these MCRU branded products.

CONSTRUCTION

At first glance this looks just like any other mains block, that is until you look much closer in detail.  The 3 pin mains plug appears to be a standard UK mains plug from MK, but the MCRU motif on the cap says otherwise and when you turn it over you are greeted by silver plating to all three pins, carried out by MCRU.  The entry lead is built using silver plated copper conductors, approximately 9mm wide, is extremely flexible and covered in black expandable braiding, measuring a standard 1.5 metres in length, with other lengths available to order.  Once again, the block itself looks nothing special being made of black plastic, but you will find no neon indicator or on/off switch present, as they are said to be detrimental to sound quality and have been removed for that purpose.  Internally though, all of the bus bars have been silver plated especially by MCRU at a local electroplaters and a soldered connection to the entry lead by using Audio Note 6% silver solder, again with conductivity in mind.

Price at time of testing is £180.00.

SOUND QUALITY

Or rather a lack of sound quality, as a mains block should never impose any of its own sonic imprint on to a hifi system, especially any form of compression and limiting of dynamics.   Remember too, you are not putting something “wonderful” in, you are taking out a component that has inadequacies and replacing it with a component that has less faults – none of them are in actual fact perfect anyway no matter how much money you pay.  It is those progressive steps up the hierarchy in sound quality terms that also has a commensurate rise in price as well, because removing those ‘imperfections’ in the products does not come cheap either.

My regular readership will also know that I do not do direct comparisons between competing components in the marketplace, because each has their own merits and so giving and taking away of points doesn’t always mean the ‘best’ product with the highest wins the battle or shootout.  However, with this particular review I felt I had to use some comparisons with other products to put into perspective and context what this product’s capabilities were, because there are so many of these blocks available to buy, so I hope you will bear with me just this once.  This is not to say either that the MCRU mains block occupies a particular place in the market and that should be borne in mind when reading this review.  All of the products mentioned below including the MCRU block were run in for approximately 50 hours as I am aware that cables not used for any length of time need running in once more to sound at their optimum.

The real issue facing me before I even started the evaluation was comparable products to pit the MCRU block against.  My resident MS Audio block costs at least twice as much and so that was no equally matched contender, so I had to venture into the dark and gloomy spares cupboard to upset all the spiders in there to find what I was looking for.  Amazing what can be found when you look hard enough and I found a generic 6 way mains block from a well known DIY store, a Brennenstuhl aluminium bodied 6 way block and a Russ Andrews Yellow 6 way block.  That should do nicely for comparisons and closed the cupboard door to let the spiders get back to doing what spiders do best – whatever that is.

First up then was the DIY store block for the princely sum of £5.99.  No on/off switch, but there is a neon indicator lamp, a thin captive mains lead and a generic UK 3 pin plug.  Slow timed boomy bass, clouded midrange, indistinct treble, goodness me I had forgotten what one of these was like to be truthful.  If this is what you currently run your system on, then do yourself a huge favour and use it in the shed for your power tools instead.

Next to try was the Brennenstuhl 6 way aluminium bodied block with a captive mains lead of decent thickness already fitted.  This one has a mains switch, a neon indicator lamp and the mains lead almost 2.5 metres in length, neatly storable (is that a valid word?) by winding the cable around the block’s length with a channel at each end to hold it, a rather neat solution if you ask me.  The aluminium casing gives the perception that it is robust and long lasting, although I wouldn’t use it as an axle stand when repairing the car.  Cannot remember what it cost when it was new, but the number “45” sticks in the mind somewhere.  For all the robust build and attractive looks, this didn’t fare much better in sonic terms than the generic DIY one, except the bass was just a bit  firmer and tauter, still lacking in weight and power, plus the top end had slightly better resolution.

Although long since obsolete, the Russ Andrews Yellow 6 way block did at one time power my entire system.  It wasn’t a superb performer by any stretch of the imagination, but I did get a huge improvement in sound quality switching to one after a generic cheap £5 block bought from a supermarket as I recall and for that I was grateful at the time of course.   I cannot recall how much I paid for it.  No neon lamp, no switch either and no details about construction were ever given.  For the purpose of this test, I now heard a leap forward in sound from the previous two candidates, as bass was now much fuller bodied and the midrange cloudiness was lifted.  Treble too acquired some air and space.

Finally we come to the MCRU 6 way block and there was some anticipation that given how much attention MCRU has paid to silver plating all the metal conducting components, that there would be some benefits to be heard from it.  Indeed there was, as the treble acquired more clarity and a much better focus, while dynamics was raised a notch or two, the leading edges of notes having a sweet taut crispness.  Bass extension didn’t increase further down into the lower registers, but there was a lush warmness to the sound with less overhang and more articulation.  I also noticed a big improvement in sound staging and the noise floor seemed lower too.

Naturally, at the end of the evaluation I re-installed my MS Audio mains block and I know I said clearly at the very beginning of this review that it wasn’t a good comparison because it was more than twice the price, but the MCRU block fared very well against the MS Audio block, much to my surprise.

CONCLUSION

As the old saying goes “Never judge a book by its cover” then that wise set of words applies equally so to the MCRU Limited Edition 6 way mains block.  It looks superficially plain and uninteresting (most no doubt will be installed out of sight anyway), but MCRU have placed more emphasis on what goes on inside the device than what has gone into its outward appearance.  On that basis then it could be a viable candidate if you are looking to buy a better mains block to improve the sound of your system, especially so if you currently use a generic block of indeterminate parentage like the one that was found in my spares cupboard.  It easily saw off the contenders I pitted it against in sound terms and came close on the heels of my resident mains block that’s more than double the price, so for that reason I will give it a recommendation.

Build quality:8.1/10

Sound quality:8.8/10

Value for money:8.6/10

Overall:8.5/10

Pros: Good sound quality owing to that custom silver plating of all the conductor surfaces.

Cons: Mains block body is not the best quality to look at.

Dominic Marsh

Dan Worth take a listen to the £1000 Chord Sarum Tuned Aray USB cable.

I have used virtually every major high-end USB cable on the market and although I have been incredibly impressed with many, I still had one major issue
and that was the centre focus. I have been talking with others at Hifi Pig, dealers, distributors and friends regarding many of the cables I have heard and how they have a tendency to trade the solidity of centre focus for openness. On critical analysis over many months of listening tests with various USB cables I decided to design my own.

This was a very lengthy and tedious process as the guy who built it for me will attest to, but finally I found a combination of materials and dielectrics that offered a cable which gave that solid, full bodied sound and vocal that also had a beautifully open and wide soundstage, this conclusion was arrived at through multiple listening tests by myself and others in my room, with my system and with others in their own systems,  I was finally happy…

A passing acquaintance mentioned to me during a conversation about USB cables that he had, after many vigorous listening hours, purchased a Chord Sarum Super Aray USB and said he would allow me to borrow it for a couple of weeks ‘you have to listen to one’ he said. I thanked him and said ‘if it’s that good I I’ll contact Chord’s PR people’.

So I put in a call to Dan George of Dan George Communications and former editor of Hifi Choice Magazine, briefly after the Chord Sarum Super Aray USB landed on my doorstep.

After a burning in period on the Blue Horizon Proburn I placed the cable in my system and from the first note I was completely captivated – that was some 6 hours ago now and I am still transfixed to the music, telling myself I must get some sleep soon.

It’s ok to get excited about a product I tell myself, but at the same time this statement has to be met with realism and the ability to shake off the ‘different factor’, now usually common sense does tell me that much more time is required to make a more educated decision before putting pen to paper, but in this case the pen is firmly placed on the pad and my experience tells me that this cable is something special, a real treat.

What stands out with the Chord Sarum Super Aray USB is how prominent clarity positions itself throughout the soundstage, from the centre focus to the very edges of the enormous soundstage produced by the cable. Notes on the boundaries of the stage are as thick and clearly defined as the centre focus and the centre focus has as much definition as the boundaries.

My want for completeness in the sound of a USB cable had been somewhat realised by my own design, but when comparing to the Chord Sarum Super Aray USB I recognise my own design and how good it is, but that it just isn’t a match for the Chord in overall definition, resolution and texture. Although I pat myself on the back for what I believe has been achieved from the geometry of my own design, I defer to the Chord for superior conductor choice and overall build specifics and understanding of the criteria for a superior USB cable.

Every single note has its own position in the soundstage now which is so stable it feels almost liberating. It’s like that sigh of relief at the end of a busy day when you kick off your boots, grab a drink and relax. A completely unforced sound that fills the room so clearly with no grain and the vocals are just so sweet and pure.

Previously, vocalists with other USB cables I have had I now judge as flat and smeared. With the Chord Sarum Tuned Array USB in place it’s as if the singer has taken one small step forward into freer space in the venue, giving them more focus and clarity, which translates to better expression of the vocal and more depth to the surrounding band members, allowing the listener to focus on the music more easily.

If you build it they will come – should I be so bold to say something like this for a piece of wire? Maybe not, but as I feel my system has reached a point where it is, or was, exactly where I want it to be and then a cable comes along and tickles me in a way a carefully selected front end or preamplifier upgrade could only achieve I have to be honest and convey the experience in what I hear.

What is all this really all about if we’re honest? It’s about our love of music and how it can affect our mental state, from happy and energetic to relaxed and entranced. If a cable can enhance this experience it should be given as much credence as any other part of the system.

I have had similar experiences in the past but as I’m sure you all know they really are few and far between. Some fall into our laps and others we strive to search for, hoping that the synergy will be complete from component to component whether in a high end system or a more modest setup, with the goal of connecting us to the music sincerely. One of my own was really seriously looking at my electrics from a new consumer unit onwards to a balanced mains supply and really honing down the grounding in my system. Another was redesigning the crossovers of my speakers. These things on the grand scale of things were inexpensive and easily implemented but boy they have really made a difference.

Although the Chord USB is far from cheap it’s been the cherry on the cake for me personally in my current setup, maybe without all the combination of my recent redesigns it wouldn’t have had as much purchase on the overall ability of the system, or maybe recent changes have allowed me to appreciate the cables real influence, I’ll allow you to decide but for me it’s an absolute winner and will take a hell of a lot to better.
Build Quality: 9/10

Sound Quality: 9.4/10

Value For Money: 8.7/10

Overall: 9.03/10

Price at time if review: £1000

Dan Worth

Having scored so highly the Chord Sarum Super Aray USB is eligible for second review and possible Outstanding Product Award. So over to Dominic Marsh the cable went and here are his findings.  

I have reviewed a USB cable before for Hifi Pig (From JIB in Germany as I recall), so I am no stranger to their sonic characteristics, even though it runs through my mind that 1’s and 0’s are still just that and the absence of either puts a real spanner in the works, never mind an enhanced or otherwise sound quality from a digital stream.  Do you detect a small sceptical note there?  You would be right.  My personal feelings locked tightly away in a box, reviewer mode switched on, dust off the DAC, connect up the Chord Sarum Tuned Aray USB cable to my PC and system, fire up the tunes and see what transpires.

No construction details were supplied with the cable, so it becomes very difficult if not impossible for this reviewer to reconcile the sounds heard with whatever physical build attributes the cable possesses, so I’m afraid the review will consist entirely of my perceptions of how this cable sounded to me.

I remember clearly how I was utterly gobsmacked when I first heard the JIB Silver Arsenic USB cable and even that experience paled by comparison when I first heard the Chord Sarum Tuned Aray and there isn’t a huge price gap between this cable and the JIB Silver Arsenic.  I wasn’t at all prepared for the sound coming from my speakers, the first thing I noticed was how the sound had appeared to leave the speaker cabinets and was entirely hanging in mid air, perfectly centered, spread widely well beyond the speaker boundaries and with a stunning three dimensionality depth-wise.  It wasn’t being thrown forward into the room though, it was like being at a stage play in a theatre where there was no microphones or amplification being used and you could pinpoint exactly where each actor was placed, with clear limits determined by the boundaries of the stage itself.  Maybe not the best analogy, but it’s my best effort.

As Dan also says, he and I both noticed a lack of grain in the sound and I can add to that a lack of hiss too.  Dynamics had a razor sharp leading edge with no smearing that I could detect and delivered with full force and power too.  Snare drum strikes had a tautness and vibrancy that sent a shiver down the spine so drum solos had real drive, weight and impact to them.    I was particularly impressed too at how guitar riffs weren’t just a chord, but each individual string of the guitar could be heard which forms the chord and that is something I haven’t heard before from any cable, let alone a mere USB cable that purportedly only carries 1’s and 0’s.  That should give you some indicator of the performance available from the Chord Sarum Super Aray USB and to say I was impressed is an understatement.

All of the music I listened to through this cable had immediacy and vibrancy running throughout, with fast lithe dynamics and perfect timing when it was there in the recording, which for once didn’t actually fatigue after many hours of listening which was most surprising of all, as music with high dynamic content can wear you out pretty quickly and those listening sessions are generally much shorter than with more mellow softer music.

I had in mind when I started this review that I was in no hurry to go it all digital to streaming because I still value my hard copy library of music.  This cable might just make me change my mind about that, but if I did my backups, will have backups of backups and a spare backup just to make sure, so I don’t have the misery my poor friend endured when his computer turned its toes up and died.

CONCLUSION

I still keep wincing at the price of the Chord Sarum Tuned Aray USB, but like all good things in life there is a price to pay.  I have no idea what goes into it’s construction either, but by the same token I don’t ever go busting into a restaurant’s kitchen to remonstrate with the Chef about the recipe when he has cooked me a superb meal that I thoroughly enjoyed and happily paid the bill.  Look at the Sarum USB cable in that light and suddenly it all makes complete sense.

Take a listen for yourself and see if you agree.

Build quality: 8.9/10

Sound quality: 9.5/10

Value for money: 8.7/10

Overall: 9.03/10

Dominic Marsh

Designer’s Notes

When I first started to listen and become obsessed by music, there were two ways to listen – one was radio and the other was vinyl.  Any radio I had access to had a single rather small speaker and if I played records, it was on a mono system that my father had built – he was an electrical engineer, first at Mullards and then Phillips.  He came home one Friday night with a turntable and a box of bits and over the weekend built an amplifier, plinth and speaker cabinet that also served as a bookshelf. The reason for mentioning this is that I – like a lot of other people my sort of age – grew up listening not to hi-fi, but to music.  Everyone knows the limitations of transistor radios but the argument you can make for them is that whatever they aren’t, they do tend to be coherent.  That is – they allow you listen to music with a real sense of rhythm and timing and the same was true of most vinyl systems as well.  Later on came a stereo system and I can still remember my utter astonishment at hearing the guitar solo on “Yours Is No Disgrace” from the Yes album – each individual note bouncing from speaker to speaker. Music was a magical thing and that’s the way it should remain.

Much later on I learnt to play music and discovered the utter joy and thrill of making music with other people.  A guitarist friend lent me his bass and we played together for about seven hours – we would have gone on but my fingers were bleeding.  I still play in a band and it’s still wonderful – and on occasion, when we all get it right – almost transcendental.  Once you’ve experienced this (and whisper it quietly, but on occasion it’s better than sex) you begin to understand what makes some of the music you listen to so special.  The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Elmore James, Parliament/Funkadelic, John Coltrane, Pentangle, Fairport Convention – and I’ve not even scratched the surface – there is so much good music out there to be explored and experienced.

Then at the end of 1989 I met and starting working for Sally, the founder and owner of The Chord Company.  At that point in time CD didn’t even register with me; I had a turntable and there were five record shops in Salisbury, all of them full of vinyl.  These days there’s only one and if I want anything other than Jazz, Blues or Classical I need travel, usually to Marlborough where there’s one of the best record shops for miles.

When I first met Sally she threw a cable to me to take home and try; up until then the choice of cable had never crossed my mind.  I put it into the system at home and everything I loved about music got better; I got fascinated and 26 years later I still am.

Working for Sally meant meeting lots of people in the hi-fi industry.  It meant getting a better system – a new turntable, a pre and power amplifier and bigger, better speakers – and that meant I got to hear even more; my favourite albums were a revelation and listening to music became an utterly joyous experience.

Then came digital.  Slowly at first and then very quickly CD was the only way to buy music.  If you loved music you couldn’t just stop buying it because it wasn’t available on vinyl any more. That meant getting a CD player and I was pretty lucky.  My first CD player was a Micro Mega Solo – at the time, one of the more musical CD players available.  That’s when the serious experimentation began.  It still amazes me that something machined onto a 12 inch piece of plastic can sound so good – especially when it’s played on a machine where a rubber band connects an electric motor to a platter so that it revolves. That a needle dragged through the groove in the plastic should do rhythm, pitch and timing so well – and that is where the magic is.

So we experimented, we researched, we visited dealers, we talked with manufactures, musicians and reviewers and we listened and listened.  We begged, stole and borrowed, we experimented and we learnt.

One of the really important things we learnt about was the importance of shielding – particularly high frequency effective shielding.  We started building interconnect cables with high frequency effective shielding in the late 90s and at the time, they were a revelation.  They were a revelation because they made music sound more like music: more coherent and more enjoyable, more revealing and ultimately there was so much more sense of coherence and rhythm.  Fundamentally it put some of the magic back into music.

We learnt about the tonal influence of insulation materials in relation to conductor materials, we learnt how different types of solder behaved and influenced the performance, we learnt about plugs and termination methods. We learnt about all of this because it had a direct influence on the ability of cables to carry a coherent musical signal.  We did a lot of blind testing – we used a whole mix of people: musicians, music lovers and hi-fi enthusiasts – and we found that the results were remarkably consistent.

The experimentation with high frequency shielding continued and in 2004 we produced our first high frequency shielded speaker cable.  We did this for exactly the same reasons that we were using high frequency shielded interconnects – the shielded speaker cable made music sound more coherent and more involving and it revealed levels of detail, particularly in terms of timbre and dynamics.  It also helped to put the groove back into music.

One of the problems with hi-fi is that it’s very easy to forget why you first bought a hi-fi system, and in the pursuit of seeing ever further into the music that you love, you end up destroying the thing that made you love it – you break it.

Over the past five years a lot of things have changed.  First of all, digital sources have got a lot, lot better.  There are now more ways to listen to music than ever.  You can stream, you can rip your music collection to a hard drive, you can download, there’s a huge resurgence and interest in vinyl and you can download high resolution files and stream CD resolution music.  This is one of the most exciting times I’ve experienced in my 26 years in the industry.  Over this time, we developed our first Tuned ARAY cables.  We used our then flagship Sarum cables to do this and what we produced was a cable that wasn’t just transparent in terms of detail and timbre but critically was capable of carrying a musical signal far more coherently than anything we’d produced before.  As music lovers it was, for us, transformational.  The first Tuned ARAY cable we developed was a digital cable.  We had, for a long time, been using DACs – both at home and in the demonstration room.  The effect of the Tuned ARAY technology was, we felt, so musically profound that we went on to experiment and develop the same principle for, first of all, our analogue Sarum cables and then the Sarum power cables.

Around this time, we also got hold of streamers and USB DACs – partly out of curiosity and partly to start playing around and listening to high resolution music.  The thing is that for so many years, we’d been waiting for high resolution music.  Like many people we believed that digital music wasn’t really going to come good until the sample rates were high enough.  By now though, the work we’d done with the Tuned ARAY cables had made us realise that actually, standard CD sample rates were capable of producing really good, coherent, exciting and involving music.  So what was high resolution going to offer musically?  We had streamers, we had USB DACs.  The streamers were using RJ45 plugs and Cat cable; the USB DACs were using USB cables.  We’re a cable company – it was only natural that we would be curious about these cables.  In particular, given the fact that whilst we could hear some of the very obvious benefits of streaming, we were struggling once again with all those things that make music so special for us – and not just special for us, special for pretty much every music lover as well.  What we were getting was hugely detailed, but ultimately and frustratingly lacked emotion and soul.  So we experimented.  We had the Tuned ARAY principles, we knew about high frequency shielding, we knew about high frequency signals and it was only natural to apply this thinking to both USB terminated cables and RJ45 terminated cables.  I am deliberately avoiding calling these cables either Ethernet or USB – they’re not.  They are cables that we built to carry a digital audio signal in a way that produced a more coherent and realistic musical performance.  They carry an electrical signal, just like our analogue cables and our digital coaxial cables.  They have very high levels of shielding and they have either our Tuned ARAY or Super ARAY tuning technologies applied to them.  We think they help a system to produce music that sounds more detailed, more coherent and ultimately far, far more involving and enjoyable – which in principle is what a hi-fi system should do, be it vinyl, CD or streaming.  We think that the way these cables help music to sound is something that anybody with a love of music will find easy to hear.

The computer industry and the hi-fi industry are not necessarily easy bedfellows.  We had no idea of the controversy and the degree of anger producing these cables would cause.  We simply set out to see if we could make a better musical experience and we did it in the way that we’ve always done – by experimentation, blind testing and ultimately, listening.  It is, after all, all about the music.

Nigel Finn (The Chord Company)

Janine Elliot plumbs in these £1750 interconnects from Polish company KBL into her system to see what she will find. 

Any cable manufacturer with the abbreviation ‘KBL’ deserves a listen.  This Polish outfit have been making a big name for themselves over the last year or so, just as the rise of Poland itself is becoming a major contender for cars (Fiat Poland) and more latterly for the Hifi collectors’ pennies too. More and more products are emerging that have a decidedly premium quality and yet are still competitively priced, making them a serious choice for audiophiles.

KBL Sound have certainly been receiving review accolades and getting the attention of serious Hifi addicts over the last few years. Like many manufacturers, the company is a result of working in recording studios and having a passion for creating something that does not hinder the source material it intends to carry. Through many years of research, experimentation and improvements they have managed to complete their mission with this, the Red Eye Ultimate Interconnect. For them, the important bits are creating openness and the “ability to play back down to the bottom whatever has been preserved on the tape”. Tape? They certainly have my attention now.

This is a no-expense spared product, with highest purity mono crystal OCC (Ohno Continuous Casting) silver conductor with Mundorf NextGen WBT 0110 Silver/Gold alloy connectors which contain 1% gold (the same highly purified silver-gold alloy used for the metallization of their Supreme SilverGold capacitors), and air and foamed Teflon dielectric. Quite some specification for £1750, but does that mean it is the best sounding cable at the price? I mean, you could mix caviar and champagne together, but does that mean it still tastes nice? I remember recording a certain world champion snooker player at the BBC who told me he had all this wonderful expensive Hifi, costing an arm, leg and snooker cue, but that the sound just wasn’t right. I told him he would have been better buying an Amstrad Hifi. The interview went downhill from that point.

This cable is, as expected, really well made, though the box it comes in is decidedly home made with sellotape holding down the brown velvet “De Natura Sonorum” inscribed cloth covering a foam platform to bed the cable in the cardboard box. However, the personal touch makes it that much more of interest to me and so serious listening with it firstly between source and transformer preamp, and later between preamp and power amp was on the agenda.

Mundorf connectors, like those from Nakamichi and a few others, enable you to screw the sheath once mated to get a tighter fit. I love them and they make the cable less of a component in an already busy circuit. The only problem is some RCA sockets need you to almost take off the sheath in order to fit them; both my Krell and MFA found it impossible to connect at first. The Mundorf connectors rely on the reduced-contact surface philosophy, whereby only one point of the return/negative is connected to the socket. This is done to eliminate eddy currents and mass storage effects.  Also its design prevents the sleeve of the plug itself acting as a conductor, which can influence sound. These plugs are exceptionally expensive, and I can see why.

SOUND

Silver usually gives a brighter and tighter sound than copper in my experience. That is not a bad thing; I have silver cables to my tweeters and copper to my woofers. This cable was certainly OK in the top, and the mid and upper mid frequencies had exceptionally good detail. David Bowie’s (RIP) new album “Blackstar” hadn’t been released at the point of this review, but ‘The Next Day’ album’s title track was ready to spin on my player. This came across as clear as you can hear. I have never been fond of the sound engineering on his albums, but the music itself more than makes up. With “How Does the Grass Grow” the horrible compression and limiting in the recording becomes clearer to me with these cables. The slight mid-band emphasis in these cables emphasized it just that little bit.

KBL Sound’s activities are not confined to just the research and production of fine cables, but also the tuning and re-creating vintage valve amplifiers, like Leak and Dynaco. So what better than plugging in my modified Leak Stereo 20.  These cables gave Harold’s best amp a more open and laid-back rendition, allowing the music to take over from any electronics that would otherwise be in the way. This really sounded musical, waking up my 1958 baby to sound as good as I have ever heard it.

Carlos Franzetti “The Jazz Kamerata” had a depth of sound I really got hooked on; the full colour from the piano, string warmth, flute and saxophone were all placed where I expected, with excellent decays on piano and a husky saxophone opened up as real as I would hear them live, like seeing the pixels on the screen, every ounce of colour was there for me to hear in all its glory. The sound had more atmosphere than I had got used to before on this regularly played recording. Not just was the soundstage detailed but it had a depth to it that was quite addictive. “Allison’s Dance” showed a move across and backwards in the soundstage at a particular point I hadn’t detected before.

Chasing the Dragon, Vivaldi Concerto for 11 Mandolins was full of emotion and breaths from musicians and also background atmosphere. Atmosphere was something really noticeable in these cables. Track 3, Bach Cello Suite No 1 was full of his bow ‘grinding away’ as Austin Pearson got engrossed in the notes.

Patricia Barber “What a Shame” (Café Blue) was equally engaging. These cables really brought out clarity of ride cymbals and Mark Walker’s percussion was as crisp as my own cables of choice. The guitar in track 4 “Romanesque” had a ‘bite’ and atmosphere that took me aback. Indeed the reverb and space in this recording using these cables was exceptional. Patricia’s voice was noticeably more atmospheric than other instruments as this cable took apart the music strands into their individual components. I felt much more involved in the music as it played, and all seemed that much more relaxed and intimate. This was a good marriage of wire and valve, though the music perhaps a little slower than I would like.

CONCLUSION

The detail in terms of pitch, focus and depth of sound, especially in the upper mid-range was excellent. These are excellent cables and should certainly be auditioned if you are spending this sort of cash (£1750). Indeed, I always say you should listen to cables in your own system as they play an important, ne, essential part in formulating the overall sound. If you need more mid frequency warmth these cables are an excellent choice. Only wish they’d change the box it came in. I’m good at sewing…

Sound Quality: 8.55/10

Value for Money: 8.3/10

Build Quality: 8.6/10 (The ‘box’ is not relevant)

Overall: 8.48/10

Price at time of review £1750

Pros:

Good upper-mid warmth

Excellent clarity in the top frequencies

Detail

Power

Excellent components

Cons:

Upper mid frequencies might not work with amplifiers with upper mid emphasis

That box 

Janine Elliott

Designer’s Comment

The Red Eye Ultimate interconnects had been designed with one goal in mind: to reveal system possibilities to the latest extent. With feedback from the previous reviewers and private customers of Red Eye IC’s, they emphasize such features as accurate presentation, resolution, saturated colours and realistic sense of space.

Red Eye Ultimate interconnects are manufactured with ultra-pure silver wire with each single crystal length reaching even a few hundred meters (the result of a unique Ohno Continuous Casting process). Then, the silver is technologically aged to obtain an even better molecular order within each wire. These advanced conductors achieve such a high level of homogeneity that signal flow is practically lossless. Foamed PTFE is used as the best dielectric for practical application. The cable is internally multi-screened against EMI/RFI. Red Eye interconnects form a perfect synergy with WBT Nextgen 0110Ag type connectors fabricated to Mundorf’s specification. This German company has comprehensively changed the metallurgical composition for all internal parts responsible for electrical contact inside the connector. They contain 1% of gold in their composition when compared to the pure silver WBT concept.

SPECIFICATIONS

Conductors: highest purity mono crystal OCC silver

Termination: Mundorf/WBT 0110 Ag sliver/gold alloy, other connectors upon request

Shielding: multi-shield

Standard length available: 1 m, 1.5m, 2m

Other lenght available upon request

After the assembly process all our cables are tested and professionally conditioned. Thus they are already burned-in for immediate use without waiting many weeks or even months for their ultimate level of performance.

Robert Szczerbowski (KBL)

Dominic Marsh takes this €840 package of amp, speakers and speaker cables from TAGA Harmony for a spin.

TAGA Audio hail from Poland and TAGA stands for “To Achieve Glorious Acoustics”, or so their tag line says.  The entire design brief is created in-house by TAGA themselves, while production is in TAGA’s own factory in China, which allows TAGA considerable latitude when it comes to pricing their products.  Their range is rather extensive, with no less than ten speaker ranges, spanning from 5.1 home theatre arrays to their flagship standard floor standing speakers, which doesn’t end there either, as we can also add active and desktop systems to that list too.  Electronic products also feature highly, with hybrid amplifiers, all-in-one music systems, DACs, power filters, the list goes on and on, then a range of interconnect and speaker cables complete their product line-up and one is simply spoilt for choice browsing through their website.  They even cater for the DIYers amongst us with cables off the reel to terminate themselves.

TAGA have sent to Hifi Pig for review a selected package consisting of a Harmony HTA -700B V2 hybrid amplifier, a pair of Platinum B-40 speakers and a pair of 2.5 metre Platinum 18 speaker cables to match.  Add the source of your choice and you can be up and running in a very short time.

CONSTRUCTION

The HTA – 700B V2 amplifier is very compact measuring 14cm H x 17.7cm W x 27cm D, with the review sample supplied finished in bright alloy that has simply superb fit and finish.  It is also available in a black finish. Comparatively heavy too, weighing in at 4.2kg.  To the front panel we find a quarter inch standard headphone socket, a large rotary volume control, an input selector knob that switches between USB input, CD input and Bluetooth.  A pair of recessed 12AX7B valves (tubes) peeps out the top plate of the chassis, half submerged as it were, surprisingly without any protection cages.  Judging by the way the valves light up almost instantly to full brightness when powered on, I suspect the tube heaters are fed by a regulated DC voltage.  Behind the two valves lies the mains transformer housing, again clad in bright alloy.

To the rear we find the Bluetooth antenna socket (antenna supplied), a USB socket, below these two is the RCA phono inputs for CD, then a pair of RCA pre amplifier output sockets, then a single set of four good quality speaker binding posts which will accept spades, 4mm banana plugs and bare wire.  Finally, an on/off rocker power switch and a male IEC AC power inlet socket, complete the rear panel connections.  TAGA supply the software via a download from their website for linking the USB connection to a personal computer running Windows.

Specifications:

The TAGA Platinum B-40 speakers are a compact stand mount design, again manufactured in China to TAGA’s exacting specifications.  TAGA class it as a “bookshelf” speaker, but to me its dimensions aren’t really suited to that position with a depth of over 27cm.  It is a reflex ported design, with the exit port mounted on the front baffle immediately below the 165mm bass driver.  The bass driver cone appears to be of a sandwich type construction, the dust cap being of the same material, with a flexible rubber roll surround.  There is a bright polished alloy outer surround ring engraved with the words “TAGA Harmony” and to me the speaker looked attractive, with or without the grilles present.  The tweeter is a one inch unit with a metal dome, protected by a perforated metal mesh grille and unusually, is mounted partially above the front baffle in a domed plastic extension.  To the rear we find a set of speaker binding posts in a biwire/biamp configuration with the ubiquitous gold plated brass link plates.  The binding posts will accept spades, 4mm banana plugs or bare wire.  I will be mentioning these again in the listening analysis below.  The review sample was supplied in a vinyl Wenge wood finish with faux Walnut and black (Ash?) as alternative finish choices.   The cabinet carcass has curved side panels which adds intrinsic strength but also tales away parallel walls to minimize internal cabinet reflections.

Specifications:

Lastly, as part of this package, TAGA supply a 2.5 metre pair of their Platinum 18 speaker cables terminated with 4mm banana plugs.  This cable is also available un-terminated off the reel, bought by the multiple metre lengths.

Specifications:

It looks to be a workman-like cable, with 16 strands braided into the two main conductors of 8 strands each, bifurcated at each end to around 15 cm from each of the plugs.  However, the plugs don’t really match the quality of the cable itself, the “splines” are not that springy and that complicated matters by having oversized 4mm holes in the speaker’s binding posts which resulted in a poor connection, although the Platinum B-40’s binding posts face upwards so gravity holds the speaker cables in place.   One of the plugs actually lost the 4mm splined part which detached itself while changing cables over from the binding posts on the HTA-700B amplifier, so I had to rapidly re-terminate it with a “Z” plug and of course I will have to fit the other seven plugs to match, or return it to TAGA as is.  I have mentioned my reservations about these particular banana plugs to TAGA and they say they will review the situation shortly and will be looking into fitting another type of plug.

The complete system package as detailed above is 840 Euros at the time of review.

SOUND QUALITY

I was pleasantly surprised when I first connected up this system just how good it sounded and none of the sound spectrum it produced annoyed or offended me, which was a great start to the proceedings.   The word to best describe the sound was “balanced” in that treble and bass were in equilibrium, midband was clean and clear, so it was no effort at all just to sit back and enjoy what I was hearing while the system was warming up.  Of course, it is my job then to analyse and disseminate what’s what so you the reader can assimilate and interpret how I perceived the sound produced.

For such a small unit, the HTA-700B V2 amplifier produced a bouncy gutsy sound via CD input and I don’t recall it  running out of steam, with the Platinum B-40 speakers and with others too that I tried, including my resident speakers.  At that time I also had a pair of Audiofilia SF-6 floor standing speakers in for evaluation and the little TAGA amp acquitted itself rather well with those too, although when pushed hard the sound became more “shouty”, which if you are the kind of person who listens with the volume control past 12 o’clock regularly you’ll need to seek a more powerful amplifier for your needs.  Pairing the Bluetooth connection was simple and straightforward, although I perceived a softer and less dynamic presentation than via the CD player input.  USB input sound quality was almost on a par with the CD input. 

Intrinsically, the speaker cable itself appears to be a good component, the braided weave layout should keep the capacitance at a low level, but the real let down was the quality of the plugs employed.  When the splines section detached itself from the body of one plug while gently removing it from the amplifier’s binding posts it merely confirmed my fears that while they looked good, they weren’t man enough for the job.  Swapping to my resident cables brought a not unexpected improvement in sound quality and I rue that I couldn’t give a fair assessment of the speaker cables’ performance in their own right with more suitable plugs fitted.  You could of course purchase the unterminated cable, or another terminated cable from their range, but that falls outside of the TAGA package deal offer and would probably add to the cost.

Then we move on to the Platinum B-40 speakers and it is by no accident I have left the best until last.  Given that they are priced at circa £320.00 here in the UK, they really can and do outshine other speakers at that price level and well above.  Installed into my resident system they sounded far better than their humble price suggests, with good solid bass free of boom and overhang, a treble that is crisp and clear, plus a midband that doesn’t disappoint either.  I found them a very musical speaker whatever amplifier they were paired with and of course the Harmony HTA – 700B V2 was no exception.

Mounted on 60cm stands and placed around 20cm from the rear wall they gave a full bodied sound, although while the deepest bass registers were not present, there wasn’t any boom or blooming either.  Dynamics were fast-ish, not as lithe as the best speakers but still a credible performance nonetheless.  I simply couldn’t resist removing the brass jumper links and fitting a set of my own pure copper wired links and the sound improvement was considerable.   Paired with the HTA – 700B V2 amplifier the sound stage was expansive, extending out just beyond the speaker boundaries, while my resident amplifier pushed that out even further still and depth acquired a deeper rendition to imaging.

In to the CD drawer goes my reference recording which is Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album.  Track one called “Biscuits For Breakfast” begins with the drummer gently striking the Ride cymbal as the intro, which has to portray the metal ringing in the cymbal to be accepted as real and any masking here shows up instantly and readily.  The Platinum B-40’s gave a good account of themselves with this test and surprisingly good too given that it is fitted with a metal dome tweeter.  Kick drum was portrayed with good weight and solidity, a good deal better than other “budget” speakers I have listened to and the drummer’s rim shots were almost life-like too.  Fink’s voice has a nasal quality to it with a slight rasp and the Platinum B-40’s did a pretty good job of that task too.

As a contrast to that, I followed on with some electronic music in the shape of Tripswitch’s excellent album “Geometry”.  There is some superb layering in this album and it takes a sure footed pair of speakers to unfold and pull back all the layers so each strand is separated out and clearly defined in every respect.  The bass lines really are deep on this album, rather subtle in places too and can easily be muddled by the music around it.  The Platinum B-40’s didn’t quite have full command and control of this album as my resident speakers are able, especially around the bass which wasn’t as deep and tended to collide with other instruments, so once or twice got recessed into the rest of the music.  For a £1,500+ speaker that would be a slight criticism, for a £320.00 speaker that should be taken as a compliment.

CONCLUSION

If I had reviewed this package system as submitted by TAGA, then it would have been the speaker cable plugs that let the entire system down, nothing more.  The oversized speaker binding post holes could have been resolved by fitting better plugs, so I can almost discount that aspect.  Taking each component in isolation however creates a different point of view entirely.

The TAGA Harmony HTA – 700B V2 amplifier is a great little amplifier in its own right.  It has enough features to make it flexible with regards to connections, it sounds extremely good too, more powerful than the specifications suggest and the small footprint means you can house it wherever you like so it remains unobtrusive.   This little amplifier has a lot going for it.

For a cable to part company with it’s connector during a review is unforgiveable.  Having said that, if TAGA take on board my comments about the plugs and upgrade them, then I am prepared to happily change my opinion because I still think it’s a great cable nonetheless.

The Platinum B-40 speakers belie their modest cost and are very able performers.  I could easily live with these, although given that I chop and change components and cables on an almost permanent basis as part of my job, those binding posts would drive me nuts. Still, as part of the package that TAGA offer, they give tremendous bang for the buck and for me they were the star of the ensemble.  Well worth seeking out for audition.

Build quality: 7.8/10
Sound quality: 8.2/10
Value for money: 8.6/10
Overall: 8.2/10

Package Price at time of review: 840 EUros

Pros:  Terrific little amplifier and speakers which give good performances – especially at the price.

Cons:   Those speaker plugs.  

Dominic Marsh

O2A are a speaker manufacturer from Liechtenstein headed up by Anna Robathin. Here Dominic Marsh tries out the company’s €1760 (2.5m pair) O2A Quintessence SUBLIM Speaker Cables. 

It’s surprising sometimes where the products originate from for review by Hifi Pig. In this instance it is Liechtenstein, and it’s a first for me.  Also another first is these products are designed and hand built by a lady called Anna Robathin who originates from Russia and I mean that as no sexist remark, rather than a shining light that hifi manufacturers should not always be male orientated and a big welcome for design talent of female persuasion. In 2000 Anna graduated with distinction Vilnius High Technical school as an engineer of telecommunication (transmission audio, video and high frequencies signals and has good command of 5 languages (English, French, German, Lithuanian, Polish) and Russian as well. In addition she has got solid musical education. That provides the possibility to expertise the quality of Hi-End products and audio quality. In 2008 she created the first line of acoustic cables under her own brand name O2A and at the same time acoustic speakers and amplifiers were created in cooperation with French engineers.

O2A also produce a comprehensive range of both analogue and digital cables.

CONSTRUCTION

The first thing that struck me when I opened the packaging for these SUBLIM speaker cables was how well built they are.  The attention to detail is incredible even though the outward appearance is fairly basic and minimal.  By attention to detail I mean the connectors are very good quality being made from copper. The heat shrink is cut and applied perfectly and the black outer mesh covering really is fitted tightly and evenly too.  The outer diameter of the main cable is 12mm and reasonably flexible, which then splits into two tails at each end – one each for the positive and negative connections respectively.

The actual construction details elude me despite searching on the internet and the O2A website isn’t all that forthcoming with details either, but I am given to understand the conductors feature copper and silver.  I could have asked O2A to give me a detailed reply to a query, but my job is to convey to you what the product sounds like and in the cold light of day that is what counts in relation to money outlay for sound quality achieved, which to me is always the bottom line to consider.

Price at time of testing is 1760 Euros (GB£1366.00, US$1992.00) for a standard 2.5 metre pair with the choice of either 4mm banana plugs or spade terminals.  Other lengths and outer sheath colour choices are available to order.

SOUND QUALITY

Overall balance is very neutral with no emphasis in any area of the audible frequencies.  Bass is solid and articulate, in correct balance and proportion to the other frequencies so it was very easy to listen to.  Treble is sweet and ever so slightly rolled off at the very top end so less than perfect recordings don’t have a sting to them and this makes for long fatigue-free listening… a joy in that respect.  What this cable is particularly good at is scouring out the micro dynamics in recordings, with more than one “not heard that before” kind of comments from me during the listening sessions. 

For example, while listening to the opening track London Grammar’s excellent ‘If You Wait’ album there is a wealth of synthesized reverberation effects and a deep penetrating bass line to the music, underpinning the female vocals.  The SUBLIM cable portrayed this track with both the delicacy and power necessary to make it an enjoyable and satisfying listen.  Track two from the same album contains some very obvious and deliberate fret fingering on steel strings from the guitarist and that comes across as crisp, defined and uncannily real sounding.  The whole album is infused with artificial ambience and the SUBLIM cable rendered this perfectly.

Ginger Baker’s epic drum solo on ‘Wheels of Fire’ by Cream has the drum kit close mic’d during the performance which is ideal for testing transient ability.  Snare drum and tom toms sounded taut and dynamic the way they should be and the cymbals had a polished refinement with no splashiness or tizz.  Kick drum too has a solid “whump” that feels like it’s hitting you in the pit of the stomach as much as you hear it with your ears.

Moving on to Derrin Nauendorf’s ‘Live at the Boardwalk’ which is a live acoustic recording with Derrin  playing solo acoustic guitar and accompanied only by a basic set of drums, the tonality of the guitar’s sound was conveyed realistically and full of natural resonances and timbre.  Every pluck on the strings was heard in great clarity and detail, although I cannot say that Derrin is the best of vocalists, but an enjoyable listen nonetheless.

Treble then is clean and clear, and I was able to pick out minute detail and finer points, even when the music got hectic.  Bass has depth and power, without overhang or delay and is able to react to fast transients in a clear delineated fashion.  Female vocals were up there with the best of the competition.  Play a simple acoustic recording in a live venue and all the reverberation effects and ambience in a venue are delivered with solidity and competence.   This was plainly evident when I played Fink’s ‘Wheels Beneath My Feet’ live album and noted that the venue ambiences for each track actually sounded all different because they were each recorded at different locations during one of Fink’s many European tours and in this respect the SUBLIM cable didn’t disappoint at all.  In the track called ‘Sort of Revolution’ we can hear the drummer driving down hard with his Floor Tom strikes which does reverberate powerfully around my listening room and really does show up any loose or flabby bass immediately when it occurs, but again the SUBLIM cables renders this very well.

The acid test for me personally is whether or not I play entire albums or just my favourite tracks off albums and secondly, how long do my listening sessions last for, so each album played from start to finish and very late bed times without realising what the time actually is, is a huge endorsement.

CONCLUSION

How can I sum up these cables then?  From appearance alone they are rather nondescript and I have seen a plethora of handsomely clothed cable confections over the years which had issues during the listening sessions.  The O2A Quintessence SUBLIM cables on the other hand are no catwalk candidates as far as appearance goes, but had no issues sonically as best as I can tell, so priced at 1760 Euros for a 2.5 metre pair the majority of build cost appears to have been spent on the inside rather than the outside and that does impress me.

Neutrality is the keyword here and the entire frequency spectrum is in correct balance from top to bottom, so it isn’t a cable designed to impress with its attention grabbing fireworks.  It is all too easy to play track after track, album after album through these cables and you feel well sated at the end of your listening sessions.  Has to be a recommendation from me then and well worth searching out for to audition in your own system.

Pros: 

Neutral sounding with equal balance throughout the range from top to bottom.

Ranks highly in sound terms amongst its peers in the marketplace

Cons: 

External appearance doesn’t convey high quality commensurate with cost.

Dominic Marsh

Studio Connections are a cable company building their cables in the UK and headed up by Michael Whiteside. Here Dan Worth takes a listen to their Platinum digital cables costing £1350 for 1m, terminated lengths.

Studio Connections takes a radically new approach to making cables by centring the design process on how the brain perceives spatial and positional information with sound. They first delved into the biology of how sensory receptors deduce position, distance and depth.

In developing the products, designer Michael Whiteside draws from a BSc in Electronics and over 30 years of recording music, manufacturing cables and building studios that have included recording and mix studios such as the BBC, EMI Abbey Road and King’s College, Cambridge.

“The technical result for our cables is that they have very accurate timing across the broad, high frequency spectrum, that is essential for our ability to interpret spatial awareness. The musical result is that the cables deliver faithfully, allowing us to hear incredibly natural sound and stereo with realistic dimensions.” says Michael.

Platinum Digital cable is designed to provide excellent balance and ground path on both the balanced and unbalanced versions and to prevent stray currents and interaction between earth and signal carriers, even at radio frequency.

Like all Studio Connections cables, the conductors are formed in a high nitrogen content insulator to provide fast interconnectivity.

PLATINUM DIGITAL CABLE – Measured Technical Data and Specifications:

Conductor material: Ultra High Purity Scandinavian Copper

Primary dielectric layer: Olefinic/nitrogen foamed primary

Second dielectric layer: Solid polyethylene secondary skin

Lay: Parallel

Overall jacket PVC with Polyethylene (PET) Braid

Overall diameter 19.0mm x 7mm oval/ 0.747 inch x 0.275

Single Ended (Unbalanced)

Drain wire: 196/0.1 high purity copper

Capacitance (min) 11pF/m, 3.38pF/ft

Resistance 0.012 ohms/m, 0.0036ohms/ft

Conductor: 196/0.1 ultra high purity copper

Connectors: Studio Connections Custom RCA Gold Plated

Balanced

Conductors: 2x 196/0.1 ultra high purity copper

Capacitance (min) 11pF/m, 3.38pF/ft

Resistance 0.012 ohms/m, 0.0036ohms/ft

Drain wire: 7/0.2 tinned copper centre woven

Connectors: Studio Connections Custom XLR Gold Plated

AT FIRST GLANCE

Each cable from Studio Connections (SC) comes in a nice presentation box, not overly elaborate by any means. Often with cables one is left wishing the product cost was less and the wooden box with gold inscriptions was just a Jiffy bag. With Studio Connections it is a nice satin cardboard box, sufficient for task and is graphically pleasing.

Inside you find an oval shaped cable. I was greeted by a XLR AES/EBU and an RCA SPDIF digital cable. On inspection the cables seem incredibly well made and have an understated yet high-end feel to them, I especially liked the plugs at each end. Their grip and strain relief on the cables was tight with no gaps and very strongly adhered. I rang Michael Whiteside and asked him about the plug bodies, he told me that they are actually made in house and the bodies are formed on a 3D printer – very snazzy. The printer itself was also built in-house with custom heads and configurations for speed and accuracy.

Installing them into my system was a breeze, there is great flexibility and although for the RCA version the plug casing looks large I didn’t have any issues with varying equipment when connecting in close proximity of other cables.

I’ve been a long term user of Studio Connections cables and the former company name Abbey Road Cables, owning cables from each of their ranges over the past several years. I’ve always obtained a great balance of sound from their products and considered their ranges to be very well priced and extremely effective in application over many items of kit in various systems. My last experience with SC was about 18 months ago as I like to try new products from different companies, so when approached for a review of the Platinum Digital Cables, which I had not investigated until this time I was more than happy to accommodate the company.

THE SOUND 

With the cables already being thoughtfully burned in were ready to go out of the box.

As my DiDiT DAC212 doesn’t accommodate AES/EBU I used an Audiobyte Black Dragon as my test DAC. Owning the Hydra X+ from the same company allowed me to connect both SPDIF and AES/EBU cables simultaneously and simply flick between inputs to compare with each and of course assess direct comparisons with other cables.

Similarities 

This section of similarities needed to be the first and foremost piece of dialogue. Both cables have  sonic differences from their respective implementation and the AES has a slightly darker or deader background, but most notably when listening to either cable I was drawn most definitely to the landscape of the image. The soundstage produced by both cables was very well locked in, allowing for a non bloated centre focus and deep, intricate details to hold areas of the soundstage that was already accompanied by other artefacts in a way that you began to believe that there really was increased layering and positional awareness of large instruments and smaller inflections of vocals and room acoustics.

For example: Joss Stone’s ‘sticky mouth’ could be heard so well that you want to offer her a glass of wine – or three. Nils Lofgren’s guitar strings sat clearly in front of the body of the instrument with clear definition on his palm heel on the wooden casket, whilst crowd applause was crowd applause rather than a Sunday morning fry up sizzling away in the pan.

The construction of each cable is effectively what SC see as being the optimal configuration of chosen materials for each of the respective applications. A true 75Ohm SPDIF and a true 110Ohm AES/EBU, the latter being more effective on longer runs, yet in most domestic environments either should suffice.

RCA SPDIF  

When looking for an RCA SPDIF cable most of us settle on versions which are not true 75Ohm but rather 50Ohm. Most manufacturers believe this is sufficient, it does work and sound will travel from point A to point B, but impedance mismatches will inevitably create errors in timing, increased jitter and result in a poor or less stable image. On various pieces of equipment over time, which I knew would remain in my system for sustained periods, I would also have the RCA digital inputs reconfigured to the BNC type and always found great benefits in having the cable I was using at the time reterminated to comply. Using a Platinum digital RCA rescued me from the annoyance of pondering over this factor.

So, I began listening intently, firstly to some very bare acoustic music and gradually busied things up. During my initial listing tests I couldn’t hear any hash in the background, notes decayed ever so well and tone was really natural with expressive timbre. As things got busier, introducing more instruments and a vocalist, I could clearly ascertain  each’s position within the soundstage accurately, with no blurring or smearing of the vocals. Even drum strikes would sit separately defined to string decays and reverbs. With the busiest of orchestras or dance music at volume I had a new found extra stability to my stereo imaging.

The cable doesn’t really have a sonic signature, it’s very truthful and transparent and will allow the listener to hear a cohesive and balanced rendition of a recording and will help also in ascertaining system synergy. If the sound replayed after installing one of the digital cables mentioned in this review doesn’t suit, then I would stress that there are clocking or software issues at play, or that the listener simply prefers a coloured representation of the sound, which of course is fine. If the system components are really well matched then the SC digital cables will simply just express this without bottleneck.

The Platinum digital being from a brand named Studio Connections should also not put the willies up you, there’s no analytical portrayal of the music, no hardness, grain or unwanted nasties being reflected from one point to another, just a faithful, musical and pure sound that for me, doesn’t leave me thinking about cables anymore.

Balanced  

I’ve always championed the 110Ohm XLR variant and its ability to sustain longer runs without affected noise pollution, better noise rejection and of course the stability and low mass of the plugs’ conductors themselves.

In any balanced situation an 110Ohm cable will win over an RCA cable… this will be debated by tube lovers and the single ended circuit design of course. However, my latest preamp is a single ended design with unbalanced XLR outputs allowing for an XLR cable construction to be used. Many other cables can boast superior noise rejection properties in their most complex forms over XLR in its most basic, but I am purely commenting on the basic structures and standard implementation.

Using the Platinum digital AES/EBU over the SPDIF variant allowed for what seemed to be an increase of just a few percent in leading edge clarity and decay prominence. I believe that in this test, within my room and system that the AES was a superior implementation and companion to the digital front end I had in play from Audiobyte.

Transient response seemed faster also and if you could say that the RCA was a little softer then the AES was a little sharper, not in tonality but in the rendering of edges and decays. The SPDIF version could be said to be a little more musical and the AES a little more detailed, but this really would be system dependant and the differences are minor. The XLR based digital Platinum cable gave a little more clarity also to a male vocalists’ lower tones and the RCA a little more roundness to a females’ top end.

Most notably during all of my listening sessions with this cable was just how unforced and musical the sound was, ever so less digital and the imaging was just so much tighter, giving a feel of more accurate timing with realistic reverbs and decays. Everything I was hearing made more sense over all the other high-end digital cables I’ve heard to date and I fealt the review item was really just ‘fit and forget’. Nothing stands out but everything is better – if that makes sense?  

CONCLUSIONS  

It’s clear to understand how Michael Whiteside has spent so much time in the professional arena and how his skills are referred to as ‘absolutely crucial’. It’s so easy to put wire into plugs and make a connection, but really understanding the true physics of each application of cable is absolutely paramount.

I appreciate the way Michael talks about cables and the analogies he has in describing design attributes to the less knowledgeable of us and when you hear how he explains topics to even the least savvy of us one can readily relate to what he is conveying and all information passed on from him to the industry and customers alike is all researchable and verifiable. There’s no BS (apart from the industry standard) involved, it’s just good honest dedication, experience and a commitment to his chosen sector of the industry and I guess this is why he is somewhat indispensable in his area.

Moving from one area of audio into another doesn’t always transfer well, but a cable is a cable right? Wrong, each cable needs a pragmatic and experienced approach to determine it suitable for its chosen application. Then there is the tweaking of the standards to produce a superior version, I guess having a physics background can help with the relationships of electrons to dielectrics and material interaction on a tribo-electric level. Somehow I don’t think most of us care really.

What we do care about is a cable which is honestly made by an individual who can clearly prove his credentials and review processes such as these which independently broadcasts opinions on the cables in question. I have had a lot of cabling from all over the world and I can stand on my oath and state that Studio Connections Platinum Digital Cables are some of the very best and the fact they are built here in England makes me smile even more.

Pros:

Well constructed

Neutral and highly transparent

Impeccable timing and soundstaging

Cons:

Same with all high-end cables, they do cost a pretty penny.

Price at time of review – £1350 1m

Dan Worth

David Robson takes these relatively budget-minded cables from Scottish manufacturer Atlas out for a drive both individually and as a full loom set up. 

Atlas EOS Modular 4 Way Power Distribution Block (unfiltered) £295rrp and Atlas EOS Power Cord. 13A 2sq mm (£160)

The Atlas EOS 4 Way out the box looks and feels like a good quality and well-made piece of equipment. It has no switches or unnecessary lights added to it, just a simple steel encased functional box. Although reading the specifications on the Atlas website this is no simple box. Each outlet has star wiring and the box is shielded from Rf / EMI via a welded steel chassis. It has a maximum 2.3kw capacity.

The EOS power cords likewise are well made with solid looking plugs and shrouded in black nylon style webbing. Slipping the 13A plug into its socket with so much ease it was virtually sucked into position, this brings to the fore how well this bit of kit has been made. All the components inside the sockets have been designed to give as great a contact area as possible and use materials that aid in the process to get the electricity as “quickly and as cleanly” as it can to your equipment.

I was unsure of what to expect from fitting the EOS to my main system as I was lucky enough to have a dedicated mains electric spur added to my listening room on a rebuild a couple of years ago. I have also always used a cheaper filter block on all the electronics in my home routinely also.

There is always a lot of “debate” with regards to power supplies and mains filters (among all the other debates) on social media groups with some people just discounting it as Hogwarts Snake Oil, others vehemently needing to vent their disagreement and then those who will sit back and smile knowing that their money has been well spent. My own take is that I’d always add some sort of filtering, as long as it doesn’t detract from the sound quality. If you hear sonic benefits then Boomshanka Baby! Enjoy.

Back to the Atlas EOS. Playing the much overused Dire Straits “Brothers In Arms” CD there is a change to the music. It’s not a complete night and day, it isn’t even massively different in tonality. Then again, it doesn’t have to be, but different it is though! The change is more about a sonic perspective, maybe a little brighter. It feels like instruments have either grown or reduced slightly in size. Not in an unnatural way, just reorganised their relation to one another. This is only a very slight re-marshalling of priorities. Drums, guitars and vocals are as prominent as ever, but some of the associated percussion has moved a little in intensity, giving space to the music around it and offering up a bit more “realism” and believability to what I’m listening to. “Money For Nothing” bangs out with good timing and rhythm, Mr Knopffler’s vocals not getting congested in any way, drums and bass guitar striking the beat for the song and the growling lead guitar sits clearly behind the singer… but very clearly defined and in its own space. “Why Worry” has a similar presentation, the music feels quite airy and has taken on a delicate edge, the width and height of the soundstage seems to have grown too. Not with instruments but with space.  During the track there is an echoing glockenspiel type sound from what seems to be the drum kit, towards the upper right of the sound picture. It arrives very much in a defined targeted position. Rock solid every time. Bass response throughout the album seems to dig a bit deeper, with a little added power and extension.

Throwing a bit of female lead vocal into the mix I pop in a bit of Joan Armatrading, from her “Love and Affection” album. The well-known “Drop The Pilot” trips out with nice timing and rhythm, although the music seems to have lost a little in excitement. Her voice has lost a little sparkle somehow, and yet the sound overall feels a little brighter. Onto “Show Some Emotion”, the bass boogies out funktastically and the acoustic guitar strings come across detailed and have a nice hard metallic edge and feeling, cymbals have a crispness that isn’t too hard either. Her vocals yet again just not hitting the spot for me. A change of artist and recording is required.

Eddi Reader’s Fairground Attraction has been with me from my teens, an amazing singer whose CD single of “Clare” has accompanied me to every audition. I’ve recently expanded my single CD and bought into several more Eddi and Fairground Attraction albums. I’m glad to say any reservations about the earlier Armatrading vocals with the Atlas EOS attached has been unfounded as Eddi’s musicality is rich and warm on tracks like “Walking After Midnight” and “Jock O’Hazeldean”. Details from the instruments in the Parisian-esque presentation of “Clare” are all clear and present. The track can get complicated and sibilant towards the end, but it never becomes a painful experience. Just a pleasant assemblage of sounds.

CONCLUSION

It’s in no doubt in my mind that the Atlas Eos and its associated power cables have an impact upon the sound by adding it to your system. I think if you have never used mains blocks/filters/conditioners before then bringing this to the table will bring pleasing results. It’s an open airy sound. It brightens up the sound a tad and adds a little hardening to the mids and treble, not in a clinical or acidic way but it takes a bit of the roundedness and a little warmth away from the sound.

I think the benefits need to be weighed up by the listener, as changes to a warm rounded sound if that’s your bag may not be to everyone’s taste. A home demo is recommended. If I was starting out again on my Hi-Fi journey I would definitely add a Mains block from the begining, then build with confidence knowing you have a good launchpad from the off.

Atlas Element Digital Optical Cable 1m (£30)

The Atlas Element cable is a bright white flexible cable using a PVC outer and incorporates a single strand of Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) at its core, this is sometimes known as Acrylic Glass. This inner light conducting fibre is coated with a thermal protective shielding reducing warping risk and then the white outer protective PVC covering giving a final protection layer from impact or other damage.

On examination of the metal die cast plugs there are 2 recessed rubber bands on each connector to aid to gripping the plugs, these are easily dislodged and can come off. Either they need to be replaced with a tougher band or done away with altogether. Apart from that the Digital Optical cable is fitted with quality moulded ABS Toslink connectors. Using a good quality Toslink is essential as unfortunately I have inadvertently damaged and broken off the optical doors with inferior connectors on cheap cables.

Using my last used CD for the previous EOS review (Fairground Attraction “The Very Best Of”) for comparison purposes, it’s immediately obvious that this cable loses nothing much in the way of anything from the original sound within the CD player itself. Eddi Readers voice has its beautiful liquid quality left securely in place on “The Moon Is Mine” and “The Wind Knows My Name”. The deep bass notes reaching down low, not getting flabby or loose,  her voice sailing from low to shimmering high without losing any composure. The brush on the snare drum, sweeping and detailed so you can feel the pressure of the bristles on the skin. I’m finding it difficult to find a negative to say really. If really pushed there may be a slight rise within the bass of vocals giving an ever so slight wooden feeling to some deeper vocal moments, this on only some tracks and has to be hunted out as its on very few.

A track this is sometimes apparent on is my copy of The Eagles “Hotel California” (remastered) title track. Nay nonny nay, it’s not there, there is a slight rise in bass though, a slight warmth to it. It’s not an unlikable sound at all! It remains tuneful and allows you to follow the bass guitar closely. Guitars range out well at the commencement of “Life In The Fast Lane” followed soon after by the well defined kick of the bass drum. Vocals are accurately placed and hold enough detail to feel its gravelly nature. The dynamics of the track are all held in place too. There is plenty of weight in the lower registers, although possibly a softening to it. Soundstage on “Wasted Time” is wide and well spread, that warmth keeping the vocals a little back in the musical picture, but it’s perfectly acceptable given the price of the Atlas Element Cable and the performance as a whole is very good.

Just to round things off with a bit of head-banging rock (before my other half gets home!) Guns and Roses get to go for a spin. Appetite For Destruction can sound a little harsh on my system at times. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” comes across with true outdoor concert like credentials. Axle Rose’s voice hanging correctly out front of the speakers and electric guitars sitting in the background giving a good depth to the performance. “It’s So Easys” guitar intro is rock solid in its composure, the accompanying cacophony of drums and cymbals come crashing out, but still being able to follow the vocals is a good sign that the detail isn’t being lost within the music.

CONCLUSION

This is a good budget Optical interconnect from Atlas. The Element portrays a faithful way to transport your digital signal from the player to the DAC. It loses very little if anything from the original recording. My own thoughts are that optical cable can add a little warmth or rounded sounds to music per-se. That is more about the equipment involved rather than the cable itself.

Atlas Equator Integra Mk3 RCA 1M (£75)

First look at the Equator cable brings about a definite quality look and feel. The pearlescent off white outer is terminated with clear plastic type RCA connections. The cable feels weighty in its construction, and is nicely finished. The Equator Integra cable doesn’t seem to be marked as directional. If a cable isn’t marked as directional my rule of thumb is that I match the writing on the cable to the same orientation and let the signal flow to the direction of the writing. This may seem a little picky, but it gives every unit tested and reviewed the same equal treatment. This Equator cable is fitted with Atlas’s Integra RCA plugs. A non-magnetic two piece internal that is solder free and cold welded. Further details are found on the Atlas website. Just to add, Atlas has supplied a Burn-In style CD with the cables. This is a really nice touch from the Scottish company. It’s also accompanied with an information booklet too that has a lot of information about this and other products. A welcome addition to your purchase.

After a few days burn in time I start my listening session with a bit of Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” album. And WOW! I’m immediately impressed with what I hear. A Beautifully succulent smooth sound, “Glamour Profession” bounces along with great verve and rhythm. There is a great deal of detail being pulled out of the recording, a very natural presentation. Bass guitar easily followed along with the vocals which can sound a little distorted with some cables, but with the detail brought out by the Equator this is not the case here. “Time Out Of Mind” starts with the Bass drum kicking away and a weighty piano intro. It’s deep and it’s taut and musically correct to my ears. The same can be said about the piano, it has a good presence and is not too forward or hard. The width and depth of the soundstage is just perfect. I have heard few set-ups, never mind cables alone, that can match what I’m hearing here. “My Rival” the slow melodic drum arrives with great timing and pace. The sound effects coming from far and wide within my listening room, the different cymbal strikes are easily differentiated between. If I have to be pushed to say a negative, it would be that the cymbals could sound a tiny bit crisper and the timbre could do with just decaying a millisecond longer. That is being super picky though.

From the funkiness of Steely Dan, to the chilled out tunes of Ben Howard’s “Every Kingdom” CD. A great album, not only for its content but its presentation too. The Detail in the track “Everything” gets brought to your ears. There is a bit of background shuffling and guitar string tuning and touching all heard clearly. The plucking of guitar strings and the touch of flesh on the metallic wires is all apparent, even the faked crackles and pops of vinyl (pet hate) is all there. Ben’s vocal is honed into the very middle of the soundstage. The inflections in his voice give an “in the room” presence and hangs a foot or more forward of the rest of the music. “The Fear” Guitar and vocal in isolated space, together and yet separate, the beat arrives and in great stereo “magicality” I have lost my speakers. They have ceased to exist in the room. Completely gone, just music left. With the lights off and my eyes shut there is just black void and sounds.

In honour of the recently sadly departed Thin White Duke I play “Best of Bowie”. “Ashes to Ashes” rips out, taking me back to my youth, Bowie’s vocals clear and individualistic, even in the multi-layered presentation, never getting lost within the track. “Lets dance”, “China Girl” and “Modern Love”. Probably not the best loved songs for the Bowie aficionados, but all have me foot tapping and wanting me to find my sharpest tailored suits and shirts, and to find a local 80’s discotheque to handbag dance in (none of which now fit or even exist)!! The varying qualities and sound of recordings across this “Best Of” CD show that the Atlas Equator Integra is unfussy of what it’s presented with. It seems to take everything in its stride.

CONCLUSION

I have to commend Atlas for this great cable. It stands up to cables costing five times or more the price. It wipes the floor with any budget cables. It’s neutral, rhythmical, detailed and balanced. The soundstage has to be heard to be believed. The only downsides I can hear is that it could do with a bit more top end sparkle. My system is quite a warm sounding affair anyhow and this may not be the case with other set-ups. As is always the case you should audition your intended purchases at home where possible. This will be my recommended cable to all who enquire.

Atlas Equator Mk2 Bi-Wire (2 into 4) Speaker Cable 2m (£120 terminated)

Having just reviewed the Equator Integra RCA cables I was looking forward to the Equator speaker cable. Both sets of wires have a very similar look of a pearlescent off white outer PVC style casing. The banana plugs fitted to my sample are my preferred gold plated Z style. I find these fit well into the 4mm holes and offer good contact. The banana plugs have grey shrouds which are not shrink-wrapped onto the cable leaving a gap from the shroud to the cable. I’m quite sure that all is very secure and well put together, but I’d like to see it fit a bit better with a more secure feel. Apart from that little niggle the rest of the cable is nice and flexible. My set for review is 2 banana plugs at the amp end to 4 at the speaker end allowing for Bi-Wiring. Where the cable splits to form the 4 wires there is an extra shrink-wrapped cover and it’s very secure and well finished.

After letting these cables burn in for a few days (Atlas offer a burn in service too) I load in the much used Eagles “Hotel California” into the CD. Rather apt after the sad departing of Glen Frey. We all know how this one starts with a nicely picked guitar. Strings come across well defined and frosty crisp, the percussion, cymbals and shakers all come through audibly clean, and appear out wide of the soundstage. The first thump thump of the bass drum kicks out with good power, but it’s a little less defined as the other instruments. This is the same for the other drum sounds, there is a slight softening to the stick strikes, making the drums sound a little soft. It’s not massively obvious and neither does it upset the song as a whole. Other details though are good. Nice smooth vocals, guitars are sweet sounding without becoming hair raising and the bass although a little softened goes deep.

Popping in “Crime Of The Century” a Supertramp staple for my listening tests and reviews, the story is the same. There’s bags of detail on offer from recordings. Playing “School” which has a lot of different sounding parts to the record, there is a good depth to the sound, punchy and rounded. With just that slight softening to the basslines – this softening takes a little excitement out of the male vocals, luckily the Atlas Equator show good timing and rhythm helped no doubt by their weighty kick. “Hide In Your Shell”, the introductory Male vocals lose a little feeling and emotion to them as the bass tones within the low registers in the voice makes the words a little indistinct. It is by no means a muddy or distorted sound, as when the rest of the music picks up tempo it’s all good in your face fun. As much as I may seem to be picking holes in the Equator its positives far, far outweigh any negatives. To prove a point to myself I go for some modern pop. Jess Glynne’s “I Cry When I Laugh”. Now I’m not about to get my old disco dancing attire out of retirement and tell you I’m up with the young guns. This is about as modern as I get. “Hold My Hand” is initiated by single piano key strikes and Jess’s smooth, sweet vocals hanging out to the front of the speakers. (After having to turn the volume down 2 notches from my standard listening level, lordy!). This is followed by the big bass sounds of the club scene, it just bounces along with good head nodding, foot swinging tunefulness. “Take Me Home” shows how beautiful Miss Glynne vocal ability is. It’s just a pity the music makers don’t see how her voice should be accompanied by a full spectrum of sound from the piano ( like on Songbird, McVie/Fleetwood Mac ) not the compressed variant on this track. This is the recording and nothing to do with our review cables, as the Atlas Equator do everything in their power to make this song an emotional cracker. The deep bass banging out, the artists vocals not affected by the ka-thump of the rhythms. Putting the pop/disco driven “Don’t Be Hard On Yourself” up to silly levels to see how the Atlas Equator coped, I can truly say there is something that takes me back to my youth with this pop music! Turning on the disco lights to add to the ambiance, the cable didn’t distort this electronically assembled music; neither did it harden up the female vocals, keeping everything quite separate and distinctly apart. Towards the end of the track there are some very deep sound effects which were all handled without any fuss, and the drivers where held within a tight grip and not getting into a flap (unlike my disco trousers!).

CONCLUSION

The Atlas Equator Bi-Wire is the real deal, it has its qualities evenly spread across its abilities. It doesn’t fail on any level. It gives a good amount of detail in the upper registers and it excels in timing, rhythm and its powerful presentation. The upper mids and treble are all well produced, nothing gets harsh or sibilant. The slight loss and fuzz of fine detail within the mid to low bass isn’t glaring and is only bettered by cables several times its cost.

Atlas Loom. 5.  EOS Modular/Equator Integra RCA/Element Digital Optical/Equator Bi-Wire.

Having tested and reviewed the supplied Atlas cable Loom as individual items, I have now assembled them all together for a bit of a listening session. I personally wouldn’t have gone for a single manufacturer of cables to use in my system at one time (read 1980’s-90’s), as I don’t think back then that any one manufacturer had a full set worthy of using. Today though, the choices seem to be greater than in the past and quality seems to be higher than ever. I would say though, that once you venture beyond the budget end of cabling, that trying to have an audition or borrowing cables from your dealer is the way to go. Some will give you cables to try at home, some will let you buy cables with the understanding that if they are unsuitable you can return them and swap them for another. Be cheeky and ask. If your dealer won’t do this then I’d suggest going elsewhere, as profit not service or your musical pleasure is first and foremost in his ethics.

Anyhow, onto a bit of listening. I’m not going to go to specific albums etc, just a general overview on the Atlas loom. Across the board all these cables The Element Digital, Equator RCA and Bi-Wire Speaker cable and EOS Modular block/cable have given a good account of themselves. To my ears there is nothing that stands out in a negative way. Together these cables form a great combination. They win big time on drive and rhythm, I get a slightly warm presentation when I use the Optical cable in the system, but I’m convinced that is the way with optical in every cable. There is an abundance of detail and information producing a good presentation of the music in every genre.

The Equator speaker / Integra RCA are great soul mates, they seem to be cut from the same audio block and suit each other. There is a slight loss of detail from the lower end of the musical spectrum from the speaker cables, but add this to the soundstage and clarity of the Integra RCA it’s only a very minor gripe. The Equator Integra is my outstanding product in this group test. I’m blown away by the way it paints the sonic picture. It just makes me smile listening to it. It also makes me want to go out and buy one just to listen to every CD I own again with it in place! You may better it with other cables but you will pay a very heavy premium in cost to do that. I would also like to give a big Hurrah for Atlas supplying a Test CD with some of its products. It’s a nice gesture and quite invaluable when breaking in new RCA/Speaker/Coax cables. That little attention to detail goes a long way.

The EOS modular electrical block and its associated cables are well made and offer a slightly different presentation to the music. This quality product would, in my opinion need to be tried and auditioned with a current system. Although if I was building from scratch I wouldn’t hesitate to incorporate it from the start. Knowing that you’re getting the best electrical feed and using it as trusted piece of lifetime kit.

David Robson

Paradox Audio hail from Oslo in Norway and headed by Tore Magnus Wilhelmsen, founded early in the year 2010.  They produce a range of cables aimed squarely at the high end of the market and the company’s tagline is “Probably the world’s most honest cables”. Dominic Marsh plumbs them into his system.

The philosophy behind that is Paradox Audio says that only the finest materials go into their cables, which directly affects the music coming out.  Bold words, so let’s see if that claim is substantiated.

Three cables were submitted for review, in the shape of the Soundwave single ended RCA interconnect of 1.5 metres in length priced at US$ 1619 (£1,062), then a 1.5 metre Velocity power cable with Schuko inlet connector priced at  US$ 2349 (£1,541) and lastly a 2.5 metre pair of Singularity speaker cables fitted with 4mm banana plugs priced at US$ 1549 (£1,016).  All of the cables are handmade.

They appear to be second up from the bottom of the Paradox Audio range.

Construction

Sadly no construction details are given on the Paradox website for the Soundwave interconnects but I can tell you they are a flat ribbon design and fitted with the Neutrik Reen RCA plugs.  Conductor material is said to be of very high purity copper with a choice of having a shield or not fitted.  Being a flat ribbon design means you have to be careful when handling the cable as it is all too easy for the cable to loop over itself and kink and once kinked, an impression of the kink could be left permanently.   This cable is also available in XLR balanced configuration.

The Velocity power cable has an outer diameter of 13.4mm and is fairly flexible.  Conductor material is high purity oxygen free copper with 3 conductors of 11 AWG (3 x 4mm) each with 3 layers of copper and aluminium shielding.  Insulation is by way of PE and PVC layers.  Connectors fitted to the review sample were an alloy bodied Schuko inlet connector and a large plastic bodied IEC connector.  Power handling is said to be 89 Amps maximum, although the connectors are rated at considerably less than that figure.  The outer covering is an expandable mesh sleeving, with a choice of colours available.  Mains inlet plugs available for USA, Australia, UK and Schuko connections, as are high current IEC connectors.

Lastly, the Singularity speaker cable is again a flat ribbon design with an outside diameter of 11.9mm.  Conductor material is said to be high purity copper and arranged in “modules”.  Each one of these modules has what appears to be a range of conductors in descending order of gauge to make up 12 AWG in total. Additional modules can be added according to application.

The review sample was fitted with 4mm “Z” plugs and spade connections are also available to order.

Sound

The first cable I inserted into my resident system was the power cable and immediately I could tell this was a cable that was not shy of delivering high current. Bass became fuller and more taut, with a complete lack of boom or overhang – the benchmark of a good power cord.  I particularly liked the look and feel of the alloy Schuko connector, although connection quality was no better or worse than other boutique connectors as it could be wiggled in the socket although actual connection was never lost. Next in went the interconnects, which added a small level of additional fine details over my resident cables, with the remainder of the frequencies on an equal par.  Finally, the speaker cables were connected up so I now had the full ‘loom’ of Paradox cables installed.  The speaker cables added a small level of refinement and better top end clarity. The collective result was very good performing; the added piquancy in the upper treble was very welcome to hear.

Time for some music to be played through the cables and into the CD drawer went my trusty test disc in the shape of Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album.  Track one called “Biscuits For Breakfast” begins with the drummer gently striking the Ride cymbal as the intro, which has to portray the metal ringing in the cymbal to be accepted as real and any masking here shows up instantly and readily.  The Paradox loom gave a good account of themselves with this test and I could find no criticisms to level at these cables.  Kick drum was portrayed with good weight and solidity, a good solid rhythmic pounding of the drum with impeccable timing, bang on cue with each beat, so no cause for concerns there.   Moving on to track 12 “Sort Of Revolution” we should be able to hear a clear distinctions in the change of venue ambience as each of the tracks on the album were laid down at different locations throughout one of Fink’s many European tours.  This track contains a large element of audience participation, with rhythmic hand clapping that shouldn’t sound like bacon frying in a pan, catcalls and cheering from the audience should also be very clear and concise too and the Paradox cables passed this test with flying colours.

As a contrast to that and considerably more technically challenging too, I followed on with some electronic music in the shape of Tripswitch’s excellent album “Geometry”.  There is some superb layering in this album and it takes a very competent set of cables to unfold and pull back all the layers so each strand is separated out and clearly defined in every respect.  The bass lines really are deep on this album, rather subtle in places too and can easily be muddled by the music around it.  The Paradox loom handled this task rather well, especially around the bass which has to be deep and not collide with other instruments in the mix, but once or twice did momentarily get recessed into the rest of the music, although there is no real cause for concern here as other cables in a similar class demonstrate the same trait.

Conclusion

These cables occupy an already crowded and very competitive market sector, so it is extraordinarily difficult to place them in any order of ranking amongst their contemporaries.  To their credit, Paradox Audio make no claims about their cable’s performance, so in that respect they are indeed “honest cables” and so presumably they allow their target audience to discover for themselves if that is the case.

My favourite cable of the three was the power cord, in it’s ability to transfer plenty of current when needed and being overhang and boom-free in the bass registers.  Speaker cables too were impressive for their fine balanced and detailed sound.  For the asking price however, I felt that the interconnects deserved better quality plugs than the Neutriks fitted by Paradox and I was left wondering if better quality plugs would have made a difference in sound quality.  Of course, I have made my views known to Paradox Audio.

We are talking about a high end price tag here and do the cables give a high end performance to match?  Well yes they did in my resident system, but whether they perform the same in your system is an unanswered question, naturally and hand built cables are never cheap to begin with.  They are fine cables nonetheless and if their price doesn’t faze you, then do put them on your audition list.

Pros: 

Sublime detailed sound with plenty of refinement.  The power cord did impress.

Cons: 

Not for those audiophiles with shallow pockets.  I would expect RCA plugs better than Neutriks fitted at this price level.

Dominic Marsh

Submitted for review to Hifi Pig we have this MS HD Power MS-EO2 SS, Star Wired mains block with surge protection and external earth point unit costing £369. Dominic Marsh takes a listen.  

Ever since I have reviewed the Audioplan Power Star and Finefilter mains conditioner for Hifi Pig way back in April 2015, I have been rather disgruntled by the performance of my extant mains conditioner and have been searching for a better unit to replace it with, at a price I could afford, let me add.

CONSTRUCTION

This is a substantially built unit made from aluminum alloy and fitted with 6 UK mains outlets.  Each of the outlet sockets is fully silver plated with high purity, high spring rate Phosphor Bronze socket clips that pass the BS Standard 30,000 times plug in/out test. The internal bus bars are heavy grade (5mm²) copper with silver plating and connecting wires are high purity copper, again with silver plating. The IEC inlet connector is a standard C14 x 10 amp rated type and is also made from copper, and silver plated.  There is no filtration fitted, although there is a surge limiter with resettable circuit breaker, so no fuse wire.  Internal wiring is catered for by a star layout and also an external 4mm banana socket at the opposite end to the inlet IEC offers an earthing point.  The case is finished off with black lacquer and the MS logo is ground through the lacquer to the metal beneath to shine a bright silver and looks attractive.

It has brass conical pointed isolation feet (which tend to slide around on a shiny surface), so I had to virtually corral it into a corner on the bottom shelf of my rack to plug and unplug cables when I couldn’t get two hands to it to keep it firmly still.   The brass feet are threaded into the bottom of the case with what looks to me like M6 threads, so alternative feet could be fitted with a better grip.  On carpet or a less smooth texture it should be fine.

Price at time of testing is £369.00.

SOUND QUALITY

Or rather the lack of a sound quality, as is the case with any mains block, surge protector, or mains filtration unit, they should have no sonic signature or characteristics of their own and impinge on the sound.

The first item I will check for then is any signs of compression, that is sitting on the dynamics and limiting the sound headroom.  My first impression of the MS unit was how open and unfettered it sounded, with not a trace of curtailing or limiting of the sound.  Space around instruments was huge, bass was delivered with great weight and power, while my system’s natural ability to do yards deep imaging was enhanced even more, making it seem deeper still.  Everything sounded just so clear and insightful, with familiar recordings taking on a whole new dimension of appreciation, enjoying what was being heard and resulted in one of my listening sessions extending into the early hours, I was enjoying it so much.

Live albums especially had vibrancy and “aliveness” that really made you feel as though you were sat in the venue maybe four or five rows back from the stage, hearing all of the music clearly and being right in amongst your fellow audience members.   My recent purchase of Fink’s “Wheels Under My Feet” live album recorded in different venues around the world exemplifies that feeling of just being there each time when the tracks were actually recorded.

Despite there being no filtration circuitry built in, it certainly sounded like there was.  Treble definition was noticeably clearer, with ambience especially giving a more detailed and resolved sonic picture.   Separation between instruments was noteworthy, without showing any clashing or crashing into each other during hectic music passages and sound staging too was crisp and pinpoint precise.  I couldn’t hear any squashing or suppressing of dynamics during the review at any time.  If there was any compression effects, then the most obvious symptom is that the bass acquires a boom artefact and loss of control, but no, I give this particular mains block a clean bill of health in that respect.

CONCLUSION

Considering the MS HD Power MS-EO2 SS doesn’t have any filtration circuitry built into it, save for a surge suppressor device, it managed to convince me that it had!  That tells me a lot of thought has gone into the design and build of this component.  The sound was crystal clear without any compression and beyond that I couldn’t level any criticism against it, save its skating propensities in my rack!  I would expect this level of performance from mains conditioners costing considerably more, yet the price at £369.00 is worthy of consideration so I give it my recommendation.  I have one on order no less and that ends my current search for an affordable good sounding 6 way mains block.

Pros:  Superb sound quality at a reasonable price.  Fit and finish is very good.  Surge suppression built in.

Cons: Hard plastic feet makes the unit slide around on a shiny surface.

Price at time of testing: £369.00

Features and specifications

• 100% Compliant with BS-1363 and BS-5733 Safety Standards
• 6 Silver plated Premium Grade Sockets High Spring Rate Phosphor Bronze Sockets Clips Pass the BS Standard 30,000 times plug IN / OUT test
• 5 mm² Power Transmission Bus Bars with 1.0 µm Pure Silver Plating Star Earth Wiring.

Dominic Marsh

David Robson takes a look at Indonesian company Vermouth Audio’s Rhapsody loudspeaker and mains cables costing £200 for a six foot pair for the former and £150 for a four foot cable for the latter. 

Vermouth Audio Rhapsody Speaker Cable

£200 for 6ft pair (You can customise your cable for £16.56 per foot)

It’s refreshing to know (or is that surprising to know) that after a few years out of our hobby, things have changed in the world of Hifi. In my youth Hifi was mainly Japanese, with a bit of crusty old fashioned British stuff with no whizzy lights or twiddly knobs. This in the mind of a young naive teen, who’s mind had been swayed by movies and media. A few years back into the hobby and the universe of Hifi has opened up to world markets. Apart from our local European cousins we now see great products from afar as China, India and new to me, Indonesia. Vermouth Audio, hails from Bali, Indonesia. Specialising in high quality Hifi audio cables, mains cables and speakers, and I’m the lucky ducky who has been given the job or perusing and reviewing their Rhapsody range of cables.

This is a new style and type of cable to what I’m used to. First of all, let me tell you of the packaging and how it arrives. The cables are carried in a nice printed linen cloth bag, with “Vermouth, Hand Crafted in Bali”, proudly emblazoned on the front, it also comes with a certificate of authenticity. This a virtual birth certificate of your new product. Having its own manufacture date, serial No. model name and who actually constructed your cable. A nice touch!

This cable and its sheathing is very thick, around 1.8cm in diameter. The blue interwoven nylon style outer sheath terminates into an anodised collar, this leading to the two 12awg black and red speaker wires, again terminating in two beautiful quality anodised banana plugs which are high grade copper with gold plating. A first for me on these plugs is that the “sprung” bit of the plug actually spins around; I’m sure this gives good contact with the 4mm banana socket of your speakers. Although initially in my mind it had more of a chance of losing contact due to the possible movement of the connectors due to external vibrations, but I have been reassured this type of banana plug locks firmly into place. These cables are weighty so any chance of this being an issue is very slim anyway, but on reflection I think I would prefer a standard style “fixed” 4mm banana. The cable feels a little stiff, but this is the first time I have encountered one of these big gauge sleeved cables. It’s a bit like wielding a garden hose as it only wants to turn and move where it wants to. A bit of twisting and coiling and things are fine. The whole cable feels tough and durable.

The speaker cables have 257 strands in total and 12AWG Hybrid UPOCC conductor per channel. There are multi-sized & multilayer conductors in two different groups. The non-woven fabric is there for extra dampening and protection and there is something Vermouth call “air tube spacer & suspension” with an18 mm high-flexibility design allowing easy installation. Anodized sandblasted aluminium cable stoppers, cold forged Copper with Gold Plated terminations and anodised Aluminium shell connectors complete the package.

Vermouth recommends up to 150hrs for the cable to fully break in and settle. Time to hit the CD storage shelves!

After letting the cables run for several days I’m happy to throw a bit of Dire Straits into the slot and let their debut, self-titled album spin. The soundstage from the opening tracks are wide and deep enough to have Mr Knopfler’s voice in its own space, with other instruments defined yet again in their own single space. Six Blade Knife has a good regular drum beat accompanied with nice clear bass guitar, the Rhapsody cables bringing a deep smooth moodiness out from the track. There is a slight roundedness to bass lines and drum strikes, not exactly turning snare drums into bongos but there is a slight loss of the outer definition of bass and drum notes. Vocals don’t seem to be affected by this and come across clear and well presented.

Switching to Nils Lofgren, Acoustic Live, (my new favourite record of the moment). A very well recorded album and a “must have” for those liking Joe Bonamassa etc. I’m happy at the amount of detail the Vermouth cables are picking up. Nils guitar strings having a good weight attached to each strike or pluck. Even when playing gets frantic the instruments are conveyed correctly and uncluttered. On “Little on Up” the simply started tune builds into a full on crescendo of guitar and vocal, the Rhapsody plays out the big scale with ease, albeit just once again losing out on the very extreme of the scale. The deeper tones just getting a little rounded or possibly smeared and the treble just not hitting that very crispy zing of metal strings, it doesn’t spoil the music because it’s both bottom and top in equal measure. That doesn’t make these cables a dull listen, far from it, as other details and qualities within the soundscale keep you well entertained.

Heading to a bit of pop and Roxy Music’s Best Of. A little try out of Bryan Ferry’s vocals and classic tunes to see how these Vermouth Rhapsody speaker cables cope with some of the 70’s & 80’s dancefloor fillers of my youth! And very well they sound too. I find some of the lesser quality recording can sound very average and even painful at times, these give a good rendition of the music, neither falling into the dull muddiness or overly bright harshness that can befall some music of days gone by. The classic late night last slow dance of Avalon comes across with oodles of detail, instruments once again in their own zones, finger strikes on small bongo drums clear as a bell; the female accompanying vocals are sweet and hang up high, giving a big sense of scale. “Dance Away” sees Mr Ferry’s vocals seep beautifully from my Russell K Red 50’s, projecting feeling and emotion into the room, accompanied by the rhythmic beat and good foot tapping timing too boot!

Pros

Neutral sound

Hold up well to their price point

Their neat bags with certificates are a very nice touch too.

Cons.

The cables lose a tiny amount of bass detail at the lower end and just missing out on having a super crisp top end

Their size and construction may put some off, but if size matters, these are your boys as they look meaty and impressive

Vermouth Audio “Rhapsody” Power Cable

£150 (4 foot) with IEC/Shuko Plug.

The Vermouth Rhapsody Power Cable, looks identical in appearance to the Rhapsody Speaker cable, being of a thick tough sheathing at about 1.8cm thickness covered by a blue nylon woven outer. Like the Rhapsody speaker cable the power cable arrives packaged in a linen embossed bag, with a certificate of authentication. The thickness and construction again can be a bit difficult to route around corners as it will only bend and move in the direction it wants to. Either end of the Power cable is a Wattgate plug. Very nice, and well-made connections – these having an IEC and a Shuko plugs. Being picky I’d have likeed some sort of tape or liner where the thick cable enters the plugs themselves, as irregular gaps at this price point look a little less classy. This probably offering no sonic benefits at all, but there is a rubber sleeve midway along the cable which if positioned just into the plug, would look a tad nicer. Not that these cables look cheap by any margin, but that extra attention to detail goes a long way.

I attached the Power Cable to my Schiit Bifrost DAC. I usually use after market power cables instead of the manufacturers own, but I had replaced my own cable with the standard one a few days before to judge this power cable against a standard.

A new artist to me, Sandy Denny, was spun on the laser player first. The Rhapsody power cable immediately sounded open and clear, thus allowing Sandy’s vocals to emerge from the soundstage showing her heartfelt talents. Her rendition of “Who Knows where The Time Goes” (1973 Live BBC recording) is just so very sweet, the guitar strings timbre and weight are portrayed in a manner which allows the music to flow and not get congested or dull or interact negatively with the vocal by being too forward but accompany Sandy Denny’s singing within this fine recording. This is also very apparent on ”No End”, the Vermouth power cable giving a clean presentation, to the point where it becomes a difficult task to look for criticisms as the tunefulness takes me away from my task of reviewing!

Switching CD’s to something a little more soul/blues oriented. Keb’ Mo’s album “Just Like You”. A more modern recording than Sandy Denny’s, but still vocally driven.

“I’m On Your Side” has drum driving rhythms, with the occasional crash of cymbals, the timing and dynamics are well controlled, the snare drum has a full sprung sizzle and not an ill-defined slushy sound. Cymbals have a properly portrayed metallic crispness. Bass lines and drums do not stray into overblown boominess, neither do they sound weak or dull. The Rhapsody gives a very polished performance and doesn’t seem to interfere with the music in any negative way. If anything the lower bass registers seem quite enhanced.

“More Than One Way Home” has a more upbeat pop sound, the pace picks up, and again the instruments are set out and are clearly defined. There are plenty of detail and layers on offer. The depth of music in the listening room has bells and percussion pinging and tinging in and around my head showing that a good 3d performance is apparently available from the Vermouth power cable. I believe you only have to lose a little detail and dynamic ability and you can lose this soundstage. The Rhapsody keeps it all there, boogying rhythms and all.

And now for something completely different! From the folk, blues and soul sounds to a bit of one of my hometown hero’s, Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Probably not the last word in audiophile chic but top 80’s pop.

Using the Vermouth Rhapsody’s deeper punchier lower end to good effect, driving out the beat, leaving me wanting to find a good laser show and a warm beer. Classic tracks like “Relax”, “Two Tribes”, Welcome To The Pleasuredome” and “War” bang out the speakers with metronomic rhythms. Little bits of details that you don’t hear on lesser audio equipment are apparent and bringing a new level of appreciation to not only the bands efforts, but the Power cable too – never muddling the tunes or becoming too sibilant at the top treble reaches. “The Power Of Love” keeps its atmospheric air, but this track does let slip into a little acidity, but that I’m sure is more down to the recording itself and not the Vermouth Power Cable.

Pros

A good tuneful presentation with plenty of detail and drive

A definite contender within its price point

Cons

May stray into the “too bright” category in an already bright or harsh system

The short length of cable is a little stiff and may prove a little difficult to route in tight spaces

Vermouth Audio “Rhapsody” Speaker and Power Cables 

The inevitable conclusion of my reviews to combining both Vermouth Audio’s Speaker and Power cables as a one brand bundle brings about some surprises. Playing Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” CD I found percussion which before had either lost its top crisp edge or had had its upper treble reaches rounded off are now back in balance somewhat. Detail is yet again pulled from the CD and fed to the speakers with some sparkle and zest. Bass lines are easy to follow this time, with both the power and speaker cable being of the same camp and offering good synergy. On “Glamour Profession” some of the vocal content can appear, with some cables in place, to have an artificial “fizz” to some of the trailing S sounds in the vocal if the treble is too hardened or harsh but I’m glad to say this isn’t the case here with this pairing. There is a definite forward presentation but not being portrayed in an overly bright or offensive high frequencies manner. Time Out Of Mind trips out of the Russel K Red 50’s with the bass drum kicks and its accompanying piano in party mode, this style of forward sound could become irritating if not kept in check, happily though there is enough smooth controlled bass, being tuneful, and carrying the rest of the music along for the ride in correct perspective.

Moving onto Supertramp and It’s A Hard World from their Some Things Never Change album. This track to me is a superbly recorded and produced piece, as is the whole CD. Fine detail and some production tricks making the full height, width and depth of the soundstage work hard. Add in well placed sound effects and this track really highlights if anything is lacking. Here though everything is where it should be and nothing is missing from the scene. Listening through this album it’s clear that the pairing of the cables has a benefit over either in their own right. Not that either has any bad traits, just that together they shine, and feel a bit more accomplished and value for money.

AT A GLANCE

Sound Quality: Bringing the two cables together in the system brings the best out of them. There is an overall slightly forward presentation that may not suit those preferring a warmer presentation.

Build Quality: Well put together and with good quality connectors and plugs. 

Value For Money: Both cables offer up pretty good value for money given their contruction, materials used and their performance.

Pros

Together this pairing from Vermouth Audio have a real hand in hand friendship with the best attributes from both cables being allowed to express themselves

Cons

Size and stiffness of the cables

Slightly forward presentation

Price:

Speaker cables: £200 for 6ft pair

Power Cables: £150 for 4ft

David Robson

Studio Connections are based in the UK and produce a wide range of cables for home audio use. In this review Dan Worth and Dominic Marsh take a look at the company’s Carbon Power cables retailing at £190 for 1m. 

Studio Connections takes a radically new approach to making cables by centring the design process on how the brain perceives spatial and positional information with sound. They first delved into the biology of how sensory receptors deduce position, distance and depth.

In developing the products, designer Michael Whiteside draws from a BSc in Electronics and over 30 years of recording music, manufacturing cables and building studios that have included recording and mix studios such as the BBC, EMI Abbey Road and King’s College, Cambridge.

“The technical result for our cables is that they have very accurate timing across the broad, high frequency spectrum that is essential for our ability to interpret spatial awareness. The musical result is that the cables deliver faithfully, allowing us to hear incredibly natural sound and stereo with realistic dimensions” says Michael.

System Efficiency and General Implementation

High performance power distribution is not just about providing energy to components in my opinion, but also bonding components together to form a single, cohesive system. This demands providing a stable common reference ground͛ between components and preventing stray voltages and noise occurring between different parts of the system.

All electronic and electrical circuits create electromagnetic fields and noise. If these are not managed in a system then they will propagate throughout the system and cause disturbances. Most equipment and power conditioners use filters to reduce noise emissions. However, noise is rarely nullified into non-existence, and usually residual noise is reflected or sent to a ground connection or to a chassis.

There is an assumption a system ground has the infinite ability to absorb noise; in reality it is a wire network. Because it connects chassis together, it can minimise noise voltages between components, but it equally transfers noise energy between components as eddy currents͛. An increase in noise levels always degrades stereo image.

The only way to truly remove all noise from a system is, instead of trying to hard block͛ it or send it somewhere else, is to ensure there are no circuit loops that current can travel around and all the components share a common reference ground. To ensure any interference is dissipated as heat.

Installation

As mentioned in the previous paragraph strapping the earths to a common location is essential in appraising any power cable and really obtaining the best electrical solution for the components. Known as star earthing, designers have been implementing this technique for many years now within their electronics and distribution mains blocks. My own system a period of time ago consisted of two separate radials for front and back end equipment, with each having a balanced power supply and a filtered block for the front end and a passive for the amps.

Although the sound was terrific and all the equipment fed by seemingly capable and competent products, I could from time to time find myself with a soundstage that didn’t produce as accurate an image as I believed should have been presented to me. I had instances of overtones in higher frequencies that had a lack of body and lower notes which felt crumpled and crushed.

As Michael Whiteside, owner and designer of all Studio Connections products is as obtainable to the public as he is to industry personnel and is responsible for really honing down the wiring of some of our best known studios and theatres, I gave him a call with my concerns and he was as always ready and willing with advice.

We sketched out the systems wiring and immediately his suggestions were to remove the use of one of the radials in the circuit along with one balanced power supply. ‘Less is more in this case’ Michael stated. I naturally hesitated at this prospect as I believed that keeping the two balanced supplies in place would in fact eliminate crosstalk. Our first step in this case was to take a preliminary approach by strapping the two grounding points inside the balanced supplies to each other. This did not yield any ground breaking results (excuse the pun).

So next I went with Michael’s initial plan and removed one of the balanced supplies and negated one of the radials.

The new chain of power was one radial feeding one balanced power supply, two feeds from that supply, one to the front end filtered extension block and the other to my all star wired (neutral and live lines included) passive block for the amps the results were really staggering. Phase and timing was considerably more accurate and instrument tone and timbre was more natural, fluid and dynamically true.

Bring in the Carbon Mains Cables 

The installation of the Carbon Screened Mains Cables into my system began as straight forward as any other power cable review. I initially added one to each of my Reference Mono blocks. My first inspection on the sound was that over my previous far more expensive cables from various companies the sound gained solidity in the bass. I felt that initially I was hearing more bass, but during more intense listening it wasn’t the levels of bass which increased but more so the timing and accuracy of the bass line which had better energy and more natural dynamics allowing me to ascertain better separation of kick drums over bass and the extension of lower bass was freer and more substantially apparent.

I then proceeded to replace my existing cables back into the amplifiers and changed the one in the DAC for a SC Carbon. Most notably I understood the vocals better. What I mean is I could feel more emotion and realism in the artist’s rendition of the given music. When watching a live band, eye contact from the singer is essential in conveying the emotion that is felt in the lyrics, but we cannot have that with Hifi, as we strive to ascertain the emotion from the description of the vocal and with  the SC Carbon in place in my DAC I really felt a good connection with the singer. Not to degrade my other cables at all I could say that at a staggeringly cheap cost I felt that I was retaining a palpability that I had worked so hard to achieve which cost a great deal more previously.

Leaving this cable in place and adding another to the Paul Hynes power supply which keeps my modified Mac sustained. I actually achieved what was a more fleshed out and rich top end. The combination of the two was marvellous and the previous cable in this position being an all silver design was chosen as it gave a fantastically airy feel to the upper registers that I preferred over copper variants previously. The SC Carbon did two things for me, one it gave me a denseness to the frequency extremes in the top end allowing them to become more prominent and articulate and secondly the more natural timbre suddenly exposed to me that the top end previously was in fact over airy and almost overly dispersed. When listening for acoustic air and space in live venues I felt that the sound I was hearing was definitively truer and more representative, almost as if the other silver cable was a bit artificial in its sonic approach.

Of course the next step was to combine the results with the power amplifiers and the front end. Accuracy was at the forefront of the characteristics I was now presented with, accuracy in terms of tone and timbre, with a soundstage which produced dynamic depths and stage placements that made terrific sense. I had achieved a lot of this previously by honing down the grounding and layout of the power circuit chain but this was some time before having the ability to work with several of the SC mains cables. Energy, tactile responsiveness and subtlety combined for a ponderous listen and it was a good 10 days to a week before I remembered that I had yet not installed one of Michael’s power cables in the preamp. Up until now I haven’t found any faults with what I was hearing and my listening joy had taken on a different dimension which was extremely satisfying.

Placing another Carbon cable into the preamp had similar results to adding one to the DAC initially, I felt that from the upper mids to the upper bass I had more dimensionality to the soundstage and band member placement was more sustainably accurate. Dominic popped over for a listen and immediately said that he felt that there was more presence to the overall imaging and that I had achieved a richness in tonality that only comes from good copper cabling which he felt may have always been overshadowed by the flaws of my ceramic tweeters. We swapped different power cables of his and mine in and out a few times and although pronunciations of certain frequencies were adorable with some of the other cords used we both agreed that the full internal loom of the SC power cables had an unforced and naturally energised sound that didn’t highlight anything in particular but rather lent its hand to overall frequency expression and simply great timing, which I’ll add I didn’t think could be achieved by a power cable and especially one at this price.

I contacted Mr. Whiteside again and briefly told him that I was achieving some favourable results from the power cables he had sent me, as we like to keep our reviews close to our chest until release and asked him for some additional cabling which could be hard wired from the balanced power supply to each of the mains blocks and for another from the wall to create a full loom.

On arrival of the extra cables for the full loom, I had my engineer reconfigure the balanced supply to incorporate the additional cables, one for the passive amp extension block and one for the front end filter extension. Results were very favourable indeed. I did lose a little punch in the upper bass in comparison to the previous cabling, but what I lost in punch was substituted with great extension in the bass and better spread of lower waves throughout the room. Better, well, a bit of give and take really, things were slightly different.

The entire loom made complete musical sense to me and flow and sculpture of the soundstage was fantastic, leaving nothing in the mist of background hashes, with ambient harmonics retaining great stature throughout the soundstage and micro details, maybe a little more rounded but contacting the music and the listener with full ranged articulation. I do like a bit more of a slapstick sound overall, but arguments could easily be raised for both alternatives, especially when concerning myself with the wide range of musical taste I have.

The ever crucial midrange in my system which for me needs to project vocals with absolute tonal balance and clarity, with plenty of transparency and spacial awareness took on a very slightly more natural role in the mix. The upper midrange with female vocalists was a touch calmer and the chestier deeper tones of a males vocal had more grunt and body with the very lowest of their range being slightly more tempered due to the rounder upper bass characteristic of the additional cables in this particular place in my system. 

Conclusion

An F1 car is a piece of engineering greatness ,but it’s the culmination of its smaller parts which allows the whole unit to run at its very finest and extract each little piece of performance gains from the overall package. Cabling is very much the same; a good system with poor interconnecting cables will not reveal its true performance and like the F1 car, if all the component parts are not just right, overall performance is degraded. Using the Studio Connections Carbon Screened Power Cables in my system hasn’t dramatically changed its ability but it’s made the whole package more tactile, has better handling of frequency extremes, has increased image performance extremely naturally and has defined the tonal balance of the overall music in a way that comforts me greatly.

In any high-end system all the small tweaks we make for the better usually add a little bit here and a little bit there to the overall sound and when describing these tweaks and changes it can be perceived that some may overstate the claims. We have to be realistic and understand that a review such as this needs to always be kept in context. Yes, but what is context in today’s age of high-end audio, a power cable that costs £3000 or more that adds definition, clarity and body to the sound or a cable that does nearly as well that costs £200, so you decide.

Dan Worth

SECOND REVIEWER’S VERDICT GIVEN BY DOMINIC MARSH

I was also called upon to evaluate these Studio Connections Carbon power cords for Hifi Pig and was supplied with enough cables to completely wire my system from wall socket to all IEC inlets throughout, including the input socket to my MS Audio 6 way mains distribution block.  Usually we only get submitted to us a single power cord to review, so it was both refreshing and indeed very welcome that Studio Connections made available a whole set which gave a sort of “completeness” to the review, rather than a mere snapshot in total isolation of one cable alone.

Dan hasn’t mentioned the Studio Connections power cord’s appearance so I will here.  It is a refreshing change to see a power cable’s outer coat that isn’t the ubiquitous expandable mesh sleeving, or some form of squashy rubberized jacket, instead we see what is undoubtedly designed in-house and not bought off any peg, being a smart “candy stripe twist” design in black and silver, so it is instantly recognisable as a Studio Connections product.

Sound

As Dan has already done a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the specifications and build parameters, I will take the opportunity to crack on without further ado to give you my perceptions of how these cables performed.

As with any power cord evaluation, my first task is to listen out for any boom or bass overhang that poorly specified and built power cords are prone to.  After many hours of listening with real bass heavy music selections I couldn’t detect either bass boom or overhang at all, so that tells me there is sufficient gauge of wire within the cable to meet transient current demands.  I then focus my attention on the treble regions for noise floor problems, hiss and smearing because that again is a signature trait that poor power cables demonstrate.  Treble was clean, clear and free of any congestion or smearing, in fact with these cables installed it made listing to Fink’s “Wheels Beneath My Feet” live album a real pleasure because the venue ambiences distinct within each track that was recorded in different venues during one of Fink’s many European tours and there was no ambiguity at all that was embedded into the recording of this album and delivered with sweet airy crispness.  I listen very carefully to the drummer’s rim shots on the snare drum and in addition to the sound of wooden drumstick to the ‘skin’ of the drum, the body or shell should also be heard in true fidelity – it MUST sound dynamic and taut with natural reverberation decay, which is very hard for a system to be faithful to.  With these cables I found Fink’s enunciation a good deal more lifelike, with a distinct gruffness to his voice.

Any level of noise floor to me trashes any musical nuances to a large degree and also clouds up the imaging, taking away width, depth and spacial placement qualities of artists and instruments within the sound stage.  I am pleased to inform you that I found a very low noise floor which didn’t intrude into the musical performance, the width, depth and placement rendered accurately and silently.

Of course, just like Dan I too have a boxful of other assorted power cords to compare with and that gives me an idea where in the great scheme of all things power cord they fit into the marketplace and what competitors if any are there to rival it, so I can form an idea on whether or not they offer good value.  At circa £190.00 for a standard 1 metre cable I couldn’t find any cable that could directly compare with the Studio Connections Carbon power cord, in fact I was looking at close to four figure priced products that even came close.

To prove that point then I took out all the Studio Connections power cords and fitted a right old mish-mash selection from the spares box, ranging from a £40 cable to a £1,500 cable and it was very obvious the ensemble I put together just didn’t have the crisp organic fluidity to the sound the Studio Connections power cords complete set had imparted.

Conclusion

The Studio Connections Carbon power cord set has acquitted itself very well, with honour too I might add. They are still to this day installed in my system and I am in no rush whatsoever to uninstall them, because for the first time in many years I have a set of power cords that I don’t feel the impetus to ask questions about and simply let them get on with the task I have set them, happy in the knowledge it would cost a lot of additional cash for any kind of tangible improvement over what these cables do, so they really are a fit and forget product so my spare cables box will have an emptying session soon.

I concur wholeheartedly with Dan that these cables offer tremendous value for money considering the returns in sound quality they provide, so I herewith add my endorsement to them.

Dominic Marsh

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality: Unmistakable external appearance, well built

Sound Quality:  You would have to spend considerably more to best them

Value For Money:  At £190.00 for a 1 metre cable it really is a no brainer purchase

Pros:

Unforced natural sound

Excellent detail retrieval

Very quiet noise floor

Very flexible and visually very appealing

Price to performance ratio is fantastic

Terrific sound quality, an exceptionally low noise floor and great with fast transients.  Great performance at sensible money(DM)

Cons:

Very difficult to fault at this price or even multiples of it

Price at time of review: £190 + £30 every additional 0.5m

I spent a very long time in thinking of an “against” argument, so let’s just say I drew a complete blank here (DM)

SPECIFICATIONS

Conductors: 1.5mm cross sectional area, 47 x 0.22 strands ultra high purity Nordic Copper.

Insulation : Brown, Blue, Green/Yellow

Insulation diameter: 3mm over dielectric

Bedding and Primary screen : 100% coverage, semi-conductor loaded

Outer Jacket: Clear PVC

Drain element: 0.46mm cross sectional area, 3 x 9 x 0.147 strands tinned copper wire

Resistance: Each core: 6.98 ohms/km

Capacitance: Core to core: 100pF/m

Inductance: Each Core: 26mH/km

Rated voltage: 500Vac

Overall diameter; 9.75mm

Janine Elliot cuts a rug with the Black Rhodium Quickstep loudspeaker cables costing £400 for a 3m pair. 

I have always enjoyed listening to Black Rhodium products, having sold them as well as using them in my systems, particularly the now discontinued Rhapsody. Their clear portrayal of the music got me inspired, particularly the higher frequencies, and use of silver making them particularly good on my valve gear. Set up by Graham Nalty, he has been involved in the design and development and marketing of audio products since 1975 including amplifiers, cables and now components. The Black Rhodium factory is set in Derby where they use selected components and materials with a proven record for sound quality enhancement.

The name Black Rhodium itself was originally a stereo interconnect in which the wire was plated in rhodium, but the name Black Rhodium was arrived at when a particular wire turned black with oxidation, but remained a shiny finish where it had been plated in rhodium. The new Black Rhodium Quickstep loudspeaker cable was inspired by their Thunder cable and uses the same conductor as Foxtrot but is now fitted with the gorgeous looking Graham Nalty Legacy Range GN-1 straight Line Contact rhodium plated plugs (the Foxtrot uses their gold plated Z plugs). Indeed, they developed Quickstep and Harmony due to a customer telling them that whenever they tried any other cables they always went back to Thunder. That got Graham thinking that Thunder had special properties that the others did not;

“I isolated the differences between Thunder and the other Black Rhodium cables and built a test cable using these features. I then used the same principles to design Quickstep and Harmony, plus a number of other cables”.

On paper, Rhodium might not have such good conductivity as copper or silver, but Graham chose it because he believes it gives the best sound quality, reproducing the speed of the music better and making the music more exciting and dramatic, and revealing much more of the music. In my tests, that speed, excitement and detail of information was certainly profound.  Graham once tested interconnects in which the same wire was plated in gold, palladium, ruthenium and rhodium. Rhodium came out best, with palladium and ruthenium about the same, and gold last. To coat the whole of Quickstep with rare metals would be extremely expensive, and therefore silver-plated copper is used, and which works extremely well. Today’s value rhodium is about $650 for troy ounce (it hit $10,000 at one point in 2008), whereas silver is $19. Incidentally, copper is around $4500 for a tonne!

Build and Tech

Black Rhodium products have always been keenly priced, showing that excellent quality of build and audio quality can be obtained without selling the house. At £400 for a 3-metre version of Quickstep this is highly competitively priced both in terms of the looks and sound quality achieved. What immediately got me interested in the Quickstep was the flexibility of the cable itself, something that is vital for the orderly homeowner. For two pounds extra the cable braid is also available in white, yellow, red, green or blue if black doesn’t match with your furniture. A lovely thought. Designed to reject RFI and EMI interference as well as vibrations, the cable worked adequately surrounded by all the other cables in my set up.  The construction includes the use of two separate and complementary materials to effectively dampen mechanical vibrations. The science of cable making is very complex, not just about the metal or dielectric, and more than just scientific equations concerning L, C and R. I still wonder why some people can still say that all cables sound the same. With all else being equal the lower the capacitance the higher the inductance, and in a crossover capacitors block low frequencies and let high frequencies get through. The Quickstep having conductors further apart has an excellent low capacitance at around 80pF for the 3 metres, but the bass is still surprisingly tight and full, and the treble extended and fast. Indeed, cables can work much like your crossover, so it is essential that that you select one to work best with the rest of your equipment. The Quickstep has excellent details and speed particularly in the higher frequencies. Bass was surprisingly detailed and quick. ‘Transient Phase Distortion’ and ‘Proximity Effect’ distortion are reduced by using thick insulation which effectively increases the distance between conductors, as well as the braided cable design which reduces the magnetic field created by the two wires. The conductor itself comprises of 16 x 0.2mm diameter silver plated copper wires with silicone rubber insulation. Understanding the design of the cables helped me to back up my audible observations, and whilst, yes, the low capacitance and choice of materials meant the top end would be better, there was no loss of bass.

Sound

Using my Class-A Krell set-up initial listening gave a brilliantly clear and exciting soundstage playing the Polish Classical brass album “Trombastic Tutti Virtuosi” from For-Tune Productions.    Silver works well on brass instruments, and this combination gave an exciting and lively rendition of the music.

Whilst the bass wasn’t over pronounced it had a sense of energy that many speaker cables are unable to convey well. Imaging is also very detailed and tightly placed within the soundstage, with all music played without stress. David Bowie’s “The Next Day” is a real test of detail. This is not my favourite Bowie album but I now felt I wanted to listen to more of it. I always find there is too much compression and limiting in this album with all instruments competing for supremacy and some cables can just exacerbate the situation and make the whole muddy and complex. Quickstep was like cleaning your glasses after they have been covered in finger marks. Everything just opened up and I really began to enjoy these cables.  Track 4 “Love is Lost” was particularly well defined and more human, though I did miss some of the “edginess” that gives the track the emotion and pain that I felt was being portrayed in this track.  Listening to the new 180g Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald (Clare Teal, The Syd Lawrence Orchestra) opened up the sound significantly, particularly in terms of separation of the instruments within the soundstage, as well as improving transients of the brass instruments.

Conclusion

Quickstep is keenly priced at £400.00 for a 3m pair complete with the GN-1 Straight Line Contact rhodium plated plugs. For sound per pound this is an excellent choice for the audiophile offering a detailed soundstage with exceptional speed, and a sound that was very open and effortless. Well worth listening to.

AT A GLANCE

Build Quality:  Excellent construction and good looking GN-1 straight Line Contact rhodium plated plugs 

Sound Quaity:  Very controlled and extended top frequencies with an effortless but exciting portrayal of the music throughout the full audio range

Value For Money:  An extremely good set of results for the price. This is exceptionally good value, though if the price is too high then the cheaper Foxtrot uses the same cable though different plugs

Pros:

Excellent speed of top frequencies.
Openness
Effortless portrayal of the music
Excellent quality of build

Cons:

Some may find the bass is not prominent enough.

Price:

£400.00 for a 3m pair

Janine Elliot

Specifications

Outer diameter of cores 6mm

16 x 0.2mm diameter plated copper cores

Silicone rubber insulation thickness: 1.2mm

Capacitance of 3m length: 80pF

I have often wondered what they feed thoroughbred race horses with.  I bet it isn’t carrot tops and potato peelings, that’s for sure.  Nor would I imagine they fuel Formula 1 racing cars with petrol from the local
supermarket either.  The same goes for Hi-Fi systems; feed them on a poor mains supply and they are not going to run at their optimum performance.

What does a “mains conditioner” do then?  In simple terms it gives the electricity supply a jolly good tidy and smarten up, taking out surges, spikes and fluctuations, removing noise and induced radio frequencies, neutralising them so they don’t enter your Hi-Fi components.  “I don’t have any of that” some may say, but you would be truly shocked just how much the electricity supply various in voltage and sometimes frequency too, plus these days the National Grid is being used for digital data transfer, not forgetting either that many home broadband systems operate via the mains in the house wiring, not confined either solely to the house itself that has it installed, because some will leak back into the supply lines.  Thermostats and motors found in fridges, washing machines and central heating controls are notorious for causing unwanted clicks and whirring which can be clearly audible through a Hi-Fi system.  If you live near an industrial estate or a farm you might get all sorts of nasty artefacts reflected back into the mains supply.  Add to that some DC offset where direct current voltages appear within the AC waveform, imbalances where either the positive or negative cycles are curtailed (this happened in my previous house) and as you can see, a mains conditioner clearly has it’s work cut out standing sentinel over what can be transported inwards via the mains supply.  Therefore I don’t regard a mains conditioner as an accessory or a luxury, I regard it as essential and hence have had one in my own system for a number of years and wouldn’t be without one now.

However, I have also heard some mains conditioners in the past that managed to squeeze the life out of the music and suppress dynamics to a marked degree, so I will be paying particular attention towards that trait during the evaluation.

Construction

Built into a substantial case, this is a solid piece of engineering.  Measuring 444x85x305mm and weighing in at 9kg it is the right size to slot into a standard sized rack.  When powered it has just two small faint blue LEDs in the central backlit panel which are not distracting, so it’s rather nice having a power indicator lamp telling you it’s switched on, rather than TELLING you it’s switched on with a glaring light – a nice touch.  The power switch and safety cutout is underneath the chassis just off centre to the front right.  It is a bit of a fumble getting your fingers in beneath the case to locate the switch, but given that the unit should be permanently powered up then it isn’t such a major issue for the rare times you may need to reach underneath for it.

On the rear of the unit is six 3 pin UK mains sockets, two of which are deemed high power outlets for use with components such as amplifiers and power amplifiers that can deliver 3,680 watts continuously per socket and the remaining four are for lower current draw units like CD players, DACs and phono stages, etc., able to supply 1,150 watts continuously per socket.  The sockets are of good quality and grip the plugs well.  IsoTek say that each individual socket is monitored for power consumption and are isolated from each other so a heavy current demand on one socket will not detriment the others.

Power inlet is by a 3 pole 20 amp C-19 IEC connector.  IsoTek thoughtfully provide a power cable suitable for the role with the Aquarius and it isn’t just any old power cable of indeterminate or generic parentage plonked into the box, it is one of their own products, namely an Evo 3 Premier.  As it is included as part of the Aquarius package I will give a brief description of it here and Hifi Pig’s own Jerry did in fact carry out a brief review of this cable back in December of 2013.

The Evo 3 Premier is only supplied as a 1.5 metre length, which should be more than adequate to fit the majority of installations.  Conductor material is 40 strands of 99.9999% OFC silver-plated conductors with Teflon (FEP) dielectric with a 2mm² diameter.  Connectors are custom made 24 carat gold plated and to IsoTek’s own design, which is a refreshing change from the norm.

Retail price of the IsoTek Aquarius Evo3 as detailed here is circa £1,200.00.

Sound Quality

Or rather, how it doesn’t sound.  The sound quality heard through my Hi-Fi system wasn’t directly attributable to the IsoTek Aquarius itself, more the profound effect it had on the performance of the other components attached to it and allowing them to work unhindered by mains borne pollution.  Because of that the “Sound Quality” rating I have given at the end of the review is only a notional figure, as it should be by rights much higher if it was a standalone sound producing component, as opposed to affecting other components in the chain as mains conditioners are wont to do.  Even so, it is still given a 9.1 out of 10 rating, a more than respectable scoring nonetheless, given the context of it’s function.

The Aquarius was tried with 3 different amplifiers; a valve amplifier, an all digital amplifier and a conventional transistor output amplifier, plus two CD players too, so all of them benefited immensely from the cleaned up mains supply it provided, so practically any device should derive gains from using the conditioner in the system.

Background became totally silent, with not even the tiniest amount of hiss when the amplifier’s volume was cranked up to maximum, whereas it was there before the Aquarius was introduced.  I heard no hums  or buzzes either.

Of course, part of my brief was to analyse whether or not the Aquarius was compressing any of the dynamics and I would be paying particularly close attention to that, given my previous experience with other mains conditioners.  Pleased to report that I couldn’t detect any compression effects at all, in fact the system was even more dynamic than hitherto without the Aquarius being installed and never once felt that it was running out of available power at any time.

The sound just opened up and flowed with absolute ease from the speakers, fine details had acquired a polished refinement, presented in an endless stream of new found details, so it was no effort at all to hear all of the tiny nuances in the recording without having to strain to hear them.  Bass too acquired a palpable firmness and solidity without any trace of boom or overhang at all.  Drums and bass were immense in scale yet under perfect control at all times.  Of particular note however was the sound stage and imaging which really was holographic in every sense of the word and it was effortless in placing musicians and instruments into fixed points in space with an ethereal quality to them, being surrounded and enveloped by an inky blackness.  In short, I believe the IsoTek Aquarius simply unshackled my system and let it do what it does best, with the benefit of having what the Aquarius doing what it does best, forming a perfect symbiotic partnership.

Conclusion

So, would you feed that thoroughbred race horse with carrot tops and potato peelings?  Would you fill up a Formula 1 car with supermarket petrol?  No you wouldn’t answer ‘yes’ to either of those questions and the same goes too for your Hi-Fi system with the mains quality you feed it.

I will say it again so there is no doubt, I believe a mains conditioner is an essential component and provided the conditioner you choose doesn’t compress or curtail the dynamics and lets the music flow out your system without any hiss, hash, mush, or extraneous noise in effortless and untroubled ease, then the outlay is worthwhile in sound quality gains.  On that basis, the IsoTek Aquarius Evo3 easily meets all of those important performance criteria and I am convinced that IsoTek have also sprinkled some “Ingredient X” in there as well, because it performed for me way better than I had expected it to, comfortably beating my long term resident mains conditioner with aplomb.

Therefore I give the IsoTek Aquarius Evo3 mains conditioner an unequivocal recommendation.

Build quality:              8.9/10

Sound quality:            9.3/10

Value for money:        9.1/10

Overall:                       9.1/10

Recommended for:  Any Hi-Fi system, enabling it to perform at it’s best.

Dominic Marsh 

As is customary with Hifi Pig, whenever a product scores 8.5 or more then a second review is called for, so after Dominic’s scoring ratings, it was handed over to Dan for him to conduct the follow up review. 

I’ve had many mains products in my time, ranging from simple basic to more complex filters and conditioners, regenerators, balanced power transformers and isolation transformers.
What I look for in a mains routing system is a unit that imposes no sonic signature on the sound and simply allows the equipment to work closer to its full potential. The Aquarius is a product that gets a tick from me.

The unit is extremely well made, has a substantial aluminium case and great looks to match. Available in various socket output types it will cater for all, regardless of plug choice or country of origin.

In the box, accompanied with the unit is an EVO3 Premier mains cable with gold plugs, an extremely welcome addition over a stock throw away cable which comes with most units regardless of price.

I ordinarily use Schuko sockets so a quick change over to some MS HD Power plugs and the Aquarius was easily swapped into my system and fired up ready to go.

My initial take on the sound was very pleasant and music seemed to be able to breathe very well indeed giving a spacious and 3D soundstage with a black background listened for an hour or so until I had other things to take care of that day and appreciating and anticipating an even better result from the unit later that evening once it had the time to settle in and warm up etc.

Later that evening I returned to the music and played some acoustic material I was very familiar with. I can’t really say that I felt the sound was much better than earlier the same day. The sound was spacious and engaging, the soundstage was definitely carved out from the black background and a sense of effortless prowess was a stand out feature of the Aquarius in my system, easily giving the impression that the unit was allowing my equipment to work more efficiently.

Imagine a calmness over the sound that can be definite, solid, bass confident and delicate and you are on the right track to understanding how the Aquarius works in the system.

Listening to vocals, especially female vocals triggered my brain to note that the upper midrange was less forced than using a direct wall or simple mains extension to power the system and other cheaper filter type units which generally always have a sense of compression or squeezed dampening of the dynamics, contrasted very to the Aquarius’ sonic appeal.

The dynamic range obtained with the equipment being fed by the Aquarius was very exciting, dramatic and enthusiastic.  Orchestral movements had vigour and explosive expression, Electronica was very beat driven with slam and subtle more intricate dynamics of delicate acoustic work was sublime.

It was easy to be seduced with what the Aquarius was achieving in the system and when the review was discussed with Keith Martin GM at Isotek, we discussed sending an extra power cable that could be seen as an upgrade to the already included Premier.  Keith suggested we take a look at and a listen to the EVO3 Optimum with a Furutech 1363 (G) and Isotek’s own copper 24ct Gold plated Furutech style IEC connector.

Plugging the Optimum into the system wasn’t a revelation but it was for sure a strong upgrade that was easily discernible over the Premier. Where the Aquarius allowed the equipment to work at a greater potential, the Optimum allowed the Aquarius to work at a better potential. Was there a different characteristic to the sound? Yes, there wasn’t a different tonality or sonic signature but there was definitely a better characteristic. The most standout addition to the overall sound field for me was an increased openness in the midrange, vocals had better projection and were a little smoother and controlled, allowing male vocals to be more masculine and female vocals to command more power and delicacy.

Bass notes also gained a degree of stability and shape, mellowing the upper bass to come through with a little more detail, giving a perception of more strength to the undertones of the midband. Treble remained much the same yet had an addition of smaller micro details being a little more easily depicted especially when the music got busier. The Optimum isn’t cheap but it’s combination with the Aquarius did allow for a further improvement to the overall feel and dimension of the sound.

Conclusion

The Aquarius is a strongly made unit which offers all the benefits of a shelf sat extension block in a sleek looking package. But that doesn’t mean anything if it’s performance isn’t strong.

The Aquarius offer no sonic signature of its own, simply put it will allow the system components to work much more towards their full potential, allowing for better sound staging a quieter background and more ease, control and strength to the overall sound.

The included EVO3 Premier power cable is a fantastic touch and works incredibly well with the unit. Adding a better mains cable though such as the EVO3 Optimum as tested in the review will rep further benefits again.

Build Quality – 8.7/10

Sound Quality – 8.9/10

Value For Money – 8.8/10

Overall – 8.8/10

Recommended for an ability to enhance the overall performance of a system without imposing on the equipment’s sonic signature.

Dan Worth

The Black Diamond speaker cable from Tellurium Q is their top of the range speaker cable coming in at £630 per metre including terminations which many would confuse for WBT but they are in fact TQ’s own design.
Yes they have an ergonomic styling similar to the WBT’s which is a testament to the design and usability of them.
TQ’s version of the 4mm banana is constructed from tellurium copper and is gold plated, the barrels are a metal alloy which are nickel plated to give a nice shiny finish and feature some nice surface grips for easy tightening of the locking design.

The cable itself as always is a mystery, all I can determine from looking at and handling the cable is that it is fractionally wider than the Ultras and where the Ultras have the conductor in a rounded cavity to each side of the cable the Black Diamond has a different shape to its borders feeling as if it has separate chambers of cables running through its length. The cable is finished in a mesh and comes in a very nice satin black box.

Routing the cables into the system is trickier than the thickest of the previous TQ cables. The band of the Black Diamond is thicker and slightly stiffer. It just takes a little care and time if there are a fair few components and angles to navigate and the job is far from impossible.

The Sound

Sting’s ‘Seven Days’ from the Live at the Royal Albert Hall 2000 album conveyed a deepness of soundstage which reflected being sat about 6 rows back. I could clearly discern all band members and their stage arrangement. The depth of the performance was very true and details were exquisite from trumpet to high hats.

The cable had taken a full 24 hours to settle in the system after its burn in process on the Blue Horizon Proburn. The Black Diamond likes to be plugged into the system and just given time to relax and settle moving it’s slightly initial forwardness in the midrange back a touch, increasing natural tone, timbre and breath.

Once settled the results are simply stunning, the delicacy and refinement in the top end especially is sublime, I could clearly hear all micro details in Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ and ‘Seven Wonders’ leaving nothing masked and conveying everything with a textured flow, a complete harmonious rendition of frequencies floating gracefully around the soundstage like fireflies over a moonlit pond.

Micro dynamics were absolutely effortless and more to the point, natural. There was no over-emphasis on power just a keen respect for precision and timed just so well.

Derrin Nuendorf’s ‘I Won’t Hold You Back’ has a soft cymbal work in the background, ticking away like a clock timing each section of guitar string work which has a crystalline and prestigious edge to each note, entering the fullness of the note and decaying with timbral vibrancy and scale which gives an impression of size to the guitar. The same is true for Derrin’s vocal which clearly comes from a foot or so above the guitar giving the impression that he is sat and somewhat hunkered over the instrument.

Soundstage width and complexity has a way of expressing its abilities even with the most stripped down music allowing for small venue interactions, reflections and acoustics to convey their ambience and scale in a most holographic manner. Whilst busier quartets, orchestras and studio recording generated larger complements with attack with slam, large scale and drama bring the performance to life with an inner energy and grip of realism.

When listening to some various recording by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, double bass fluidity and the dynamic slam of percussion was incredibly intense, I would refer to the sensation as a sound wave or pressure field which is closer to a live performance rather than a synthesized punch and drone.

I wouldn’t say that I felt the Black Diamond’s bass in my system was devastating, huge or bold but I can confidently state that it has an entire shape and skill that can be fast, slow and expressive, delicate or rhythmic.

Touching on my last word of explanation of the the Black Diamond’s flexible bass characteristics ‘rhythmic’ and moving through some varying genres of pop, dance, folk and R&B the lower end took on a new found enthusiasm for me that just the natural alignment it possessed with acoustic and classical music.

To hold a good flow to the music a system needs to have a good bass-line, a strong undertone and a bottom end to support and carry the music along and the Black Diamond’s were very even handed in respects of being able to deliver particularly great mid and upper tones with a strong chassis to stiffen everything up giving strength and stability.

I would say that my own reference cable the Audioquest K2 has a hugely detailed, refined and somewhat relaxed top end. The Black Diamond has an exquisite top end, it’s highly polished, crisp, controlled and transparent and integrates down into the midrange flawlessly which is very liquid.

Any male vocalist I played from Ben Howard, Ben Harper, Jo Savoreti, Sean Lakeman and many many more had a reflection of their individual tonalities that sounded extremely true and effortless, the K2 in the midrange is just a marvel and to give any other speaker cable high praise in the same sentence calling it organic and expressive of all midrange characteristics and potential flaws is a testament to its designer.

Equally poised were female artists, the projection of the upper mids could be so intense with the Black Diamond and still remain controlled and not suffer with peaks of eye shattering wincing was remarkable, many high end cables use networking boxes to attenuate this frequency but the Black Diamond simply takes it in its stride and adds no unwanted nasties or even begins to try and hype up the signal its receiving, it’s more like a gentlemen standing to one side to allow the lady to comfortably pass by.

Conclusion

My time with the Black Diamond speaker cable has been extremely enjoyable, I have praised its attributes very much. You could argue that the price is a draw back but I don’t hear cables that performed as well as the Black Diamond costing any less and I listen to a great deal of cables frequently.

In fact my own Audioquest K2 although differently balanced does not walk all over the Black Diamond and some may well argue that system to system their preference would swing one way or the other. The Audioquest is staggeringly more expensive also.

With exquisite treble, beautifully fluid midband, expressively detailed bass and a dynamic range and soundstage which explores every performance in a most natural and involving way the Black Diamond from Tellurium Q is a masterpiece of cable design.

Build Quality – 9/10

Sound Quality – 9.2/10

Value For Money – 8.5/10

Overall – 8.9/10

Recommended for being a truly high end performer, a tribute to a system rather than just a means to conduct music. Sound quality is simply stunning.

Dan Worth

As is customary with Hifi Pig, whenever a product scores 8.5 or more then a second review is called for, so after Danny’s scoring ratings, I have been asked to conduct the follow up review for this cable.

Herewith is my follow up review of the Tellurium Q Black Diamond speaker cable.

This cable is awesome.  What?  You want MORE?  Oh well, if you must.

Construction

This is some serious heavyweight cable, larger in fact than the other “wide banded” TQ cables like the Blue Diamond, Ultra Black and Graphite.  Unlike the other cables however, this model has special locking 4mm
banana plugs very similar in principle to WBT’s 0644 classic straight connectors, but manufactured to TQ’s own design brief with Tellurium Copper bodies plated in gold.  They do grip very well to binding posts which helps considerably, given the weight of these cables.

I recall my comments about the Blue Diamond speaker cables (Reviewed recently in Hifi Pig) which noted that they were not very easy to make inconspicuous due to their size and propensity not to lay flat readily and the Black Diamond is no exception to that observation either.  Not that anyone in reality is really bothered by that, are we?

Priced at £630.00 per linear metre they are not exactly cheap, nor are they the dearest on the market either.  Value is a sliding scale however and given that we all strive for the “perfect” sound from the pounds we invest in it, then we expect a fair return for that outlay.

Sound 

As you can probably imagine, us reviewers do get a goodly number of cables passing through our hands as part of our function to appraise hifi components and not forgetting either we play with our own personal cables as well for good measure, so it takes an exceptional cable to really get itself noticed.

From that first few bars of music I heard through these cables I knew they were something rather special. It was a kick drum in fact and it hit me square in the pit of my stomach is was so clean and powerful, it fair took me aback.  The CD I was playing was only a warm up track I play to get the system warmed up ready for some serious listening and wasn’t paying too much attention to be honest because of that.

Anyway, after hearing those first few moments I quickly changed the CD to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and the next hour and a half or so was a complete revelation.  No, make that three hours – I listened to it again just for the sheer pleasure of it.  When I say the word “helicopter” you Pink Floyd fans will know exactly what I am talking about now and I have never heard that sound better in 20+ years than I have with the TQ Black Diamonds in my system.  If I shut my eyes I wouldn’t know any better than having this machine hovering less than 50 feet above me with the vortexes spinning of the tips of the twin rotor blades, making the classic whistling sound.   When the children are singing during the title track it can hurt your ears a bit with the volume turned right up, but not at all this time.  No muddle, no hash, no moments to make you wince, smooth as silk and bursting with refinement. I even got the sonic impression of how many children were singing in the chorus, it was just so palpable.  The list was endless of all the extra details I was hearing and I must have heard this album many, many hundreds of times over the years since it’s first release and hearing it this way has set a new benchmark for me what sound lies buried in there, never heard before, but now has been heard for sure.

Next into the drawer was Yello’s “Flag” album and that also got two hearings, with every single track on the album a total pleasure, again another album I believed I knew intimately what it sounded like until I heard it through the Black Diamonds.  Those that have heard this album will know that is has a powerful propelling bass line right throughout the CD and the sense of power, precision and timing with the Black Diamonds was never in any doubt.  “Otto Di Catania” from this album is one of my favourites and the imaging and sound staging are exemplary, with depth, height and width well out beyond the speaker boundaries.

Next into the CD drawer is my preferred “murder track” from Porcupine Tree’s “Deadwing” album, which really does sort out who’s who when it comes to components – especially cables.  The title track has all sorts of squeaks and screeches in the initial minute of the track and I was always puzzled what the sounds were, but not now.  The TQ Black Diamonds have let me clearly hear the sounds are from an Underground (“Subway” to our transatlantic cousins) train pulling into a station, with people disembarking.  This is both good and bad news, because there is now a danger that other cables that pass through my hands are going to be thought less of after hearing what the Black Diamonds could do with Deadwing.  Fear not readers, I will be as unbiased and dispassionate as ever towards all that follow.

I think Dan has done a pretty good job of describing all the finer points of the Black Diamond’s performance, so there isn’t that much I can add to it in truth without repetiton, so perhaps if I summarise what the cables don’t do just to add another dimension to this report to give you a clearer picture of this cable’s capabilities.  They don’t boom or overhang at all anywhere in the bass.  There is no cloudiness, haze or congestion in the midband. Treble is not harsh or fizzy, no sting, no unpleasant artifacts.  They do not have a flat two-dimensional perspective to the imaging and sounstage, nor are they curtailed in width or height.  Dynamics and transients are not slow or slurred.  They are not at all forward sounding or brash, nor are they recessive or muted in sound either.  My evaluations always concentrate on these attributes in great detail and if there were any issues found then be assured they would certainly be included in this review.

Conclusion

£630.00 per linear metre terminated.  Let’s get that out of the way first, because some of you will have a frowned expression while reading that figure.  Many of you will already have tried this, that and the other cables during the ownership of your hifi systems and nobody can escape the losses incurred while on that journey of buying and selling.  If I said to you the TQ Black Diamonds just might be the last speaker cables you will buy, then suddenly the price isn’t as vexing as the figure might at first suggest, so in a perverse way they could actually save you money by ending that endless search.  What you will hopefully be auditioning is a cable that has so little wrong with it, it just sounds so RIGHT in every way imaginable and you could probably count on one hand the number of high end cables that could be claimants to that particular crown and the TQ Black Diamond costs much less than it’s immediate rivals.

My time with them has been a total joy and a learning experience too, in that I have heard so much more  details from my CD collection that simply have not been manifested for more years than I care to remember and some of them have been listened to hundreds if not thousands of times, played on some esoteric high end systems no less.  I will listen to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” album in a completely new light from now on.

The real acid question then is, would I buy them myself?

How much would a Kidney fetch these days I wonder?

Build Quality – 9/10

Sound Quality – 9.3/10

Value For Money – 8.5/10

Overall – 8.93/10

Recommended for being probably the last cable you will need to buy.  Stunning performance.

Dominic Marsh