 For a long time I did hide my suspicions, discoveries and beliefs. On one hand it helped in keeping my occupation healthy – journalism has its laws, including being reserved in passing judgments – on the other hand it prevented me from being accused of being mentally incapable and from questions what and how much of that I am smoking that I hear such things. The first hurdle was taken quickly, as it is the task of a journalist to dig into a certain area of reality he is interested in, in this case the audio, until it hurts, until reaching the borders of what can be understood. And I do not want to place myself higher than I am, but it will sound well and it is also the truth: if one would stop every time when it seemed funny, insane or just dumb to the majority of people, probably 90% of all inventions and ideas would remain in the heads of their inventors, and we would still be shaking some trees in the savanna hoping for a rotten fruit to fall down. One has to explore every possibility and all what is happening on the market must be watched closely and verified. But just that leads to hurdle number two, publishing ones clear opinion on controversial or unclear topics. )
I learned some time ago, that a majority of the things I thought were just marketing hype really work, so I had to do something with my knowledge. Not all “patents” are equally useful, those that are less I usually ignore and do not write about them. But there are some that are useful – with changing intensity. So those things are no longer an unexplored nebula for me, but I see some bright spots here and there. And cables are easiest in this game. I no longer think that somebody will see me as a madman, because if somebody does, then I assume he or she did not hear a well done presentation, or his/hers systems does not reveal the differences because it just is a pile of junk or the mentioned person does not hear anything. This last solution is an absolute extreme, but it cannot be excluded. Some symptoms of the case, that things theoretically irrelevant may be quite big in some situations, I saw long ago. But when Mr. Jarek Waszczyszyn (Ancient Audio) prepared a new player for Mr. John Tu (I wrote about this a few times) and experimented with the power supply, a few things surfaced that put the known solutions on their heads. Mr. Jarek is a scientist, a man really knowing what he does, and not easily convinced to something he cannot rationalize or visualize. And he was the source of the impulse, that freed me from my “cage”. So he connected a separate, stabilized voltage , from a separate transformer to the lens in the pick-up head. Theoretically this is a waste, as the power consumption is stable, not a heavy load for the supply, etc. And still the difference between this setting and the classic, still very well done power supply was overwhelming. In part, the incredible resolution of the system that was used for the listening sessions was responsible for this effect, but anyway – the change was bigger than changing the output capacitors from one brand to another. I think so. I do not know any rational explanation to this phenomenon, but it has to be somewhere, and the only problem is that we cannot measure it, and even if we can, the we do not know how to correlate it with other measurements – because nobody has done that before – or we cannot interpret them. So there is no magic in it, but huge amounts – I am sorry to ruin the wellbeing of some people – of our ignorance. )
My “unlocking” came quite recently – maybe against appearances – when I tried the puck that came with the CDC player from Nagra on my Prime Ancient Audio. I wrote about that in the lead article, but it will bot hurt to repeat it. So the puck in the AA players is – in my opinion – not very well looking. Actually it is quite ugly, but I do not want to put it on the edge, as I may be wrong. So when I saw the beautiful, stylish puck that came with the Nagra (Nagra = Switzerland = mechanical brilliance) I knew I wanted to have it. That’s it. Adaptation of it to the Prime was quite easy, as both players use the same Philips CD-Pro2M drive with unmodified element that holds the disc. Let us just mention, that in contrast to those, for example in the drive Jadis JD Mk II a small metal cylinder was placed on the motor axis, and the puck was modeled accordingly. Besides better fit, magnets could be eliminated, that keep the puck in place normally. Anyway, the Nagra clamp fitted the AA perfectly. I was just picking up the phone to call the distributor (Intrada) with a request to buy the puck, when I realized, that however it looks perfectly, it sounds different than before. It sounds… worse. Shaking my head, trying to clean my ears did not help, so I assumed something changed in my system. The sound was less dynamic, without the proper attack. Also the bass was worse, not as profound and precise. And the stage got lost somewhere. But I did not make any changes to my system! I mean nothing besides the puck. To realize what has happened I listend to a few discs on my speakers and headphones. Depending on the quality of the recording it could be sometimes heard better and sometimes worse, but every time clear enough - enough to make me return to the AA clamp, albeit with a heartache and aesthetic distaste. Naturally I asked Mr. Waszczyszyn for the explanation. But no, maybe I’ll write a bit later about that. To no to seem fanatic, and I would prefer to have my actions make sense, before I told anybody about my impressions, I invited two more Lektor users (the new Grand and the unmodified Prime – I will write more about the modifications of my Prime in the December lead article) to try the puck with their players. I did not consult the results before the test, but in both cases the comments were close and the only the accents differed. And now we can switch over to the engineering – Mr Waszczyszyn thinks that this is related to different distribution of the rotating mass – the Nagra puck is flatter, broader and lighter – and thus different way of reading information from the disc. It does not mean that the clamp from the company of Mr. Kudelski is worse – absolutely not – it just means that in this case another mass distribution proved better. But the most important thing is that seemingly even such small things can influence the sound. So are we to test the pucks? This should be a joke, but I am not so sure about that anymore… )
And after this introduction I can propose a short summary from the 50, jubilee meeting of the Krakow Sonic Society without bigger concerns. There were no festivities, just another fight for the Truth. And the meeting was about … mains plugs. It is known, that every element in the audio path influences the sound. Some influence more, some less, sometimes the influence is ultra-subtle, but no element in the system can be excluded. Cables are the beginning. A next step is the used plugs. From them all RCAs, XLRs, banana plugs, spades, pins, etc, the most esoteric are the mains cables plugs. I could not get to write about them for a long time, as I did not see any sense in that. After a dozen of emails with the head of the Japanese company Oyaide, a specialist in that area, that informed me about the better and better plugs they’ve put on the market, I broke down and ordered all their incarnations, including the ultra-expensive models with a metal housing and beryllium contacts. To make the comparison a valid one an identical cable was needed (a high class one) to be fitted with all plugs. And here Oyaide worked flawlessly – they sent six meters of their best cable, the Oyaide Tunami Nigo (test of the speaker version HERE). This is a cable that can be used as a speaker cable as well as a mains cable. This is possible due to its construction – two thick twists made from PCOCC-A copper and a third layer made from a thick copper foil just under the shield. I made the connections myself, so that those were identical in all cables. The test was made in a system that we use most often to listen to some “inventions” the Ancien Audio Lektor Grand and the Silver Grand Mono. As I received only a single pair of every set of the plugs we had to choose one of the devices. The only singular device in the system is the drive, so our listening test were done changing the mains cable for the drive. To make the meeting less boring I decided to compare two sets of Oyaide plugs in direct comparison – the beryllium M1/F1 and the P-079/C-079 with directly gold plated, many times polished contacts (normally a sub-layer of nickel is used while gold plating). Also a classic computer cable 2x0.75mm was used for comparison. To assess the quality of the cable itself, we did also listen to the mains cables Tunami Nigo GPX (with GPX plugs), and L/I 50 Exs (with P-037/C-037 plugs – silver plated i rhodium plated) and a cable made by the distributor, the EE/F-S (it seems to be an Oyaide but from outside of the catalogue, anyway this is a stiff cable made from PCOCC-A copper) from the spool with P-079/C-079 plugs, that allowed for comparing the cable only. )
After such introduction, combined with examples and rhetoric comparability by similarity, that an esoteric thing like a puck can change the sound, it could be expected, that there would be a difference between the plugs. That are the rules of written word (and also the spoken one). But nothing has prepared me, or you, to the dramatic differences between the plugs. I made the session with a broader audience, an audience I was sure they hear and know what all this is about, but that was not very fond of tweaking. In contrary, although the case of the puck made some uproar, they approached the case of the plugs quite humorous, and agreed to the session just to not make me feel bad. But nobody was left untouched by this session. I will not keep the chronology and I will go straight to the main issue: there is no exaggeration in the price of the beryllium plugs. Without any doubt, and by a lot, that cable was better than the cable with the otherwise very good ‘079’ plugs. The differences were clear, repeatable and in some sense fundamental. The ‘079’ cable sounded with a live, dynamic, expressive sound, that kept vividness and resolution of much more expensive cables from other companies. It was the second cable of choice in the tested bunch that evening, regardless of the plugs. Switching to beryllium plugs changed the sound completely. The tonal balance remained similar, although the bass reached lower, but all elements were sparkling, vivid and without a trace of aggression. Also the resolution got better, what is not easy with an un-brightened, sparkling sound. And aggression is something that cannot be associated with any of the Oyaide cables. Only the best plugs showed, that the lower models are just a starting point, and then, when we have all elements sorted out, there is a way of going deeper inside. Frankly speaking, that is the sound as of the LE-10 Limited Edition cable from XLO. There was unfortunately no time to compare those cables directly, but I remember the sound of the American cable, and even if there are some differences in details, then the direction is the same. And the Oyaide is much cheaper. The plugs raise the cost significantly, but even though, this is still fairly cheap. Like I mentioned, Tunami with the ‘079’ plugs finished second. Unexpectedly good, even exceptionally well, was the equipped in the almost cheapest ‘039’ plugs L/I 50 Exs cable. A tad lighter and more delicate in its sound than the best cables, it presented a perfectly drawn stage and a very good depth of the sound. I really liked it. I will have to test it with better plugs, and who knows… Equally nice, although completely different, was the Tunami Nigo GPX. Compared to other cables its sound was more massive, a little warmer and without such well drawn treble. However the midrange was superb – smooth, full and strong. The last place was for the cable prepared by the distributor. Maybe the explanation lies in the fact, that this cable was prepared for a strong amplifier, but with the source the case was like this. We were also disappointed by its stiffness and problems in plugging it. L/i was like liquid mercury, when compared to it. Also interesting was the comparison of each of the cables with the computer cable. Every Oyaide cable sounded better. The computer cable sounded with a fresh, dynamic sound. With short samples it seemed as if the Qyaide would be less precise and a bit slow. But it is not true. It was enough to listen a little longer, to realize, that the computer cable is nervous and edgy, that is has brightened midrange, that was impressive for a short time (you have to remember we were listening using to components), but after some time it seemed just boorish. The cable with the beryllium plugs sounded like a velvet tissue after abrasive paper. I do not exaggerate – it’s just how it was. )
I am still waiting for a sensible explanation of this phenomenon. Here and there some tries to describe it appear, like those talking about the rigidity of the contacts and the enclosure, talking about the kind of the contacts, etc. Probably they contain a bit of the truth. But I can hardly imagine, that such minuscule things can make such big changes in the sound. The test were decisive, and this has pointed to the conclusions, that the Tunami Nigo is a high quality cable, and secondly, that the beryllium plugs bring outstanding sound. The only thing to test, is how those cables will sound connected to amplifiers, and how those classy plugs (it is the absolute to I think) would sound with a cable of the XLO Limited Edition class. The first thing will be easy – I make the test at home, the second will be hard. XLO cables are confectioned at the factory, and I don’t know anybody that desperate, to dismantle such an expensive cable just to see if the plugs can be exchanged. And if they cannot? This cable does not cost two or three zlotys.
Equipment used for testing:
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