Even though my first product (the ZERO-Autoformers) was launched from an audio forum/message board website 17 years ago, because of their tendency of having a few non friendly participants, I have not been active on any of these types of sites for the past 15 years. Yet more recently, because of the good things I have heard about Audio Circle from my audio industry friends (Vinnie Rossi, Clayton Shaw, Jim Salk, Triode Pete, Frank Van Alstine), and my valued customers, I have decided to become active and help support the progress being made here.
As for my introduction, I think the best place for me to start is to simply answer the most popular question that I was asked at RMAF a few weeks ago... "Why are you called the ANTICABLES ?" I do recognize the name can be interpreted as being a bit contentious, so let me explain how it evolved.
ZERO-Autoformers:
As I mentioned, our first product was the ZERO-Autoformers, which when used with mono block amplifiers took the place of speaker cables. They were first introduced early 2001. The “ZEROs” were used to increase the impedance of any speaker, so it would be “easier” for an amplifier to drive.
The autoformer itself, from the beginning, was sonically very good. The weak link was the lead-out wires. The original PVC insulated tinned stranded copper lead-out wires were unresolving. The next attempt was teflon insulated silver plated copper stranded lead-out wires which were more resolving but had a "tissy" sonic signature. Determined to find a solution, I launched a serious wire investigation project and came up with a red coated solid copper lead-out wire that sounded neutral and transparent, with a very nice purity of tone. Problem solved. End of story... so I thought.
Turns out, that third generation of lead-out wire was so good, it became its own product that I called "Anti-Cable Speaker Wires". I named them this because the un-jacketed red coated wire didn't look like, cost like, or sound like typical speaker cables. Also, since "cable" is wire with thick jacketing, and since our wire didn't use thick jacketing, they are not cables, so the name "Anti-Cables" seemed appropriate.
ZERO-Boxes:
I should explain. The ZERO-Autoformers also come in a beautiful boxed version, the ZERO-Boxes, that required a set of jumpers. The jumpers were made from the same improved lead-out wire used on the autoformer. Customers started recognizing how good the red coated wire jumpers sounded and started asking me to make them 8 and 10 foot long sets to use in place of their speaker cables. After getting numerous reports back from these guys stating how much better the red coated solid wire sounded than their multi thousand dollar speaker cables, I decided to make cables with them. Well...
Every attempt at dressing up my good sounding wire with jacketing (so it would looked like speaker cable), made it sounded like a speaker cable. Jacketing causes dielectric effect distortion that time smears the music signal and makes cables sound like cables. I decided to give up jacketing, call them the "Anti-Cables", and sell them in their naked form. The product became so popular, and won so many Editors' Choice Awards, that ANTICABLES eventually became the brand name of the business.
The Cable Business:
I did not originally attempt to get into the cables business, I was only trying to solve a sonic weakness of my single autoformer product, and I ended up getting drawn into the cable business. (pun intended)
Even though the red coated wire has gone through close to a dozen sonic improvements over the years, it still looks very much like the original version. I find it fascinating how much sonic differences can be heard between two nearly identical looking pieces of wire because of variables such as purity, the drawing process, directionality, dielectric material, etc. and I look forward to discussing topics such as this on an ANTICABLES Audio Circle.
Thank you for the opportunity to post my introduction. Looking forward to becoming a Site Sponsor.
Paul Speltz
