First of all in the spirit of total disclosure, I, like many ACers, owe Jason a huge debt of gratitude. Jason (Pez) of Pez and Tyson’s amazing coverage of Rocky Mountain Audio Show(s) was must reading for me when I was embarking on the arduous journey of upgrading my Stereo. Pez and Tyson’s coverage was where I first heard about Vapor Audio, and after much research and reading, I pulled the trigger and bought a pair of Vapor Joules. A decision that has delighted me every day since.
The Joules turned out to be extremely revelatory and showed up the paucity of the system I then owned. Being a frugal buyer, I always look for products that punch way above their weight. This led me to a pair of Parasound JC1s for power amps, and then eventually to a full set of Parasound John Curl designed Halo products. This includes a new set of the astonishing new JC1+s power amps, the excellent reviews of which are just starting to come in, a JC2BP Pre-amp, and a JC3jr Phono Pre-amp. This system is augmented on the digital side by a Roon based system running through a Benchmark DAC2 and a Marantz SA-KI Ruby SACD. The recently arrived turntable is a brand new AMG Giro which has also exceeded my expectations.
The cabling for all of this has been a mishmash but over the last few years, I have settled on Power Cords and Speaker Cables from Straight Wire and interconnects from Voodoo Cable and JIB. It is the JIB cables that I replaced with 2 Hapa Quiesence Silver RCA cables and to say that these cables are revelatory would be an understatement.
All of you who have gone through a well curated and selected (I hope) upgrade to your total system know that at some point even small changes start to make huge and obvious differences. My first exposure to that was when I first plugged an upgraded Power Cord into my JC1+ and all of a sudden the bass became more specific, tighter and realistic, an improvement over what I had had before. This is the sort of difference I started to hear with the Quiesence Silvers. Yes, the bass was improved but more importantly, the image was radically modified for the better. It was such a massive change that I was at first somewhat unsettled until after a week or so of listening I realized that it felt like I had moved several rows closer to the stage. Somewhat like I had moved from Row W to Row M, right in the center of the concert hall. This took some getting used to (I sucked it up and took one for the team), I now realize that, in reviewing terms, my soundstage has gotten wider, and more importantly, the air and space around instruments is deeper and quieter. The general accuracy of how the instruments sound and where they are placed has gotten scarily good. My friends in Boston would say “Wicked Good”
I will leave it to others to define whether Dual Chirality (I had to look that up) actually makes a difference or whether it is the pixy dust that Jason liberally spreads on his cables, but I will say that something makes a difference. Like many of you, I have heard Shelby Lynn’s “Just a little lovin’” many times. I use it as a test record every time I change something in my system. It only takes a few seconds of the Cymbal, Snare, Hi-Hat and Bass Drum to tell me a great deal about the “rightness” of the sound. As the song progresses, Guitar, Bass and Keyboards come in, followed by Shelby’s lovely voice. It tells me a great deal about my change depending on how quickly I decide to move on to my next test record to check out something else about how my system sounds. Much like Jennifer Warnes’ “Way down deep”, which I also use (to test how boomy the first bass percussion instrument sounds) I find that with Shelby and Jennifer, when a change is important I find myself listening further and further into the song. And if I find that the song has finished without my even noticing, I know that I am on to a really good thing.
Not only did this happen, but I also got a revelation about the drums on Just a Little Lovin’. I am a drummer and am very used to not only how a drum should sound but where in space a drum should sound when sitting behind a drum Kit. I was shocked to realize that the drums I was hearing were spatially correct as they would be were I sitting in the drum chair. The Hi-Hat was to my left and up a foot or so, the snare was right in the center mid height and the bass drum was to my right and down on the floor. The Ride cymbal was floating slightly up, about ear level just above the bass drum. This was astonishing. When a “relatively” small change, like adding an interconnect between your SACD player and your pre-amp can change your understanding about instrument placement and directionality of the instrument, that “Change” deserves to be called out.
I am extremely happy with my Hapa and I suggest that anyone looking at interconnects seek out Jason and his products.
