I normally frequent the AV123 forums, but since this might be appropriate in a neutral forum I decide to repost it over here.
First I should thank Mad DOg and Sa-Dono for the recommendations over on the other forum to check out Eichman cables. I also appreciate their recommendation to talk to Mike from CryoTweaks about them. Mike has been great to work with. I've never seen an online vendor willing to send out demo gear without payment in full first so I was pleasently suprised when he just wanted a cc number as a backup. He had to special order my speaker cable and he was very communicative about the process and where the cable was as it was delivered and sent out to the free cryo he offers and finally out to me.
I was looking for a new pair of interconnects to use with the P-3A. I was looking for cables that I could evaluate in my system so I arranged to have several cables to test at once and could return any (except the Ixos which I've owned around a year now).
One note I should make is that I prefer a warmer sound and we are both fairly sensitive to brightness. I get listener fatigue headaches fairly quickly with brighter gear. I want as much detail as possible, but I'm not willing to pass into that accuracy camp so far that the cymbals hurt my ears.
In order to have a better feel of any possible difference I drafted my wife to help with my testing. My wife is not an audiophile and didn't want to buy "extra" cables so she was not predisposed to like the new ones better. She did not know which cable was which. It was only single blind testing since I did know which cable was which. I also did not use ABX testing. If you don't think my tests are valid then don't read it, but I'm not interested in hearing how they aren't. I was only interested in what we thought whether it was in our heads or not. To be honest I'm not really an audiophile either so if I used the wrong terms don't shoot me just let me know what to improve. I don't have a golden ear, but they are my ears so what ever they hear is right for me
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I've given our impressions in with the text, but let me again point out that this was a single blind test and that I let my wife give her impressions first. The only time we different in impressions was when one of us used a different term and usually the other quickly agreed that the other term was better. She did not want to hear a difference, but she did and it was not subtle.
Ixos Studio Gold Master .5m [cables in system before testing]
Audio Metallurgy Gold Alloy (Gold/Silver/Copper alloy) with LOK connectors .5m
Zsquared AUAU Quiet Storm (Gold/Silver/Copper alloy) with Neutrix Pro-Fi 2m
Eichmann eXpress 6 series 2 1m
All of the cables (except the Eichmann) had between 20-30 hours in my system before testing.
The room is 15x20. The speakers are 5' from the front wall and 2' from the side. I sit in the middle around 4' from the back. The room is treated with 3 HF realtraps at first reflections on the side and ceiling and 8 regular realtraps in the corners.
Equipment in the system at the time:
Audio Alchemy DDS-Pro with stock power cord
Perpetual Technologies P-3A (modwright level 2) with Revelation I2S to DDS-Pro and Revelation power cord to P-3
Monolithic P-3 (modwright) using stock power cord
Onkyo 777 as a pre (DAC connected with tested interconnect) in direct mode (full range to Onix Rocket RS750s) with captive stock power cord
B&K 7270 (200x7 amp) connected to Onkyo with 1m Onix Blue (DIY 10 gauge PartsExpress power cord)
BPT 3.5 signature balanced power conditioner feeding everything from a pseudo dedicated 20amp circuit (nothing else on the line, but many outlets) [sometime soon I'm going to run a subpanel so I have some free breaker spots for 2 or 3 dedicated circuits but not yet]
Speaker cable was 15' of Onix SP200
Here is the music we used. Since my wife was listening too we had to compromise. At least I avoided Dolly
10,000 Maniacs Unplugged - Jezebel
Shrek Soundtrack - Hallelujah
Shrek Soundtrack - True Love's First Kiss
O' Brother Where Art Though - Big Rock Candy Mountain
O' Brother Where Art Though - Down to the River
O' Brother Where Art Though - Man of Constant Sorrow
The Audio Metallurgy were up first. These cables just jumped out at you when they were in the system. The first thing you noticed was a airier almost etherial nature to the highs. Natalie sounded amazing on these. Down to the river sounded like a choir of angles. They also really brought out a lot of detail. After just a few minutes though and I was ready to pull them from the system. They added just too much edginess for our ears. They also did something really strange to the male singers. It was almost like the cables turned them into eunichs. To us it sounded like there was a hole in the male voice frequency range and it was shifted up. My wife immediately spotted these as one of the alloys because they were so different from the copper Ixos. If highs were critical to you then you might want to give these cables a listen, but they didn't fit what I was looking for.
Next up were the Zsquared cables. Again these cables made a fairly dramatic impression as soon as they were in. The highs on these cables had the same qualities the Audio Metallurgy cable did. I'm not sure which was stronger in this aspect. These cables didn't seem to have the hole at the male voices either. Male signers sounded much more correct than with the Audio Metallurgy. Over all this was a very good cable. It seemed to have all of the strengths of the other alloy with only one of the weaknesses. However its one weakness was that along with the airy highs and incredible detail there was just a little too much edginess for our tastes. For the right listener in the right room with the right gear these would be incredible cables, but they were not for us in the end.
Next was the original cable I had been using the Ixos. It almost seemed quieter when we plugged it in. The forcefulness of the music was gone. The lows and mids were better with this one. Gone was the edginess that had bordered on painful. However also gone was the detail and airyness. This cable also let us see some of what the others were hiding. We had intentionally picked Big Rock Candy Mountain as one of our listening songs because it is meant to be a recording of a recording so there is a background hiss as if from an old radio. The silver cables minimized this hiss and it was hard to pick out. The hiss was very noticible with this cable. I know it sounds strange to praise a cable for reproducing a hiss, but in this case it is part of the music and was desirable to be accurate. This cable was a classic jack of all trades. It really excelled at nothing, but neither did it have any glaring weaknesses. Had we stopped here my wife would have picked this cable, while I would have liked to give the Zsquared a little more time in the system to see if either us or it could adapt.
Now we tried the Eichmann. I did not have time for any burn in because I did my testing on the day it arrived since I only had a couple of weeks left on my trial of the alloys. Now this is a copper cable, but my wife actually thought I had put back an alloy cable again when I first started the music. That immediate feeling that the alloy gave the music was back. We both were amazed at the clarity this cable had. Detail that we hadn't heard before was so obvious. The hiss in Big Rock sounded totally real. The highs were crystal clear. Natalie didn't have the same etherial sound and Down to the river didn't have the angelic sound, but they sounded more like a real human singing. We could actually hear individual singers in the choir on Down to the river. We could hear the agony in the singer's voice on Hallelujah. What was even more interesting is that this cable made the bass from the Ixos sound bloated. Hands down this was our favorite of the bunch. The only thing any of the cables came close on was the highs. We liked the airiness of the Zsquared, but the Eichmann was probably realer.
After this test on a Saturday morning I gave the system a chance to settle in as we listened on and off for the rest of the day. On Sunday afternoon I decided to plug in the Eichmann power cord. Since I hadn't yet received my Revelation Precept I used the transport because it was furthest upstream. I was skeptical that a power cable could really make a big difference, but I had heard something when I upgraded to the DIY PartsExpress cables so I was willing to check out the Eichmann. When I switched out the DDS-Pro's power cable with the Eichmann we were both floored. To our ears the power cord had more of an effect on the sound quality than the interconnects. Even more of the choir in Down to the river was audible. Now we could hear the notes (not just the buzz) on the brass over the choir ahhhs in True Love's First Kiss. I wanted to reach out and touch the radio knobs on Bigh Rock. It felt like the power cable made twice the improvement on the highs as even the alloy interconnects had. And all of the magic with only a slight increase in brightnesss. My wife almost thought it was too edgy, but I felit like I could live with it and I talked her into letting it settle in. Either it or us has smoothed out greatly since then. Even though I should have been feeding fairly clean power to the transport this cable made an incredible difference.
Now fast forward two weeks. I've gotten back my P-1A (no SOCs, I decided to wait for RS1K) and I've gotten my two Revelation Precept cables. The Precepts are on the transport and P3. I have another Revelation I2S cable for the system too. I've moved the Eichmann power cable to the amp. With all this extra silver from Revelation I've pushed the detail up another notch, but it almost has an edge. Just barely perceptable, but after a 2 hour listening session I've got a headache. Shorter sessions are wonderful.
So why am I telling you this, well yesterday I received my Eichmann eXpress 6 speaker cable with Bayonette plugs. I was able to get my wife to sit down for the first listening session with the same music as before, but just as I went to switch the speaker cables out, she had to leave to take our 4 year old son to Bible school next door. We had almost forgotten, but he came running in telling us that people were playing outside behind the church. So this test didn't include her right away and her auditory memory might not have been as fresh.
The first thing I noticed about the Eichmanns was how stiff they are. If you thought the SP200 was stiff you haven't seen anything yet. It does not flex automatically, you have to work it into shape. There was one advantage to this though because I was able to snake the 4m cable to the right speaker in a zigzag since its right in front of the gear. The left speaker actually took a little manipulation to get the cable happy with its angle to the ground. The next thing I noticed is how much better it seated than the GLS bananas I was using on my SP200. The new Eichmann banans fit very snugly and don't wiggle at all. The cable is a little thicker than SP200, but its a very similar blue color only maybe a little brighter or more neon.
Ok, enough with the physical description, how did it sound right? In one word: AMAZING. First off it sounds louder, but I think thats just because of the second thing you notice. It is incredible clear. The 750s aren't sloppy bass producers on SP200, but it was so much tighter with the Eichmanns. The mids were so much clearer now too. Each note has a physical seperation from the next. Nothing is trampled by anything else. Everything sounds so much realer. It didn't really sound fake with the SP200, but I feel like I could walk up and touch the singers now. On Down to the river the backup choir is huge now and I'm not sure how they all fit in my room
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The jump in detail was incredible, but somehow even with all of this detail there was no gain in edginess or harshness. As a matter of fact the harshness I had heard before was gone. The highs are incredibly airy. I can hear the echo of the lead singer in Down to the river. I've almost got that ethereial sound back, but it still sounds perfectly real. You not only hear the agony in the singer's voice on Hallelujah, but now you can feel it too.
When I put these cables on I had originally intended to only listen to the test music and head out to mow. I barely finished the riding in the front before my wife got home, because I ended up listening for over an hour longer than I meant to. I broke out all kinds of stuff to hear what these cables could do. Movements 4 and 5 of Bethoven's 9th (orchestral Ode to Joy and choral Ode to Joy) were incredible. You could feel the happiness and wonder radiating from the music. My system has never been this immersive.
Each Eichmann product I've tried has been better than the last. These speaker cables made much more of a different than the power cord and interconnect put together. My wife came back later and I made her listen before I gave my impressions. Before I had finished putting down the remote she told me it sounded louder. She was also amazed at the extra clarity allowing the detail to shine through. She thought it might be a touch edgy still, but did agree that it wasn't as bad as before I changed the speaker cable. Even thouugh she didn't want to like them she admitted that it was much better. Actually her quote was "Sorry Anna I guess your college fund will have to wait." to our three month old.
Since we used the Shrek sound track I'll through out the obligitory veil lifting comment a little different. Onions have layers. Sound has layers. All of these Eichmann products helped in removing the tough papery skin to get to the juicy flesh within.
I had tried different cables in the past, but I've never heard such a difference as I heard with these Eichmann products. Not only am I keeping the Eichmann gear I've got, I'll also be adding another power cable and a pair of XLR interconnects shortly after Emotiva ships.
To me the Eichmanns are the perfect compromise between details + great highs and brighness/edginess. In a sense its not even a compromise since I don't think they give up any detail or performance in the highs for their lack of harshness. Maybe I'll hear something better later on, but for now I enjoy all three of these so much that they are my reference cables.
