Hello Fellow Audiophiles,
Four years ago, I met several personnel from Delphi Aerospace at the CES and asked them to dinner. An engineering school I attended in the 1970's, California Institute of Technology (popularly named Cal Tech), was located down the street from JPL (Jet Propulsion Labs) and my goal upon graduation was to design space craft at JPL. However, as we all know, my audio hobby took over my career, and meeting the fellows from Delphi was a nice experience- a Blast From The Past, you might say. Now I can say that I'm associated with real NASA engineers that have designed wiring systems for space craft!
The Delphi engineers are in the Connections Systems Group, and their job description is to design wiring harnesses for military and NASA projects. These cable designers have Phd's and/or Masters Degrees in metallurgy, physics, and electrical engineering and have the ability and means to invent new types of metal and non-metal conductors, shielding, and mechanical fabrication. They have to design cables that will keep a micro-volt signal transfer intact with electromagnetic interference, sun spot radiation, and enormous levels of vibration and heat to deal with. During our dinner at CES, I discovered that they have 8 patents on distortion reduction in signal transmission and have a $4mil lab. They say they can measure the differences in resistance, inductance, and capacitance down to 1/10,000 of a unit, and that every single type of wire they've measured had enormous electrical differences between them. Since inductors, resistors, and capacitors are the building blocks of crossovers and equalizers, it stands to reason that a well designed cable should have "zero" readings, or it will be adding distortion to the signal.
Since the successful flight of the space craft depends on dependable transmission of signals from ground control to onboard receivers, computers, sensors, and rocket engines, the connection cables have to be the finest examples of engineering in the world, and the use of low distortion design is critical to mission success. In turn, my goal for the VSA "Master-Built" cables was to reduce all types of distortion (resistance, capacitance, inductance, magnetic field modulation, hysteresis, and so forth) to enable the signal to be transferred accurately between the electronic components of a stereo system. Together, Delphi and I designed a full line of state-of-the-art cables for every audio application over a period of two years.
We all realize that wire cannot improve the sound of a system, it can only degrade it. Therefore, the goal of any high quality audio cable is to reduce or eliminate any distortions that the wire will add to the signal. Although it may seem to the average audiophile that my approach of using NASA technology and very expensive materials might be "overkill," many of our customers own stereo systems with a combined price of well over $100k and one fellow has a system worth almost $1 million. These are serious audiophiles who will not tolerate anything but the best quality.
As a price comparison, you might want to look at the prices of competing cables that can't approach the performance of the VSA "Master-Built" cables. We've all seen $35,000 speaker cables, $20,000 interconnects, and $8,000 power cords from "kitchen table" companies with no engineering background or test equipment - this situation has given high end cables a bad name, and deservedly so. The prices they are charging have nothing to do with the actual worth of the cables or their company overhead - it is a marketing ploy to make people believe that they have something special to offer. In my humble opinion, most of these cables only offer an alteration to the original signal and are not accurate - nothing I would want to pay for!
There are three price ranges of "Master-Built" cables, and the Signature cables under review, above, are our most expensive version. Although many of our customers have purchased these expensive cables due to their sophisticated systems and high income levels, most of the cables we've sold are the entry level and middle-priced cables, since their performance level exceeds their modest cost.
The VSA Signature cables, although expensive as they are our "Top Of The Line", are "mid price" components compared to the most expensive competitors, but will elevate your system to its highest level of sound quality by the reduction of distortion. The Delphi engineers stress that maximum benefit of their cables requires that your entire system should be wired with "Master-Built" and after three years of experimentation of my beta testers, this proved to be valid. Many of our initial beta testers are audio reviewers, some very well known, and others just good listeners with great equipment. We have sold over 200 sets of cables so far, and about 40 of those customers ended up purchasing the rest of the cables to rewire their entire systems after trying the speaker cables. None of the customers, including reviewers who owned cables costing up to 3x our price, have returned the cables under our 90-day Trial. In several months, we will have a new website with more products on offer. For the time being, we can email you further information such as photos, models, prices, and a White Paper written by the team of Delphi engineers.
Before I forget, the main topic on this thread concerns the audibility of power cords, and I want to give you the info that Nick at Delphi told me:
"Do not view the power cord as an extension of the house wiring, but as the 'first component' in your system. Since the power cord is subject to the reception of RFI and EMI interference, acting as an antenna, and extends these interferences to your electronics from reception through the power company and your house wiring, the power cord's main job is to reduce or reject the noise coming into the component. As Delphi has several patents on noise reduction, we use unique technology in the materials and winding geometry to reject EMI, RFI, and Quantum noise from entering your component. When presented with a cleaner source of a.c. power, your components will sound smoother and the music will emanate from a "blacker" background. The dynamic range will not become harsh on peaks and your system will attain a greater holographic image. Our patented power cords are not designed to replace any power conditioner you might own, but are an extension of these devices."
If you are interested in trying any of the "Master-Built" cables, even if you do not own VSA speakers, please contact me for pricing and lead time (they're all hand made per application), at albert@vonschweikert.com .
Happy Listening!
