A brief introduction to Darwin Cable Company...
Darwin Cable Company was founded by Bill Magerman and Tony Bender. Each independently discovered the potential for great musical reproduction in their college years. It was an obsession for excellence limited by financial realities for many years, but from that a blue collar sensibility about value combined with a demand for perfection emerged.
Bill's love for music lead to his founding of Tribute Audio, a company that catered to Epicure speaker aficionados. Bill's exceptional crossover reproduction enhanced the legendary speakers, and in the process created a cottage industry. His customers urged him to create cables as good as his crossovers—which he did, never imagining where it would one day lead. A disciple and now a guru of low-mass design, Bill's cables reflected his experience and reverence for the capabilities of solid core silver wire. Despite the DIY appearance, the cables outperformed thousand dollar cables.
That's where Tony Bender, a former D.J., music historian, promoter, producer and writer, comes in. Through connections in the audio industry, Bender had access to cables costing tens of thousands, was impressed by some of them, but never satisfied with the performance—let alone the obnoxiously high prices. A mutual acquaintance tipped off Bender to Magerman's IC's, so Bender, ordered a pair. They weren't much to look at and far too fragile, but the performance was otherworldly, and bumped Bender's $1,200 cables right out of his system.
After a series of conversations, the two men formed a partnership and eventually, Darwin Cable Company. Both men are involved in theory, conception and design, but Bill is the superior craftsman who brings each prototype to life. Tony—the ears of the company— is the initial analyst. “When the performance moves me emotionally, that is when I know we have something special.” At that point, the cable is sent out for blind evaluations through the company network. “It's not a great cable until everyone says it's a great cable,” Bill said.
They tried conventional industry build approaches, and discovered, Bender said, “the mistakes other companies were making." They vowed to put performance first, substance over style and created a stripped down, purist hot-rod of a cable. Low mass, low capacitance, cryogenically treated floating silver wire interconnects...
Going back to the most basic elements, the duo, through process of elimination and dozens and dozens of prototypes, re-imagined the concept of interconnects, building from the from the ground up by listening at each juncture to each evolution. They auditioned materials from three continents and later employed sophisticated cryogenics to fine-tune the performance.
The original $295 Darwin Silver IC was described by one major cable distributor as “Having no flaws.” The cable's superior conductivity and low capacitance design reveals the potential of a system's components unlike no other cable. Neutral, balanced and supremely revealing, customers are stunned by the inner detail, extension and superb, low, taut bass.
“We realized that many of the shortcomings ascribed to components were often the shortcomings of ineffective cabling,” Bender said. “One company was marketing a “tone control cable” to offset the problems caused by another.” The Darwin Cable is a way to exit the cable merry-go-round with trademark neutrality, transparency—"the most effective signal in the business," Magerman says.
One of the major developments, was re-engineering an RCA core for superior dielectric performance, a process measured in hours, that launched the Ascension line and is now found in the new Truth line. Magerman said, "We tried all kinds of RCA ends, keying on metallurgy and low mass cores, including some of the very expensive famous brands, but nothing sounded as good as the ones we hand-built."
With an ever-growing list of enthusiastic customers, including component manufacturers and audio dealers, Darwin Cable Company says that will put their Ascension and Truth cables up against "any cable, at any price, any time" and back that confidence with a 30 day Peace of Mind No Risk Money Back Guarantee. See testimonials and industry reviews at
www.darwincables.com. The original Darwin Silver cables have legions of fans, reference quality, at reasonable prices and an excellent introduction to the company. What do the succeeding Ascension and Truth cables offer? "More." And that is saying a lot.
How did the company get its name? A friend was jokingly throwing out names, one of which was the name of his dog—Darwin. Bender, who later coined the phrase, “Evolution of Sound,” thought it was perfect. “It reflected many things—our philosophy, our personal audio evolution, our continuous efforts to improve the product...” Bender, a collector of fossils, uses them as backdrops for cable photo sessions.
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