Got my Ultra speaker cables last night and installed them into my system and here is an early report on what I'm hearing - basically, everything!
The cables took a little time to settle in but once they did, it was like opening up a live stage in my living room
In terms of frequency response, the bass opened up in a way I didn't at all expect - rich, full, more harmonically textured and with a depth that I thought I could only get with a dedicated subwoofer. The mids are superlative - they improved in a similar way to the bass, giving instruments and voices more body and weight and truly natural timbre. Lastly, the highs at first sounded less extended but after some further listening, I realized there's actually more extension in the upper frequencies but that they are in fact rendered in such a natural and relaxed manner as to seem less prominent at first listen. The highs are completely free of glare, grain, or harshness in a way I'm not sure I've ever experienced before. The resolution improved but without any accentuation of the upper frequencies - rather simply by presenting more musical information in a completely organic way.
Beyond frequency response, these speaker cables are incredibly transparent and driving the VR-55s, create a 3-dimensional soundstage (3D hologram as Albert calls it) that goes beyond simply placing instruments in space - they add a depth, weight, and presence to each instrument and to vocals that so closely emulates the real thing as to be unnerving at times (as your brain is tricked into believing something is there that isn't).
With acoustic guitars, you not only feel the resonance of the body when the strings are plucked, but you're presented with a 3D acoustic image of the body itself - i.e. you can practically feel the size and extent of the guitar's body within the sound field. This extends to other instruments where the physical size of the instrument is seemingly discernible within the soundstage - these cables give you 3D instruments, not just 3D soundstage!
To add to the transparency point, playing some material I'm very familiar with, exposed some overdubs in the vocals I've never heard before but here they were; clearly delineated, layered, one just behind the other and very easy to follow. I'm also hearing some very subtle instrument sounds that were previously lost in the background - now clearly rendered by the Ultra cables.
Wrt vocals, everything mentioned above adds up to such a tonally correct and organic representation of vocals and with such a presence that I'm not sure I could distinguish playback through the VR-55s with a live playback. Playing some Al Green, I could, not so much hear, but
feel him draw in a breath and knew exactly when he was ready to exhale and start a new verse. On this particular Al Green track, his image in the soundstage came through clearly as though he was standing right there in my living room, at normal height and just as with guitars, you could feel his chest cavity contribute to the rich undertones of his deep voice.
These cables have unleashed the full potential of the VR-55s imo - it's as close to plugging your speakers directly into the source as I can imagine - they simply disappear and present the full musical canvas to the speakers, unaltered or distorted in any discernible way.
As a final note, the cables were Kable Kooked by Albert for two weeks before shipping, which he claims puts the equivalent of ~1000 hours that are needed to break these babies in.
Hyperbole you might think, but I honestly was not prepared for the transparency and presence conveyed by the combination of these cables and the VR-55 speakers - it is simply breathtaking and if you can afford these cables, I would give them my highest recommendation without hesitation.
