I rarely do reviews, mostly due to my belief that everybody is their own movie critic and systems are room and synergistic dependent. That and I am no audiophile in any sense of the word. Actually the best audiophile sound I know of is the belly laughs on my two kids. Anyway, since I was bored and stuck at work on a Sunday evening I thought I would put pen to paper and offer my thoughts on one of the current hot products.
Reviewing or comparing cables is not easy, it takes a far more focused or critical ear to hear the minisule differences in cabling than in components persay.
I have more than system but the one these cables were used in is fairly revealing. Making it fairly easy to spot differences in components or cables. One of the many qualites I prize in a cable is neutrality, so that no specific frequency range leaps out at you, or conversely is missing. I still like to hear as full a frequency range as I can, given the recording, just not an overblown, bloated, sketchy, or too compressed one. But most important, the gear has to be musical. I need to feel the music, for it to pull me in emotionally and mentally.
Construction: The cables are well made and look nice. The person who coined them the “Licorice Cable” was dead on. They do look like a piece of twisted red licorice. Ever consider changing their name Gregg?
My initial listening impression was simply, this is nice. A general feeling of rightness in my realm of the world, as if the galaxy were in order and harmony had been restored. Sorry, got carried away there for a bit, I was day dreaming about a job writing reviews for the mags. Seriously though, what do I mean by this? That there is no aspect of the performance that is emphasized. Everything is given its proper weight, very balanced in the frequency spectrum. Remember I prize neutrality. Most cables I have heard will emphasize something, or deemphasize something. And this may give you wow-factor initially, but ultimately leads me to a dissatisfying long term relationship.
Since the Reality Cables are neutral, there was no wow factor, just a "yea, this is nice" feeling, again a sense of rightness with what I was hearing, whether lisening for dynamics, depth, harmonics, coherence, frequency extension……..add your own noun. Most importantly, I was connected.
Now for some of those audiophile aspects that everybody is possiblt waiting to read. Or I guess I should say the ones I find impressive:
Sense of Air: This cable is fairly remarkable. Listening to notes, it becomes very easy to distinguish the air or space between each note. Performers now have an added layer of dimension.
Staging: Hard to imagine a better stage through speaker cables, the cables have terrific center fill, great width and depth too. Frequencies were all present without calling attention to themselves.
Bite: Transients had the proper attack. It has been a while since I attended a show but then I started listening more and more, to many different cd’s, different performances, different genres, and I began thinking back to what a trumpet sounds like live. And that made me realize a live trumpet has bite, real bite. Kind of a grab you and make you pay attention bite. This, to my mind, is indicative of the speed of the speaker cables, when the rest of the system is up to it. These speaker cables gave me that feeling of harmonic correctness.
Onto the Sound: These cables define neutrality about as good as I have heard. Timbre is incredibly spot-on. I have been burning them in while doing various other things and been suddenly startled, convinced that I had heard people talking in another room. Nope, just the voices on the cd I was listening to. In my limited experience, is about as good as it gets in our audiophile world; to be convinced, with your back turned, that you heard a live sound.
This neutrality extends throughout the frequency range too. Sax sounds incredibly present, but never overbearing. Bass notes have a natural fullness and bloom. Music just flows from my system
Having said all of this, I can say that these cables are an unqualified success in my system. They insert a more realistic and dimensional presentation of music, with no obvious or apparent faults that I can perceive.
As most here on A/C knows the room acoustics and system synergy will have a big affect on the performance of a given combination of audio components. And generally do not like to compare apples to oranges so I will not offer any insight if these cables are better than the Zu Wax, Ridge Street Pioema’s or BPT 6’s that I also own. That is for everybody else to decide. I am sure there may be better cables, but not too many I would venture to say at this price. And at quite a bit higher too! Overall I find these cables to be quite neutral and do not favor any type of music, though certainly revealing of the source equipment. I don't even think about them anymore, they just don't seem to be there. Which I think is about as good of a compliment of any cable as I can give.
Every once in a while, you find a company that offers an excellent product for a very modest price. If you're lucky, you find an exceptional product for a very modest price. I feel I have done that. I hesitate to go too overboard but these cables are the essence of an amazing bang for your buck product. But they represent something more, they happen to beautifully portray the natural soul of music. And does so at a price almost anyone can readily afford.
Lastly, it goes without mention that Gregg is one of the nicest guys in the business. I wish him all the success he deserves.
We’ll I think that about does it for now. Who knows, once Gregg’s interconnects break-in a bit more you may hear from me again.
Best Regards,
Jeff
