2009. december 2120 sztereó*sound&vision

Two pairs of ears, three hours, four test materials and five pairs of cables on a rainy November morning – all conditions are set for another cable test. This time I borrowed three pairs of top-of the-range speaker cables from Audioquest. Luckily, I went to pick up the cables from KáCsa Audio by car. To bring home such heavy duty cables on public transport you would need one of those shopping

carts – something I don’t have. Although I have seen exceptions but in the world of high-end audio we are not surprised to see cables thick enough to be installed at power stations. These Audioquest cables are not far from that.They say at Audioquest that the new pure silver speaker cable will not reach the market before 2010, so current top models are Mont Blanc and Volcano in the Earth Feature series, both of which use pure copper. Cables in this series bear Earth related names, but Audio-quest decided to explore beyond our humble home and gave cosmic names to some its new cables. Thus the new copper-silver hybrid speaker cable was named ‘Meteor’. As a matter of fact, the Wild Blue Yonder interconnect tested in the previous issue also got its name from “out of this world” (check details on Wikipedia).

Cable manufacturers tend to agree that the purer the metal and the more ho-mogeneous the structure of the conduc-tor is, the better sonic character of the cable will be. The manufacturers, how-ever, have their own best methods of reaching this goal. Some manufactur-ers emphasize purity by the “number of nines”, for example 6N (six nines) cop-

per means that the metal is 99.9999% pure copper and only the rest is impu-rity. Others concentrate on the crys-tal structure and swear on mono-crys-tal conductors where average length of a copper crystal is 125 meters; there-fore the signal doesn’t have to struggle through crystal boundaries. Some manu-facturers employ age-annealed conduc-tors or put the cable through cryogen-ic treatment; all this is to restore crystal structure. Audioquest swears that the solution lies in the conductor’s surface which has to be as smooth as possible because the conductor acts as a rail for the electric fields in the conductor and for magnetic fields outside the conduc-tor. Even after twenty years I remember how surprised I was when we proved this fact with long equations in an elec-tro-dynamics class at university. The professor said that we have to imagine that the energy created by the electro-magnetic field moves outside the con-ductor and the conductor gives the di-rections. Engineers at Audioquest were not my classmates unfortunately, but surely they were not in the canteen ei-ther when this was covered in class. All mid-range Audioquest cables and above employ Perfect Surface Copper (PSC) or Perfect Surface Silver (PSS). Needless to say, that the three Audioquest cables in this test also use such conductors.

Apart from aiming to use high quality materials, manufacturers follow differ-ent schools regarding cable geometry, dielectric materials, or even termination methods. Except for the very low end of the cable range, Audioquest uses only in-dividually insulated solid conductors. The three speaker cables were constructed from solid conductors with different di-ameters. They argue that “any single size or shape of conductor has a specific dis-tortion profile” and therefore they use a specific “combination of different size conductors in order to significantly re-duce the audibility of these character flaws”. Audioquest calls it Spread Spec-trum Technology (SST).

We tested the Wild Blue Yonder – new

AQ interconnect cable – in our last issue,

this time let’s look the same time devel-

oped speaker cable and compare it with

4 other cables.

Attack of the Extra Terrestrial

AQ Meteor: new generation

copper-silver hybrid cable!

Test

For insulation Audioquest doesn’t use Teflon which has excellent dielectric qualities, and is the choice of so many cable manufacturers. On the contrary, the “negative conductors are insulated with partially conductive carbon-loaded polyethylene. This remarkable material damps radio-frequency garbage from be-ing fed back into the amplifier.” Although the materials are different but Lessloss employs the same concept to filter RFI from its power cords. It is not surprising that these cables were also equipped with the Dielectric-Bias System (DBS) which was introduced in earlier issues already. (Digitális Házimozi Magazin Issue 59, Sztereo Magazin Oc-tober-November 2009.) The DBS aims to reduce energy stored in the insula-tion which would be eventually released back into to signal and would cause dis-tortion.

The Audioquest speaker cables I had for the test came with screw-on spades or banana plugs which take only a few min-utes to swap. For the test I put banana plugs on all of them. While changing the plugs I saw that the conductor ends of Volcano and Mont Blanc were treated with some kind of copper paste, while silver paste was applied on the Meteor. The silver paste resembled the Walk-er Audio SST which I’ve been using for years, but a number of other companies make similar silver paste.

Well, let’s go over it again: PSC, PSS, DBS, SST, conductive insulation. It’s like quoting from an automobile catalogue: EBA, DSTC, SIPS, etc. It all sounds good, but what does music sound like through these cables? To make our own work more difficult we added two other cables to the test: the Neotech NS-2000 which has been carrying the signal to my speak-ers for quite some time and my friend, Kousay, brought his Audio Note Japan KSL SPc cables. The physical qualities of these cables are so different from each other and also from Audioquest cables that we are entitled to believe that dif-ferences would be more than just notice-able. All 5 cables were single-wired and we used Audioquest jumper cables. Bi-wiring never worked for me, anyway.

The two test CDs we listened to most were Roberto Fonseca Cuban jazz pi-anist’s ‘Zamazu’, which I was fortunate enough to hear live, and ‘Album Leaves’ on which Kousay was fortunate enough to play the cello escorted by a piano. So both of us had some idea what to listen out for, no doubt Kousay a little more than me…We chose the following order: Mont Blanc, Volcano, Meteor, Neotech, and Audio Note; naturally returning to each cable a number of times later again. I was struck from the very beginning how much improvement the Volcano offered

over Mont Blanc, despite the fact that on-ly difference between the two is that the Volcano has 60% more conductors, ev-erything else is practically the same. The Volcano was considerably more relaxed but still able to express details more dy-namically. Instruments were better sep-arated on Fonseca’s album where on-ly five people play but at times it sounds more like a big band. In Kousay’s words, the Mont Blanc is more “hi-fi” sounding (i.e. less high-end). I would say that with Mont Blanc everything is in place over-all, nothing important is lost, nothing un-pleasant is present but compared to the

Volcano there is a feeling of strain, or rather, a lack of reserve power. It’s like comparing a talented young opera sing-er to Pavarotti or a “Star is Born” con-test winner to Freddy Mercury. The former are perfect in their own right but the latter give us the feeling of re-serve power in their voices, just cruis-ing through difficult passages. The over-all sound character of the two cables is quite similar: uncompromised bass ex-tension, wide and deep stage, and a little warm tone often associated with copper cables. At the same time, the exact po-sition of the instruments and musicians

is less precise than with the silver Neo-tech cable I’m used to. When trying to come to a final conclusion on the differ-ences between Mont Blanc and Volca-no, a friend’s – who owned a number of sports cars – answer came to my mind to my question about the differences be-tween a street version and the bi-turbo version of the same model: “nothing…only two hundred horse powers”. I’d be happy enough with the street version of that sports car. The Mont Blanc easily qualifies for the street version category and in many systems the Volcano’s extra “two hundred horse powers” may not be

noticed or considered significant. (Just a side note, my power amp is 1250W/ch at 4 ohms and my living room is over 800 sq feet, which may put some more pressure on the speaker cables than a smaller sys-tem and space.) When connecting the Meteor we were surprised how polite it sounded and at first it seemed overly laid back. After a few minutes of listening we removed it and decided to come back to it a little later. Thinking back now, it was like a ten year old child having his eyes fixed on a Porsche at the red light, although there is an Aston Martin DB-9 or a Bentley Cou-

pé in the other lane next to it; in other words, the Meteor is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We will come back to the Me-teor a little later.

We spent the next half an hour or so swapping the Neotech NS-2000 and Vol-cano there and back which was equiva-lent of a mid intensity training in the gym. The Neotech cable is thicker than my five year old son’s arm and the Volcano is not far from a ¾” garden hose. Neither of them is very flexible, so I often felt like wrestling with giant snakes when trying to connect them. The good news is that

COUNTER SPIRAL (EARTH FEATURE) DESIGNPositive Conductor Group (inner circle = 9 AWG)

1 × 21 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors 2 × 20 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors2 × 19 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors3 × 17 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors

Negative Conductor Group (outer circle = 9 AWG)1 × 21 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors 2 × 20 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors2 × 19 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors3 × 17 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors

DBS Anode (+) Silver-Plated Drainwire + Foil ShieldDBS Cathode (-) (Negative Conductor Group + Conductive PVC Rods)72V DBS Battery Pack IncludedRed/Black/Grey Braid over Black PVC Jacket

Volcano

COUNTER SPIRAL (EARTH FEATURE) DESIGNPositive Conductor Group (inner circle = 9 AWG)

1 × 21 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors 2 × 20 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors1 × 19 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors1 × 17 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors

Negative Conductor Group (outer circle = 9 AWG)1 × 21 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors 2 × 20 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors1 × 19 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors1 × 17 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors

DBS Anode (+) Silver-Plated Drainwire + Foil ShieldDBS Cathode (-) (Negative Conductor Group + Conductive PVC Rods)72V DBS Battery Pack IncludedBlue/Black Braid over Black PVC Jacket

mont blanc

DOUBLE STAR-QUAD GEOMETRYOverall: 2 × 12 AWG (3.19 mm2)Treble Group

2 × 20 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) Conductors 2 × 17 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors

Bass Group2 × 19 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) Conductors 2 × 16 AWG Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) Conductors

Nitrogen-injected foam PE (Positive Conductors)Carbon-Loaded PE Insulation (Negative Conductors)Nylon Braid Grey/Polyester Black DBS Field Elements

meteor

bass treble

2009. december 2322 sztereó*sound&vision

Test

when in place, they stay there and will not put tension on the connectors (unlike my earlier NBS speaker cables). Never-theless, these speaker cables are not re-ally suitable for light weight amps and speakers. The Neotech cable presented a distinctively drier musical performance which at first sounded a little mechanical and less involving, despite offering more details. At the same time, it felt as if we were sitting closer to the stage and the musicians were in better focus. Kousay remarked that instruments sounded more natural with the Neotech and the CD playback of Album Leaves sound-

ed closest to how he played it when it was recorded. Nevertheless, when we put the Volcano back, it brought some refreshing liveliness into the sound. We concluded that the Volcano was magi-cal in a way, even though it may not have

been the most natural. Similarly to say-ing: that it’s not always the most beautiful woman, who is the most attractive. I suggested giving Meteor another go. To our surprise (as to why we had not heard it earlier) the Meteor nicely combined the advantages of Neotech and Volcano. This may be attributed to the fact that the Me-teor is a hybrid copper-silver cable. Natu-rally, the overall presentation was closer to that of the Volcano, but it sounded as if the felt cover had been thinner on the hammer of the piano, so it sounded a lit-tle sharper, closer to the Neotech. At the same time it sounded as if the pianist had been aware of this and played more soft-ly. The Neotech, in comparison, is even sharper, brighter in character but clear-er and more focused. The bass was al-so moderate on the Meteor, similarly to the Neotech. If Volcano is ten on a scale representing “brute force” of bass, Me-teor would be eight, and Neotech would be seven; meanwhile Neotech expresses bass details the most precisely.

At the end of our test day we connect-ed the Audio Note Japan KSL SPc ca-ble. Audio Note got its fame for its natu-ral sound. We could confirm it this time, too, but mainly in the mid-range. Both in the low and high frequency ranges a lot of energy was lost. Although it was his own cable, Kousay impartially said that the high frequencies were rolled off. He said he liked the natural sound of that ca-ble, but he was unhappy about how vio-lins sounded with the Audio Note cable – even in his own system. To save face we have to remind ourselves that the Audio Note cable costs about the third of the cheapest Mont Blanc.

The unfinished battle between Neo-tech and Meteor just kept bugging me. A few days after the first test with Kousay, other audiophile friends Attila and Péter

popped over. Among other albums, we primarily listened to bassist Brian Brom-berg’s ‘Wood’. The Meteor pictured the size and scale of the double bass better, but the melody was slightly easier to fol-low with the Neotech, and for this rea-son my friends preferred the latter. A few days later I returned the Mont Blanc and the Volcano to KáCsa Audio, but for over a month now I’m still bor-rowing the Meteor and swap it for the Neotech every now and then. I’m still not sure which of the two I prefer; de-pending on the genre and recording sometimes one and sometimes the oth-

er. The Meteor is about the quarter of the size of the Neotech, so no question about being more living-room friendly, not to mention the WAF factor. The Me-teor costs substantially, about 50% less than the Neotech NS-2000 which easi-ly makes it a better value for money. On the other hand, if you listen to a lot of rock music and need uncompromised bass energy so that the neighbors don’t complain about not hearing the kick-drum and the bass guitar properly, you should give Volcano a go.

Zoltán Dénes, contributor

System:Analog system: LP: Acoustic Signature Final Tool MkII, Mambo Silence Platter upgrade, Moerch DP-Shell 6, Benz Micro Ruby 3 SE pick-upDigiatal : C.E.C.TL51X, Lessloss DAC 2004MkIIPower system: Whest Reference Series Phono PS.30RDT, Audio Research LS26, MC2 Audio MC1250Loudspeaker: Proac Response D80

Cables: Power cord: Lessloss and Audio Note Japan KSL-ACZPhono: Audioquest, WEL SignatureDigital : Audio Note Japan KSLInterconnect cable: Audioquest WBY

Music’s for the Test:Roberto Fonseca: Zamazu; Kousay H. Mahdi Kadduri, Péter Nagy: Album Leaves; Brian Broomberg: Wood; Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

24 sztereó*sound&vision

Test

Volcano length: 3 m 800 000 Ft

Mont Blanc length: 3 m 440 000 Ft

Meteor length: 3 m 750 000 Ft

NS-2000 length: 3 m 1 500 000 Ft

Distributor: KáCsa Audio Kft. • www.kacsa-audio.hu