Apologies for not posting this sooner, but I have been waiting to talk with Alan of ABC Audio (EWA Cables) about my thoughts, I have left messages but oddly he has not come back to me yet, as my comments are basically positive with respect to the EWA cables I thought I would publish anyway. Thanks for supplying the cables Alan.
I will give a quick (not so quick) history of my cable adventures over 40 years or so, my ramblings I hope will help with understanding of how I got to where I am now and my thoughts on cables generally. Some may find it a tedious tale but it may help and be of interest to some.
Through the 70's and 80;s I went from low end systems built with separates to what was considered say mid priced, generally considered better audio. Initially Dual 502 TT, NAD 3020 amp, Wharfdale Denton XP2 speakers, evolving through various changes until I had a Luxman D105U CDP, Audio Innovations S500 valve amp and Snell type J speakers with stands. Throughout I mainly used QED 79 multi strand copper cables, which are still in the drawer. Interconnects were generally up to £30-40 purchased based on HiFi mag recommendations or a dealer. I tried various types of materials, but I only formed the opinion that using silver in the equation could make it sound a bit harsh or brighter, particularly when early CDPs were in the mix. When I got a Meridian 508 CDP I purchased Eccose Conductor CA1 RCAs (£130) to go from it to the amplifier. This made a definite improvement and I carried on to use them for many years with various pieces of equipment never thinking that they could be improved on. Then when building a Meridian based system I needed some more RCAs so purchased a pair of Eccose Nu_Divas, I think about £180 at the time, and very good indeed they are, I still use them.
Twenty years ago I came across a NVA pre and power set up at a dealers for silly money and purchased it on a whim, it also came with some odd speaker cables, 50mm diameter foam tubes with wires inside, the dealer knew nothing about them. The NVA pre and power amp did not sound very good using any of my interconnects between them, I contacted Richard Dunn at NVA and he sent me a pair of his RCA interconnects and suddenly it all sounded good. He also confirmed he recognised the odd loudspeaker cables as NVA and said they were fine to use, but would not say much more. These are quite short and I have tried them with a variety of amps and speakers and they always perform well. I have since been told they are prototypes for pre-release demo at dealers, made with various solid core wires from military use.
In two instances I determined in a simple way, and not very analytically, that cables actually do make a difference and what might work in one system may not in another! Also some cables are just plan good. But I was still sceptical about expensive cables and how the prices were justified. For my 40th my lovely wife gave me a pair of KEF Ref 3.2.2 speakers, the dealer demo’d them using my amp with QED 79 leads bi-wired and also some Monitor Audio sliver/copper multi-strand cables (no longer made), the difference was obvious, improved soundstage better top end and low end control, they worked with the KEFs, thus we shelled out £380 for the cables/phono-plugs, quite a lot 25 years ago.
For various reasons I stopped listening to my system and music from about 2001 to 2012, mainly due to our Guest House business and being too busy. I sold most of my hifi gear but had kept the cables. When I started again I just hooked it up with what I had, sat down and listened. Over 10 years I went through various components, amps, pre-amps, speakers, CDPs and several TT’s. The most consistent items in the various combinations of set ups were the old cables. Around 10 years ago I purchased some Chord Epic speaker cables as an upgrade to the Monitor Audio cables, they changed the presentation and at the time with the Dali Ikon 6 speakers for the better.
Various speakers came and went and I hit a brick wall, basically I misunderstood what was causing issues with how my set up sounded, lack of bass control and sometimes loss of soundstage. Eventually I was pointed in the right direction and realised I had caused speaker/amp mismatch issues several times. This was finally resolved with a Krell power amp and Wilson Benesch Vector speakers. To get more from them about 3 years ago I purchased new a pair of QED Silver Spiral Reference cables for £700, with jumpers. A definite improvement resulting in more space, detail and better soundstage, and better low bass control. I also have had three tonearm cables (for clarity the lead from the actual arm to the phono stage or amplifier), two stock ones, one standard SME, low cost Pro-Ject and a Pro-Ject mid priced one. These were replaced by the highly respected Furutech AG12 tonearm cable which at the time was about £560, it gave more detail and much better clarity across all frequencies. I also purchased a used Tellerium Ultra Black II RCAs from an audiophile friend, put between Krell Pre and Power, an immediate improvement in clarity and soundstage.
What I learnt from the above was that cables can and do make a difference, they can improve the overall sound or aspects of it and they can also degrade it. But I was sceptical that cables costing big bucks would actually give any improvement or give any VFM.That more or less brings everything up to date to October 2023. I came across a rather appealing used turntable with arm, as you do. It was an air bearing Turntable with parallel tracking arm. I read up on it, highly recommend with good press and personal reviews, and yes on paper it should give a better resolution than my existing turntable, a Pro-Ject Signature 10, I must say I have been very happy with it since I got it. Why change, I wanted to get that bit more from my vinyl replay, my main listening source. The dealer struck a PX deal but it meant me outlaying around £3k, not a small spend for me nowadays.
The same friend said “What are you doing, you have great system components, why change the turntable? You need to address your cables to get the best from it all, the Krell pre and power, Audio Valve Sunilda phono stage, are all very good, and a great Marantz CDP KI Pearl, and Wilson Benesch Vector speakers are very respectable”. I purchased all the aforementioned used and at very reasonable prices, except for the Pro-Ject turntable which was new. He went to great lengths to point out that if I replaced all my systems with brand new equivalents, in terms of build quality and sound capabilities I would have to spend a great deal, at least 3 times what I had spent. However as he pointed out my interconnects and cable all together new were about £1.5K, which was nowhere near the usual recommended spend of 10-15% of a system however I looked at it. He was very emphatic saying I should at least replace the tonearm cable and go for better speaker cables if I could.
I listened to him and started contacting several cable manufacturers and sellers and got some home to try out in my system for several weeks. After discussing with my lovely wife, we set a budget of £3-3.5K, my hope was to find little or no improvement so I could justify that shiny turntable instead.
First up was the LFD Copper tonearm cable which I was told is shielded, change one thing at a time. This cable is what could be considered on paper a step back as it was pure copper and no silver like my current one, but it retailed for about twice the cost of the Furutech. I spent 3-4 weeks listening with this cable, there was an initial ooh that sounds good but I allowed it to settle down, all I can say is that it just gives more definition better low mids and bass control, and surprisingly more detail. The dealer also lent me a rather expensive RCA interconnect(£3.5k) from the same manufacturer, I tried this between pre and power replacing my Terrillium Ultra Black II, there were very subtle differences, not necessarily better, and definitely not worth a £3k increase in cost IMO. I also put the loaned interconnect between the phono stage and Krell pre, there was a subtle improvement in detail and a change in sound stage, worth the extra only if you were well off IMO, so the Nu-Diva went back.
After the LFD tonearm cable, I trialed speakers cables from the same two manufacturers, the speaker cables from LFD were first, ex-demo for around £2.5K, and there really was an initial wow moment, I was quite shocked at how much more controlled everything was and more detail, with a wider soundstage. After a week or so I put my speaker cables back and listened, the trial LFD’s were definitely an improvement, but I was holding back until I had heard the EWA's
Two weeks later EWA loudspeaker cables from ABC Audio arrived. These are £500 more than the LFDs, they are quite well known in Audiophile circles and, I believe they use pure copper(I could be wrong) not silver like the LFD’s. At the first listen the EWAs produced a WOW moment, more bass and lovely mids, and the top end was still there, there just seemed to be more of everything. I went back and forth between these speaker leads, trying to get to the bottom of the differences and why. What I have realised is that the LFD’s effectively emphasise the top end, giving great attack and control across all frequencies but in my set up the mid range looses warmth and as a result bass extension is also suppressed. The EWAs do everything the LFDs do but give more across all frequencies, the result is everything sounds more natural and real, that’s my opinion and what my ears tell me anyway. This is very evident when playing music with natural instruments and female vocals, for example Micheal Hedges - ‘Aerial Boundaries’, Eva Cassidy ‘Fields of Gold’ from Nightbird” and Ravi Shankar - ‘Portrait of Genius’ and various classical recordings including string quartets and pure piano. With the EWAs I particularly noticed on Miles Davis - ‘So What’ from ‘Kind of Blue’ that when all the band are playing together it sounds very balanced and still easy to pick out each individual instrument, as each player steps up to solo you can hear them forward in the mix as the other players lower their levels, just as you would expect if hearing it live, with the LFD cables the musician soloing seems exaggerated and is thus pushed too far forward in the soundstage in my opinion, in comparison to listening with the EWAs the LFDs seem to produce a more forced sound.
The EWA tonearm cable straight from the manufacturer was delayed, I believe this is the first to be produced by them and I was happy to try it out, I was effectively being a guinea-pig, as I understand it is based on their IC-40 interconnect cable. It was close in price to the LFD cable but that may change if they choose to produce more and I presume the type of plugs used will also affect the price. I was very interested to see how this tonearm cable performed after being wowed by the EWA LS-80 speaker cables. I was not disappointed and my thoughts are in the table below.
Summing Up:In my opinion cables definitely do make an important difference to the sound output by a system, for good or bad, their composition and what they are used with is also a very important factor. One question that many ask ‘Does paying a lot for cables actually get you a good cable that works well?’, well I would answer no not necessarily but with a caveat, and it is a big one. There are obviously some very good reasonably priced cables out there that perform extraordinarily well, but there are so many choices the problem is identifying the good VFM cables and then determining if they work well in your own system. Back to that caveat, there are some very good cables out there which are not cheap but easily out perform others, some are ridiculously expensive and others more sensibly priced, I also suspect there are some very expensive ones which are just not worth the cost at all.
Over the years I read up on some cable reviews, but to be honest I am not sure they are relevant, I just used them as a general guide. I am not convinced that they giving really independent evaluations on a products, and a reviewer may find a cable works well in a set up but it may be of no real benefit in a readers system set-up. I did take on board some personal recommendations from audiophile friends and a couple of dealers and manufacturers that I thought might offer some good advice, one dealer and a manufacturer I was not purchasing from, to their credit both gave me some good tips and pointers.
Where to start and what approach to take is quite difficult as well, from a source device there may be as many as 4 or even 5 between it and the speakers, i.e. Turntable to Phono Stage to Pre-Amp to Power Amp to Speaker (4, add a step up transformer and its 5 cables), digital source can face the same issues. Where in this chain is the best place to start?
There is an inherent problem, if we start at the front of the cable chain in a system then the interconnects and speaker cables further on may mask any improvements due to their own limitations, start at the other end and then benefits from sonically better loudspeaker cables could be lost due to the interconnect limitations in the signal path. I believe there is no simple or easy answer as to how best to approach this conundrum, however I think you can mitigate and take an approach that will hopefully identify and achieve improvements. My approach was to focus on one musical source, get all my existing interconnects and try them out in the chain until I got the sound I liked best, I actually did not change much in the end.
The next step was to listen to different tonearm cables, some I already owned and those on loan for trail, unfortunately one was delayed getting to me in this process. I always kept to the same listening tracks, twelve that I know very well, a mix of genres and instrumentation. I made notes, took scores of different aspects of sound and presentation, it is all too easy to get lost or confused in the process so having references are important. When I had narrowed it down to two that I liked I repeated the process until I had a clear winner. Before I committed to the preferred tonearm cable I listened to loudspeaker cables with it, until I had a clear loudspeaker cable winner. I then re-assessed my top two tonearm cables with the preferred speaker cable to ensure it still had good synergy. I believe this is valuable as the loudspeaker cables change and impacted what I heard, they each either enhanced or degraded some aspects of the sound, its belt and braces but is worth it.
Finally when the last tonearm cable to try arrived, and I assessed it and again I tried it with my top two speaker cables, and at last I had my final choice, EWA Tonearm and Loudspeaker cables.
The next step if and when I have the money will be to persuade a few dealers to lend me interconnects. I would change one at a time going through the range of cables to test, to see if I can better what I have already. Once I have addressed one source I may deal with the others in a similar manner.
One final and important point to consider, is how much to spend on cables in a system, if money was no object then spending £5K on cables in a system with components that cost £5K(new) is probably very unlikely to be a worthwhile exercise or a cost effective thing to do. In other words the sound quality will be limited by the limitations of what the components can produce due to the design/manufacturing constraints of the components. My personal thoughts on this are that the general rule of thumb that is touted in HiFi circles is probably a good guideline, that is 10-15% of the component cost should be spent of cables, so in so for a £5K system, and additional £500-750 on cables.
In my experience if the components in a system are capable of producing high levels of sound quality then trying out different and possibly more expensive cables is a worth while exercise to see if you can get more from the system overall. However I would also consider trying cables like the Belden interconnects and Dueland speaker cables which are extremely good value for money IMHO and probably put many cables many times their cost to shame, there is lots of info on both on the internet.
In my view cables are an important part of a HiFi system, and can and do make a difference to the sound quality.
