High-end tunable audio cables fine-tune hifi show speakers and amps

3rd July 2017

High-end audio cables are essential when it comes to releasing the full potential of your audio system.

When it comes to getting the best from high-end audio components it is important not to treat audio cables as just accessories. They are essential when it comes to releasing the full potential from hifi audio equipment.

That understanding is central to Wire On Wire’s ethos and we were able to demonstrate its importance at this year’s North-West Audio Show at Cranage Hall.

Wire On Wire and 3SquareAudio presented at the show jointly with our Experience680 tunable interconnects and Experience660-S speaker cables and their ‘Translator’ floor-standers and stand-mounted ‘Liberators’ all driven by carefully tuned first-order crossover units.

The first day we had on show the ‘Translators’ connected to an NVA A-30 MkII amp with the Experience660-S speaker cables. An NVA passive amp connected our switching-unit to an Oppo CD player.

We wanted to get the sound right for the room and bring out the best in the speakers so we tuned the Experience680 for that. We found that opening up loops 3, 8, and 15 to tune the Experience680 did the job. The system without tuning had sounded a little bright for the room.

But we also wanted to demonstrate to our visitors that the cable could sound softer so we tuned another with loops 3, 8 and 13. Playing a variety of music we could switch between the cables allowing our visitors to hear the difference that geometry could make to a piece of music.

The uplift between the softer presentation and the tuning we had chosen for the show was easily noted by virtually all our visitors including a rather surprised Stuart from HiFiPig. See what Stuart had to say on the matter.

Towards the end of the afternoon we moved the Liberators into position for demos the following day. Not surprisingly having installed a new set of loudspeakers into the room the overall sound balance needed adjusting. The Experience660-S speaker cables will tune as they use the same REDpurl™ adaptive asymmetric geometry.

We settled on 3, 8, 13, and 15 loops tuned, which gave us superb detail and a sense of space and depth to the soundstage. We pitched this against another cable tuned (2,3,4, 8 and 13 tuned) to soften the upper frequency presentation (without loss of detail) to enhance the mid-range slightly as a way of showing our visitors how the system could be adapted to a particular system and user.

Visitors had clear opinions, some preferred this latter version whilst others preferred the cable tuned to give a little more lift to the upper frequencies. The age of the listening ear of course plays a part in these observations.

Either way the transparency of the speakers reflected the changes we made but it shows how important it is to tune a system, however good, to get the best out of it. And of course it allowed our visitors their preferred choice of listening that they would expect once an audio system is installed in their own listening space.

Thank you to all our visitors and fellow exhibitors for making the show such a success and we hope to see some of you at the London Indulgence Show.