We thought it would be a good idea to share one of our customer’s feedback after he has upgraded his audio interconnect cables to the cables below.
AudioQuest Chicago 1 to 1 RCA Cable
AudioQuest Irish Red Subwoofer Cable
Feedback below:
The new cables arrived today which I immediately installed and did a couple of hours of listening. More listening over the coming days and weeks will I am sure reinforce all what I have learned so far.
The first noticeable difference was how quiet the environment became. I am guessing there was a subliminal noise level in the room due to the previous cables (Jaycar premium RCA interconnects) which I ignored subconsciously. But with the new cables I get a feeling like when you put on noise cancelling headphones .. completely dead silence. It was eerie at first but became most welcomed when listening to critical music pieces. The lack of that noise just made all the low level ambience effects really stand out. This is really evident in the quiet sections of a classical concert piece or the breathing of a soloist.
The next thing I noticed was the clarity of the high frequencies above 5kHz. For example the upper ranges of the violin sections in Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Previously this was raspy and annoying. Now it is silky smooth and with detail. I am guessing this was due to some sort of high frequency distortion in the previous cables, likely due to clipping caused by the capacitance of the cable. This also was very apparent when listing to David Gilmours famous guitar rifts in the Delicate Sound of Thunder concert.
Next was the extended range of the bass and again the clarity. Without my new Super Chunk Bass Traps now installed in all four corners of the theater room (https://persona.uk.com/superchunk-bass-traps/) coupled with the SBS PB16 Ultra subwoofer I don't think you would have seen any difference between the two cables. But now, using the new cable, the bass extends deeper and overall is clearer. The sub is crossed over at 120 hz using a miniDSP 10x10HD processor running at 56 bit resolution and 96kHz sampling rate. The input signal is the L and R from the Anthem AVM60 and split to the Cornwall IV speakers and the SVS sub. Given that the 15" speaker in the CWIIV handles 30 Hz up to 700 Hz, splitting off the bass at 120 Hz allows the 15" speaker to concentrate more on the mid and upper bass frequencies leaving the heavy grunt work to the SVS sub. The PB16 easily matches the very clean bass of the Klipsch CWIV and is more like listening to the Klipsch KHorn bass. Since I have used KHorns for about 20 years I would say adding a SVS PB16 Ultra to a Cornwall IV and you end up with a speaker that easily outmatches the KHorn at both the top and the bottom ranges. And it costs much less.
Next was the dynamics and loudness. The music now has very noticeable dynamics which was evident when the house cat's ears were jumping around a lot. This was not seen with the previous cables. It means the sharp transients alerted the cat to something going on which required refocusing of its ears. A good test for transients. I also noticed the music was a couple of dB louder for a given volume setting. Probably due to the lessor resistance in the cables but could also be due to the lack of background noise and improved dynamics.
And finally the entire sound stage of the music has opened up more making the listening experience feeling as if becoming more inside the music. I have not done any Dolby Atmos tests yet since it is evident I will need to recheck the balance of all the speakers first.
So in summary the upgrade from the Jaycar premium RCA cables to the AudioQuest cables was more noticeable than I had thought it would be and well worth the dollars spent on them. But for others who are looking to do the same I highly recommend to make sure the rest of your system is up for it. Every element in the signal chain must be at the same level of these cables or you will not hear much if any difference. And this includes both the listener and the source material. By this I mean going all the way back to the recording methods and equipment used. But if you spend the time to get all of this sorted then you will find the addition of cables like this to be a necessity.