I have always had a proplem with any kind of hifi equipment. The problem has been that whatever the equipment was doing good it was not enough to balance what it was not doing or doing wrong. This has been valid for amplifiers, cables, CD players or transport, DAC, streamers, but has been more present in preamps, and more so in the pre-pre categories.
The phono MM preamp is a bad animal, but still belonging on the same kingdom of line preamp. The MC step up preamp… is a wild beast most of the times born with heavy handycaps. This is since it has to deal with more deep problems then the « normal » preamps, and dealing with deep problems is always more difficult then dealing with more superficial ones. The mainly problem is noise. The pre-pre has to develop in its preamplifying action as less noise as possible or proposing « something else » in echange for it, or proposing a more natural, less intrusive felt noise if such thing exists.
There are very good MC phono preamps that are dead quite. The thing for me is that all these very good preamps, except the ones that cost more then 15000 euros, will make you very happy only when you turn them on and put your ear close to a loudspeaker. They are quite like a tomb. But the more you listen music with them, the more you are happy appreciating how good they should sound, for all their quiteness, the more something strange will start to take shape inside of you. Or at least inside me. They get too close to digital reproduction. You feel as something that makes analogue special, is getting lost in this quest of absolute noise reduction. Anf this lost thing has some quality that is extremely difficult to explain and to put in words. I guess it is something that is related to a dialogue between noise and silence. It feels as part of the noise has the capacity to store something related to the musical message. I really cannot say what this something is, but I can say that it is lost. This is also very clear with cables. And expecially with power cables and power conditioners.
MC step up transformer, in this case are for me the best bet for pre – pre applications. But…yes the but can have a profund meaning. There is a terrible matching hell to fight with before having a very good result. If you get out winning this match, a good MC step up transformer with a fairly economic MM preamp will sound more musical then a full box phono preamp costing 4 - 5 times more. At least for my personal taste. But it will be the result of either trying different MC transformer step up with your cartridge, very difficult thing to do since it is extremely rare to find a dealer that has few to let you try, or just a lucky strike. Many of us believe in the lucky srike mostly because we don’t compare this lucky stike with something else and to realize that is just a strike with half luck. There is also another option : buying the MC step up transformer that has been made to go with your cartridge. Also this could not be the best since it will have to match the other gear is connected to. But it remains the safer bet.
The MC preamp is a wild best because it kills timbres, and it kills energy. It flatten energy and timbres in its proces of amplification. And what it kills no other parts in the chain will be able to resuscitate.
In this case Lector came out with something "wrong": a tube MC step up.
How the hell you think to step up very low voltage with something noisy as tubes are?
The thing with tubes is that they are noisier then solid state, and noise is not good. But as I said before it is not that if noise is not good and I have something that makes less noise this something is going to sound better. It will just have less noise.
So the matter is giving more essential good introducing less meaningfull bad things.
I think that Lector aimed at this.
How does it sound?
When you try this unit coming from very expensive SUT, like the EMT, that I love, or the Auditorium 23 Hommage, that I deeply like, the first thing you want to know is if there is any noise out of it. You go to put your ear close to a loudspeaker and... you hear the wind of tubes! It is not loud, since you cannot hear it from the listening position, but you know it is there. And this knowing is very fastidius.
So I have started listening this step up with a very bad attitude toward it.
Add to this that the first 30 hours it does not sound well at all.
Highs are disconnected, the flow is restricted, the resolution is not that good.
After about 50 hours things are different. You will start to appreciate that it is more fluid then many others and that the differenciation of timbres is more evident and that the rithmic capabilities are surprisingly very good, excepionally so for a tube pre, but more so is that all is given in a coherent manner. The partecipation of all the elements are better glued togheter then of a more classic step up or MC phono preamp. Yes, the music makes a little more sense, and you start forgiving it adds a little noise. When you go back to a normal step up transformers, it means in the class of 1000 euros, you will discover that step up transformers, in the keeping a richer timbre in comparison to the solid state pre phono, bring a caracteristic distorsion, a pleasent distortion. You will realise that a solid state has less distortion, but a worse one.
At my age, I am 57 right now, listening is much less a dissection of elements. My listening is directed more toward the emotion then anything else. This was the case when all started, but then, in the quest of getting better sound, I have become more concerned about this and that, about the depth of stage, deeper bass, focalisation and bla bla bla. And I managed to get better sound. But rarely better music.
After many years I started not to care about the elements of the reproduction if the result is not convincing even though seducing.
I have listened to too many hifi objects, most of them quite expensive, that in the quest of some great caracteristic, like a cavernous stage, or whatever, have lost the capability to make music out of these elements. It is true that we like to justify how we spend our money and it is easier to justify it when we have something easy to target to. Also because if our quest is musicality, the essence of music expression, you realise the most gear you listen to, does not give you more music but just more of a part of it, and most of the time at the cost of the all picture.
It is extremely difficult to get more meaning, more vibration, more expression, more musical intent out.
This long prelude it is just to say that it is useless to talk about all the hifi elements if these are not balanced in a coherent and meaningful way, the way that brings sense to the musical message.
This unit has a good portion of all the hifi things we like, none of them is great but it has them in good portion and expecially proportion. It has good focalisation, good depth, good dynamic swing and so on but it has something that most of them lack: it makes them able to gel well togheter.
Let's got more in depth about some special caracteristic this step up has. First of all, it proposes a different nature of distortion in comparison to the MC step up transformer, keeping the same richness of timbre that for me only MC step up transformer are capable of preserving. And I can say this kind of distortion is less mechanical to the ears. You get a less mechanical distortion for more noise. I say "mechanical" distortion even though it is not a correct term. I refer to it as mechanical since it is a distortion that in some frequences gives more rigidity to the musical message.
The very expensive MC step up transformer such the EMT, or the Auditorium 23 Hommage, have in much less degree then cheaper onese, but they still have it a little of it.
But with this unit we have something that these two MC step up transfomer don't have: the capacity of loading the cartridge the way you like.
For me this is the "bad disesase" of MC step up transformer: you cannot be sure they will sound good with your cartridge in your system. So either you have different cartridges and different MC step up transformer, or you will never can be sure about the matching issue.
After I started liking this unit quite a lot, I started playing with resistors for loading the cartridges.
A different resistor of the same value, many say in this position should not change the sound and instead it changes the sound!
I have loaded two videos where you have the same value resistor but from differnt makers and from different materials: one is the Audio Note Niobium and the other is a Takman metal resistor. The difference is more or less clear, and if you can hear it on these videos, in reality it is even more clear.
The Takman metal resistor makes the "bodily" difference betwen instruments and silence more clear. Instruments are more carved out in space, but they are more closed in in their timbric expression. The Audio Note Niobium makes timbric differences between instruments more clear, it is more fluid and more nuanced. The Takman has more dynamic contrast, it pushes stronger. It has a kind of wave energy in storing and giving it back.
I would have liked to try with other resistors, but unfortunately I had to return the unit to his owner.
For which kind of listener this product is?
The Lector is certainly for the ones that are not concerned with anything else then musicality.
That's it.
Great work Lector!
PS: I wonder why this brand is not more popular. I guess it is for its almost inexistent marketing effort. I have to say that I have never listened to a Lector product that was not great in its price range and above. Its CD players, transports and DACs are really excellent. Its preamplifier is a steal for the money. This MC step up phono is exceptional... It is like Lector is uncapable of proposing an average product!
Audio Note Niobium resistor (the pink one) vs Takman metal
PS: the Audio Note Niobium will sound much better after about 50 hours. It will improve dynamic contrast and it becomes more rithmical overall. The improvement in rithmic let me perplexed but it happened without expecting it.
The music in the videos is from this immortal album!
When its stilus touched the LP I realised I was not liking it. It was a strange sound. Expecially it was dynamically constricted, dynamically muted. The biggest problem was that this was not balanced by some other magnificient quality so that you could say : yes, you don’t like it but have you ever heard its 3D presentation? or something like this. No, nothing at all. I thought it was a bad cartridge. Moreso it was on the lowish output even for an MC and this proved a problem for the first preamp it was connected to. And this was the only reason why I realised I had made a mistake. The thing was not properly loaded. I have made a big mistake with my step up. You know sometimes, even though you need glasses, you just say to yourself you know by heart were the setting are. But when I was ready to change my phono preamp I had my glasses on and said : what the hell ! I have loaded it at 37 ohm !
I started it all again. I used a step up transformer on my Lamm phono preamp and things… changed. Yes they changed. Dynamic it was sure not its forte, but was acceptable, normal, not too good not too bad, but it was emmediate to my ears that it had soomething special et unique. It had a kind of sweet fluidity with a certain tinbric density coupled with not really muted transient attack. Generally when we hear a certain fluidity we also hear diminished transient attacks, and expecially fluidity and density of timbre don't go often toghete, but in this case, its not that it had great transient capability, but the fluidity of its musical reproduction was perfectly balanced with everything else in a way that I was feeling nothing was missing. I perfectly know this trick. And is a rare one. So the thing that gets you captivated is this kind of uniqueness of sound. When you hear it after a while you realise that all other MC cartridges really have something in common, you realise that all belong to the same family with some variations that meke certain cartridges more appealing to you then other ones. But this one is like it has a different nature. In a way it is exremely interesting since it is really like a new interpretation of the music. on the other side the way you have learned to judge and to select cartridges is challenged to the point that you ask yourself who got it right. While keep on listening to thos cartridge few times I have thought all the others got it wrong, since there was a certain expression a certain charge in the music that was completely absent from all the other MC cartridges I have listened to. They all sounded mechanical in comparison to this one. And the ones that sound less mechanical and more fluid were achieving this at the expenses of body, or transient attack.
The only really fastidious point was that after so many years of being used to MC sound whenever I wentr back to another cartridge, I was feeling more "at home" in its wrong doing. I am sure that if I had lived with this cartridge for much longer time I had to seriously readjust to all my other cartridges with some difficulty.
For this reason I can surely affirm that this cartridge has some kind of magic. Not because it immediately will blow you away but it will suck you in a strange world. in a world were thing are there like suspended in a different reality you are used to ear.
You can buy some cartridges that have some universal pleasing sound like Dynavector. I don't know anyone that does not like Dynavector. That he prefer something else yes, but that dislikes Dynavector never. Then there are other cartridges that are disliked only by people that don't let them express as they were supposed to sound like Ortofons. Ortofons sound the way they should only with step up transformers in my opinion if not they sound uninvolving. But if you use with the right step up they are not going to be disliked by anyone. Then you have some others like VDH that are either disliked or loved like it happens with Naim electronics.
In this case, with this Miyajima, it is absolutely impossible to predict by who it is going to be loved. I guess it will fit well in a reproduction chain with low power amps and horn speakers.
It is a cartridge that all vinyl lover should hear. I guess this is valid for all miyajima cartridges. Right now I am listening to another Miyajima, the Shilabe. It has the same family sound of the Saboten, so I think this is the sound of Miyajima cartridges.
One thing is sure: if you like this sound nothing can be an alternative to it.
I know, maybe it is not good to spend such long time with a tonearm that has so many technical disavantages. The arm tubes cannot be that rigid since their fixing method. And then they are not even tapered to avoid vibrations. The continuity of the cabling is broken for the very same reason. Not only in one point from the cartridge to the din connector at the tonearm base, but also at the tonearm tube - tonearm base level. Could you cope with the fact that this fragile connection is held on place with pins touching togheter by pression?And the lateral weights are like big vibration captureing devices.
But at the end it sounds fairly good to me and also to many others even if they didn't buy it. Yes at the end something can sound poorly in principle and good in reality or sound good in theory and bad in reality. I prefer the former case.
Let's get into the heavy subject: It is stated that generally vertical damping is not an advantage in this tonearm.
Few have written it does something in their set up. A friend hifi distributor of mine says it is better with vertical damping. Others say it does not change the sound.
When we have different answers we have to consider different things. Of course the first is lazyness...
or better: the fastidiousness of the procedings.
One thing is to moove the tonearm from a turntable to another. Another thing is to try different silicon density and another one is to wipe it off from the well and put it in again. And another is,at the end of all this, to play with the length of the axe that dips in the silicon well of this tonearm.
But I wanted to have a definitive answer to it. It is better to assume it works better in one way of another. It is much simpler to rest satisfied. But you know how it is...satisfaction does not last forever. We are not in the Garden of Eden and everybody knows what happen to the only people there.
I have made about one year of testing. I have used this tonearm in different turntable with different cartridges and different tonearm cables and the answer is, unfortunately or fortunately it depends how you will receive this information, it makes a difference. Sometimes this difference is slightly better, sometimes slightly worse. But this slight thing makes an important matter at a certain level, surely at the level of this tonearm. I don't think anybody will buy a tonearm of this caliber if for him small difference were not vital.
What when damping is too much: the sound is darker and less agile. Less rithmically involving.
What happens when it is too little or nothing: the sound is responsive and rithmically expressive with a little brillance, a little shine similar to some silver cables. Some, since it is not always the case in silver cables.
Between these two for me it is always better the second. I don't like a darker and less rithmically involving sound.
What about the best result? The best result is a longer journey result.
First of all the silicon density. Yes I have tried different silicon density. You can easily find different silicon density for RC cars differencial use.
The best came out to be of 100K.
When you put about 0.2ml of this silicon in the Moerch well for vertical dumping and you play with the vertical shaft length to get it right you are going to find a setting where you feel indeniably that like this is correct. Everything snaps in time and focus and tone. It has more or less the same effect of changing the cartridge impedence matching in your phono preamp.
Records that were difficult to listen to become really OK! This wa for me the best adventage for me. I hate records of which music I love to be reproduced in a way that does not allow me to enjoy them.
The problem is that this everything is not stable. It means you didn't find the best for every combination. You have find the best for a certain cartridge. And worse... for a certain tonearm cable. Worse still: for a certain combination of cartridge and tonearm cable in a certain turntable. And of course your choosen arm tube (green, red or blu) you use.
For example in the Kuzma Stabi Ref 2 and EMT cartridge with a green arm tube I have found out that the vertical shaft had to be lifted out to mesure 12mm from the base where it is seated (11.5mm is the shortest mesurement allowed according to the manual). But this with a certain tonearm cable. With another tonearm cable it was better at 14.5mm out
In a Thorens TD124 with an Ortofon SPU Gold on a blu arm tube the best was to leave the vertical damping shaft all the way in 11.5mm out. This was the case with all the three tonearms cable tried. Maybe because it is a non suspended design and a direct drive...
With a Linn LP12... better without vertical damping!
This is just so you have an idea of it.
So yes, generally vertical damping in this tonearm is not an advantage but if you want it all out of it, it can be crucial.
Of course certain systems are much more reactive then others. If your system does not react or you don't react to different vibration device like cones or platforms and so on, or for you any cartridge loading sound the same, it is useless you try out the best vertical damping.
At the end it is somehow intuitive. The vertical damping has not only a mecanical influence but also a vibrational one. Anything we put in the system and that connect things togheter is a vibrational device that will add or subtract things to make things worse or better.
I feel that the option of vertical damping is perfect for the ones that have one turntable one tonearm cable and one cartridge. You find the correct setting and then forget about it.
It is good to have this option. It is good to know that you can have a possibility to tune it.
It is a bad thing to think you have the possibility to tune it for the better but you don't do it.
Yes, it is a question of fastidiousness.
The best answer would be: generally the vertical damping in this tonearm does not improve the sound if you don't want to mess with it but it could.
The counterweight.
You have three main counterweights with this tonearm. I am not talking about the lateral ones but the ones you need to balance the cartridge and apply the correct VTF. These three counterweights have an eliptical shape. Then you have a fourth counterweight, perfectly round, that is easier to moove to achieve the smallest difference of weight. I hate this one. It it mooves too freely. I would have much prefered it to be a little tighter with its o-ring.
In the owner manual it showed how to get a dynamic balance with the main counterweights. Sometimes this is achieved rotating it or both either with the larger part in the top position or in the lower position. You could also have, if you nned more then one to balance the weight of the used cartridge, one rotated in a way and another one rotated in the opposite way.
The thing is that the rotation of it or thenm changes the sound.
I have found out, with different turntables and cartridges, so the effect is repetable, that using the counterweight with their larger side up gets the sound more unified and more linear in a sense. Using the counterweight with its larger side down gives you more drive and dynamic contrast. The best combination of course depends upon your system and your taste, but more I would say about your taste since tried in different configuration the outcome is the same.
It is quite probable that you are not going to like this cable. It is quite probable you are going to dismiss this cable for many reasons.
It does not sound good out of the box.
It is not going to sound that great out from a Naim system.
It is a cable that needs a lot of patience from your part.
You have to accept from faith that it is a good cable and if it does not sound good it is not its fault.
Generally, it means always, we are up in a hifi situation when we have controlled the bad things by smoothing things out. Highs are too aggressive, we get a smoother cable here and there. But when we are using "smothers" we are loosing some information, spatial, timbric or rithmic and surely we are using filters.
High end systems sound good and uninvolving. We admire them without caring about them at the same time. Most of the time they don't reproduce the essence of the music. Only a clean sequences of notes and very silent spaces.
So we have a mid high, high end system and we insert this cable in. What we will ear after about 300 ours of burning in? If we listen before this burn in period this cable could sound even worse then a $10 for 1m Belden power cable, that by my standard is a very decent cable.
So after this long burn in period you will ear that the sound stange get more compact. The propulsive energy is concentrated in a smaller scale landscape. The bass is well controlled, go very low but you feel it is sometimes too dry. The mid hig are very open and tense. The highs are neither very extended not very controlled.There is a sensation of things being tense, and soon you will become tired of it. You will go back to your previous cable with aural confort.
OK, once again you wanted to upgrade and things went on the wrong side. You take the cable away and hope to sell to Naim owners. Yes because I don't think it would be easy to sell it to other people.
But what happen if you accept by faith that this cable sounds good and what you are hearing are...
It is going to show all the vibration issues on your hifi. You think it is bright or it is forward only because you didn’t fix the vibration well in your sistem.
This was an impossible task with other higher end power cables. They tend to smooth things out and wash also the timbre out in the meantime and sometimes rithm too. But they are polite. They have a calming effect on your hifi problem. I think is because the Powerline is extremely open in the mid-high region that the vibrations issues of the system will show. The Powerline will show how manipulative and coloured high end power cables generally are to smooth things out and to low the noise floor.
The most notable thing in this cable is its medium frequencies section: it is more open then you thought could be. After you try another cable it will almost inevitably feel shut off in this region or if not shut of or recessed a little foggy.
This cable is raw. It means it leaves your system breath.
It is very different from other power cables. It is not for fixing or improving things out, is to let things out. So this can be a good or a bad thing.
It will give you some work since it behaves completely differently from other power cables.
I personally find this work to be worthed. I always found that it is quite easy to calm down a system, but to give life to a system that is on sedation is very difficult.
With the Powerline your system, after correct use and matching, will either sound bad or good depending on your work, but it will never sound boring. And I hate boring systems.
Cardas again! What a strange thing for me. I have never listened for a very long time Cardas cables. My listening experience with Cardas stopped at the time of Golden Reference. Now, after many years I can appreciate what evolution does.
I have already said that in the past I was not really a Cardas fan. Not because they were not good cables, they always have been good, but I felt they were more like fixing cables. For most systems it was a good thing, but when you were putting togheter components that were blending well togheter, I have found Cardas cables were retaining informations, dynamic and rytmic abilities.
You know how it is, most of us are only partially intelligent. We have an experience in time and we project it in the future with a forever stamp on it. It is for this stupid reason that I was not listening to Cardas cables. Even though I have to admit, I have herd few times systems sounding extremely well with a complete Cardas set up. But they had to be completely Cardas cabled.
Now after many years I have to say that Cardas sound has changed, and these changements were all positive. I think now Cardas sound can be more universally appealing.
Let's start with the Reflection. Reflection sound is fluid and slightly raw at the same time. It is a strange feeling! I think it is a question of microinformation. It is not the quitest cable, but within this not complete quiteness and black background it gives a kind of "educated freedom".
This cable is also rithmically capable. In the absolute scale I can only say it is slightly dynamically restricted and the bass is...not the strongest point, but well blended with everything else. I guess if the bass was different it would not sound this fluid any more and maybe it will be more heavy handed and this last thing is something I really dislike. It is similar soundind to the old Golden reference power, but more fluid, less coarse and less upfront.
The Clear Beyond sounds very different.
The first thing we notice are actually two: the dynamic window is more open and its silence is deeper, much deeper.
These two attributes makes for a less propulsive sound and more space for everything to happen. But it gives also the impression to slight alter the time, not the timing! You get the feeling timeis slightly expanded, that music is less constrained. It is a faster then the Reflection but it seams slower for this time thing. A little like a professional F1 driver against a very good driver. When we see the good driver in the circuit we think he goes very fast, its driving comes out as aggressive. Then you see the F1 driver in the same circuit with the same car. It seams he goes slower, that he has more time to express his skills, and his controll over the car and the circuit, he floats, everything is smooth, no compensation in the trajectories, it seams the car goes on invisible rails. At the end this apparent slower perception will be time recorded as a much faster lap!
This is the thing that happens with the Beyond.
One thing that I was absolutely not prepared for was to realise that Cardas Reflection does not blend that well with Clear Beyond. In the past I could have mixed every Cardas and they would have mixed well togheter. The Reflection power blend perfectly with Reflection interconnect and loudspeaker cable, but not so with Clear interconnect. And the opposite is also true.
But the Beyond is a more universal cable then the Reflection. It blended well also with a Naim NAC A5 speaker cables that is very difficult to pair with almost anything. The Beyond is a cable that easily tend to disappear. This is an excellent thing, but if your system has been covered by some pushing from cables to compensate a laziness or whatever adding the Beyond will make it sound the component connected how it should. This is how things should be. But at the end the result it is going to be less "involving" you are going to think it is the cable while it is not. I have tried many combination and this was clearly shown. For this reason I think the best way to assemble a system is to have very neutral cables and then at the end matching the components. But most of us already have components so we try to get what works best with them in our listening room.
I have the impression that when you go Clear you should get everything in the Clear range. And that the Clear range blends well with other brands too. This is because Clear range is more neutral and leaves very litle signature on its own.
The Reflection is beautiful, but its beauty is more delicate, you have to respect it more, you have to put it in a more sympathetic context. But if you already have a Reflection somewhere, go and "reflect" everything else and you will be an happy guy! The ending result is extremely balanced.
Except for one thing. Don't put a Reflection feeding your power strip feeding other Cardas cables. The sound will suffer. Don't ask me why...
At one of my friend's house with my Kuzma Ref2 turntable. He wanted to listen to it in his system, and then we said why don't we make a video of the cables we are listening to?
And here you have it. A confrontation between two "immortals" speaker audio cables. Both are still in production after many years and both are extremely good value for the money.
The Naim is difficult to make it sound this way. It needs more then 400 hours of break in and has to be correctly dressed. If not you are going to discharge it after 5min listening, but you will never catch its value. The Straigh Wire is of a very easy interface with most amplifier speaker combination.
Whatch it on you tube and you will have the subtitle to know which cable you are listening to.
It will be nice if you will write your thoughts and preference!
This is such an expensive cable! Yes, but who is going to buy it? Surely no uf you have a $1000 tonearm.
But, for the lucky ones that can own a reference tonearm, is such a cable worthed?
I will put it simple: it is not only worthed but it is a bargain! There are many phono cables in this price range and above, and one thing is sure the Clear Beyond surely belongs to the range above its price.
The most beautiful thing about this cable is its coesive easiness with everything. Everything is expressed without struggle or too much fluidity that can be boring even if at times seducing.
The one thing that is really Beyond is its silence. It does not pick up any noise and it does not have any noise from its own. Just compare it with any other cable and you will easily realise it. There is also no trace of metal conductur signature. You cannot guess either it is silver or copper or whatever.
Its transparency is exceptionally good as its soundstage. But every detail is perfectly integrated in the music message. This is a very uncommon thing to achieve. Generally when you have a very detailed cable, it makes the details sounding like in another dimension in time that is different from the music.
Also their nature can appear to be from another happening. It is difficult to explain, but it is for this reason that details can be too much of a good thing and harsh. It is like a frequency get separated from the whole message. The Clear Beyond achieve the rare thing of being very detailed and musical at the same time as no other cable I have tried so far can.
And it is fast without being dry. And here again the beyond gets "beyond" another paradox in hifi reproduction. When a cable is fast generally is short in reproducing notes decays. And also feels it simplify the musical message somehow. This generally tends the rithm of the music to be perceived more easily. But it can sound a little dry. The Clear Beyond allow a beautifull decay being fast at the same time and never letting the tempo in the second seat. Maybe it is a question of ultimate time control or maybe it is a question of not letting the signal being polluted by noises or by any kind of distortions. Anyway this managing of tempo (PRAT) and decays is unique among cables. Expecially if we add that the reproduction of depth is magnificent. The reproduction of depth most of the times does not go hand in hand with good ritmic capabilities in hifi staff.
All these characteristics allows the instruments timbres to be fully develloped, and also the bad recording to sound bad, but not as bad as with other top cables. Because there is more of everything.
And then its bass... Deep, controlled, fast but breathing at the same time. The bass has space to breath with this cable. The best reproduction of bass of every phono cable I have ever listened to.
And I guess every of all these most of the time reciprocatly exclusive factors brings at the last for me inesplicable characteristic: this cable has wamth. Most of the times this feeling is given by a curtain effects on the high frequencies, or a slightly fattening of the mid bass region. But in the Clear Beyond the high frequencies are extremely well extended and the mid bass region is the best of any other cable I have tried. I feel it achieve this characteristic avoiding faulse harshness and being true transparent. I guess the true transparency allows timbres to be beautifully portraied and the lack of distortions, even the pleasents ones, togheter with the true transparency brings this wamth out. For this reason I will say it is a different kind of warmth of which we audiophiles are used to. It is a kind of natural warmth, results of lack of intrusion of "bad" things.
After fews moths of using this cable with few cartridges, phono preamp, amps and speakers and the needed connecting cables I have come also to one conclusion: whenever you try to identify something that you don't like in this cable you are identifying something that you are not liking somewhere else in the audio chain. Once you think it is forward, then you change preamplifier you realise it is the preamp or the cartridge you are using with it and so on. For this same reason it is absolutely not a fixing cable. It allows you to fix the chain keeping it as a stable actor. If you think it is its fault you are deeply wrong...
This was one of the easiest review for me.
I have listened to more expensive phono cables that can do something better then the Clear Beyond does, or at least we are more readily aware of these advantages, maybe because umbalanced from the integrity of their total musical portray, but these "betters" were always less important in comparison of the "betters" the Beyond is capable of. The Beyond generally did better were music count the most.
Without any doubt one of the best cables ever built.
An absolute masterpiece.
I truly compliment Mr. Cardas for this achievement.
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