NETWORK NEWS: Wes Phillips hooks up with Transparent Audio's Music Link Reference interconnect & Music Wave Reference speaker cable

by Wes Phillips
stereophile, May 1995, Vol. 18, No. 5. Reprinted with permission

"They cost WHAT? A hahahahahaaa!"

Nothing is more guaranteed to amuse non-audiophiles than the subject of high-end cable pricing. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to laugh at you, but . . . bwah ha ha haaa!" Who can blame them? Even in the hi-fi camp, there are those who are convinced that wires are no more than hideously expensive tone controls. "Hmmpf; cackle. Snort!" Others hold that, differences in resistance, capacitance, and inductance aside, the whole high-end cable market is just an exercise in mass self-delusion. "Really, how much are they?"

Regular folk, like my friend Randy- who has one child in college and two more in high school-just purse their lips and bite their tongues to keep from commenting on the whole subject. "WHAT!?!"

In my experience, however, I've heard audible differences among the available interconnects and loudspeaker cables- no matter how much I might devoutly wish otherwise. Don't look to me to explain why. Far from finding that there's one true path to audio nirvana, I have a boundless gullibility when it comes to cable technology theories. I love 'em all -- especially the really goofy ones.

My problem is that it all makes perfect sense while I'm listening to designers expounding upon them; only several hours later do I do a double take: "Hey, wait a minute! How did that traffic cop get into the wire in the first place?" This is because I try to keep an open mind -- well, certainly one that's unburdened by any real grasp of theory.

My dalliances with cables of the week lurched to a screaming halt last year, when I received a set of Transparent Audio Reference interconnects and speaker cables. These were products unlike any in my experience. Forget veils lifting, windows opening, or any of the tired old audio clichés: I'm talking about nothing less than communion -- an act of sharing thoughts or feelings in spiritual fellowship. If Cecil B. DeMille had directed the encounter, clouds would have parted, a ray of light would have fallen on my speakers, and choirs would have sung hosannas.

Instead, I tore my finger on a splinter while crawling around to connect the speakers, and then sat bleeding onto the couch, enthralled listening to Beethoven piano sonatas. But you get the idea.

WIRE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS?

What are cables supposed to do? On the most superficial level-and also at the deepest, most functional level -- they're supposed to connect everything together. They transmit the signals from source components to the amplification chain and then on to the speakers. No matter how great the components, if you don't got no cables, you don't got no sound.

Ideally, cables would perform their job without adding anything to the signals they're carrying, and would deliver up all of the signal going in. You're probably already hip to the fact that such a simple-sounding description is an impossibility here in the material world, but why?

First is the physical nature of metallic cable -- its molecular structure alone ensures that noise will be added to the signal. Second, no matter how you design the cable, you have to deal with the trinity of resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Resistance, which refers to how hard it is to push current flow through a cable, is the easy one to design around, and is seldom a problem for metallic cable designs. Capacitance and inductance, on the other hand, really throw a kink into designing a cable which resembles our theoretical ideal, because they're storage elements -- which means that they have a strong (ahem) resistance to surrendering all of the signal they carry. It's their nature to retain it. More over, inductance and capacitance perform a kind of dance in an audio cable: the cable is primarily inductive, but at some frequencies, it becomes capacitive.

The point in frequency where a cable changes from inductive to capacitive is referred to as the resonant point, and that point is approximately 1300Hz, generally speaking. As the frequency approaches 1500Hz and below, the cable starts offering increased resistance to the LF component of the signal. Random noise, not to mention a host of other interactions, dictates that the changeover is not a specific point but rather a broad band, wherein the signal changes from inductive to capacitive and back again. The ear perceives this interaction as cancellation -you end up losing information that can not be recovered. Finally, we come back to the most basic of all cable functions: It connects everything together. The problem is, at each stage it connects items of differing impedance. The signals that are rejected because of this mismatch reflect back toward the source, where they mask low-level detail.

Whew! In this very much not ideal world, cable has a Sisyphean task.

NETWORK THEOREM

Designers get around these problems in many different ways -- and some just ignore them. Jack Sumner of Transparent Audio maintains that building a compensatory network into the cable itself is the way to go. In this, Transparent cables are not sui generis; MlT's cables also employ networks, although the two product lines are quite different. "We sold, and built, MIT products for eight years," explained Karen Sumner, "so it would be pretty surprising if we didn't learn a few things, including where our design philosophy diverged from theirs."

The first thing that most folks -- even non-audiophiles -- notice about the Transparent cables is the network itself: the pods sprouting off the cords give the cables the air of electronic componentry rather than mere wires. The natural question is, "What's in the box?" But other than replying that it consists of a low-pass filter network, Transparent ain't saying. Ask what it does, however, and it's hard to get them to stop talking.

"By increasing the amount of inductance, we change the point where the cable changes to capacitive," Jack Sumner explained in an interview last February. "The first thing that we're concerned with in a network is rolling off the ultra high frequencies. A lot of people just don't understand how this can [favorably] affect what you hear. Our model comes from thermodynamics: if you put heat into a system, a certain amount is transformed into a lower form of energy, so it's not usable as heat. The same thing is true in a cable: if you have a lot of very high-frequency component, like RF, some of that is actually changed into a lower form of energy. And that gets down into the audible bands as noise -- which obscures low-level detail, like the first and second reflections off the walls and ceilings of concert halls. It doesn't necessarily make common sense, but we're throwing away information -- information that you don't need.

"The second thing a network does is more closely match one impedance to another. You always have a change in impedance going from one component to another. The signals that don't pass through the interface are reflected back into the amplifier as out-of-phase information -- which really screws up such things as low-level detail.

"The third and most important function of the network is that it lowers that resonant point where inductance changes to capacitance, by adding inductance to the cable. This is the part that's proprietary -- you can't just add inductance. Take a cable without a network: it has a flat frequency response and uniform group delay. Uniform group delay means that the harmonic structure stacks up the same way at the end of the cable as it did in the beginning. When you hear a real cymbal, you hear the stick striking the brass, followed almost immediately by the overtonal structure that finally results in the shimmer. Just adding inductance to the cable would give a more accurate impression of the fundamental frequency -the strike of the stick-but it would destroy the time and frequency relationship of the shimmer. When we add a compensatory network, it becomes possible to lower the resonant point without affecting the group delay or frequency response. We believe lowering the resonant point is the only way to achieve the proper relationship of fundamental to harmonic."

See what I mean?

MUSIC IS THE ART OF THINKING WITH SOUNDS

Now, I've already said that I'm a sucker for all cable theories, so I'm probably not the one to look to for verification of Sumner's design brief. But I've spent the last year or so listening to these cables -- and to some earlier samples of the Music Wave Reference speaker cable-trying to suss out precisely what's going on. During that time, I've used the Transparent products with every component that's passed through my house, and, except in conjunction with a couple of loudspeakers -- the Monitor Audio Studio 2s and the Sonus Faber Minuettos -- I think they've stood head and shoulders above any other cables with which I've had experience. (I have not yet listened to the latest designs from either MIT or Kimber, which have impressed me in systems other than my own.)

First of all, you have to notice the silence of Transparent's wires. We commonly think of silence as the lack of noise -- not incorrectly, I concede. But in music, silence is not just the absence of some thing else, it's a value -- a thing unto itself; in fact, in most theory classes, the rests are taught before the notes are. The Transparent designs portray silence as a physical, not just theoretical, reality. For the first time, one can hear low-level details that have never been audible above the inherent noise of the wire. My long-time reference CD of Leonhardt's and La Petite Bande's performance of Bach's Mass in b (EMI CDS 7 47595 2) illustrates this surprisingly well. In the "Credo," there's a pair of playful moments which reveal both Bach's wit and his religious passion. The "Credo" is the part of the Mass wherein the core beliefs are articulated, and most composers set it to fairly serious-sounding music.

Not cool papa Bach, though. Over a descending ostinato from the lower strings, he has the various choral sections come in sequentially, round fashion, with the first line, "Credo in unum deum." Set over the walking bass of the cellos and basses, it's a surprisingly lighthearted -- some might say rocking -- reading of the creed. But Bach doesn't stop with this display of religious joy. Set into the overtones, and quite independent of the fundamentals, is an ecstatic little dance that displays a completely different rhythmic emphasis from the sung -- and played -- tones. You don't even hear it on most hi fis -- it's one of the obvious ways in which live music is richer and more profound than the canned variety. I have never heard it more explicitly stated on this disc than when using the Transparent cables.

Almost all components have an effect on the tonal balance of recorded music, and cables are no exception; but I never felt that the Transparent Reference products were imposing a particular sonic signature on my system. Changes in individual components produced clearly audible changes in system character -- frequently radical ones. If the cable were asserting its own personality, I don't believe this would be the case. The (forgive me) transparent nature of these wires helped me to hear much more clearly the shortcomings of individual pieces of gear -- especially those of less-ambitious equipment. This is primarily a comment on the bizarre world of audio reviewing, as no sane person is going to attach a $500 integrated amp to a pair of $4k speaker wires, are they? Well, if you're thinking about it, don't. Both Transparent and MIT make reasonably priced networked cables. While wire is essential -- no system will work without it -- wires are not the first place to put your silly-money.

I was also consistently impressed with the coherence of the Reference cables. I don't believe I have ever heard my systems sound more seamless from fundamental to highest overtone. This consideration is important, and almost universally overlooked. It also takes us out of the purely tonal and into the temporal realms. It's not uncommon to refer to the overtone structures as stacking above the fundamental. This would almost be an accurate way to illustrate them graphically -- if we were to carve them out of a piece of music. But the truth is that overtones are inherent in and inseparable from the fundamental. We describe them as having a separate existence, because our auditory system favors some frequency ranges more than others. And, not so coincidentally, because many components lack uniform group delay -- further distorting our perception of the individual note. If you start those individual notes in motion -- in time as well as in pitch, creating music -- things really start getting confused.

This becomes obvious in works that emphasize precision timing -- such as the art of flamenco, and in the music of its preeminent practitioner, Paco de Lucia. Flamenco has a remarkably complex rhythmic structure -- the legacy of Moorish music's collision with the even more Eastern traditions of the gypsies. In Andalucia last summer, I became fascinated by the strolling players and their partners who accompanied them with precise and intricate hand-clap patterns. After a week or so, I concluded that these patterns were metrically too complicated to be committed to a score -- reinforcing Percy Grainger's belief that so-called "primitive music is too complex for untrained modern ears."

I came home from Seville with de Lucia's 1969 Fantasia Flamenca CD (Polygram Iberica Philips 842 953-2), a virtuosic reverie on flamenco roots. In "El Tempul," resguiedo (chords strummed so furiously that they sound like solid bursts of static) alternates with emphatic melodies that are punctuated with the golpe (the technique of tapping the face of the guitar with the ring finger). Even perfectly portrayed, the piece is hard to follow -- de Lucia has lightning-fast technique, which means that essential musical components, like thunder, lag behind the event. The Transparent Reference cables have proven to be indispensable in sorting out what's happening, and when. I took this CD around from room to room at the Summer CES; most systems, even those composed of state-of-the-art components, tended to blur these details. I might even go so far as to say that I have never heard them presented correctly in a system that did not contain the Transparent cables.

Spain was also instrumental in helping me to comprehend -- sort of -- the whole issue of how the resonant point affected musical meaning. While I went to Iberia to get away from my regular life, including things audio, I found that my thoughts were never far from musical matters. How could they be in a country filled with music and bird song? And where there was music, how could I not obsess over hi-fi? One Sunday afternoon, at an organ recital in the cathedral at Cadiz, I had an epiphany. As I listened to the lingering decay of a final chord, it struck me that there was, perhaps, in physical resonance a concrete (ahem) analogy to the electrical phenomenon.

Thurston Dart, in The Interpretation of Music, points out how much compositional style depends upon where the music was intended to be performed. "Musical acoustics may be roughly divided into 'resonant,' 'room,' and 'outdoor.' Plainsong is resonant music . . . Perotin's music, in fact, is perfectly adapted to the acoustics of the highly resonant cathedral (Notre Dame, Paris) for which it was written . . . The forms used by Mozart and Haydn in their chamber and orchestral music are identical; but the details of style (counterpoint, ornamentation, rhythm, the layout of chords, and the rate at which harmonies change) will vary according to whether they are writing room music, concert music, or street music." We could go even further and maintain that acoustics have driven musical development -- would Bach's music have sounded anything at all like it does if Thomaskirche at Leipzig had not been remodeled when the sermon became a major element in the Protestant service? With a mean reverberation time of 1.6 seconds, Thomaskirche was ideal for large choral works (such as the Mass in b): the string parts would have been easily heard, and faster tempos were possible compared with a vaster, more reverberant space.

Just as reverberation in space obscures change in pitch and meter, it occurred to me that the electrical resonant point -- falling well into the audio frequencies -- tends to obscure them on a signal level. Reduce its presence in the midst of the fundamental frequencies and everything becomes clearer and better articulated. Reduce noise -- the inevitable random effect on adjacent frequencies -- and you exponentially increase your ability to hear into the musical event.

WHAT'S THE CONNECTION?

The Transparent Audio Music Link Reference interconnect is handsome stuff. Clad in black mesh wrap, the pearl colored insulation gleams through, revealing directional cues printed on the cable. Six inches from the end of the cable (away from the source end) are the 3"-long, l"-thick network cases. Terminations are Transparent's proprietary locking-RCA plugs -- they're durable and sound good, but are a pain to use. Lock them on to inexpensive, flimsy RCA chassis jacks -- which I emphatically do not advise -- and you might remove the grounding sleeve when you disconnect them. But even if you use them with practical, sturdy connectors, these 3" terminations are connected to cable that's not all that flexible. You need lots of room behind components, and you need to give yourself lots of slack in the cable-it doesn't react favorably to being kinked (but who does?).

The Transparent Audio Music Wave Reference speaker cable looks substantial -- to say the least. The main cable run, again clad in black mesh, is 1" in diameter. The network casing is a hefty 11" by 3" by 2", from which protrude a pair of 1'-long flexible wires attached to the thickest and most substantial spade lugs I've ever seen. If your speaker or amplifier manufacturer has used nonstandard binding posts, you'll have one bear of a time trying to spread the forks of these connectors. I don't know what to suggest here, since it's obvious that these are extremely-high-quality connectors, but I did need to mention it. If you use stand-mounted speakers, the network box is left dangling from its short wires -- not to worry, Transparent will provide you with a Velcro harness to attach the box to your speaker stands, providing strain relief.

The Music Wave Reference cables are not designed for bi-wiring-a relief, as doubling the price of this cable takes us into cost-no-logic territory. Transparent makes specially networked bi-wire runs, or will provide suitably high-quality jumpers. Once they warned me against bi-wiring with this cable, I just had to try it-and they're right: don't do it. I did bi-amp the Martin Logan Aerius with a pair of conrad-johnson Premier Eleven As and two runs of Music Wave Reference, and it was heaven! But add up the tab and you come up with $7000 worth of amp and $8000 worth of speaker cable, all driving a $2000 speaker. Still . . .

WE KNOW WHAT IT COSTS, BUT WHAT IS IT WORTH?

Here we are, back at that sticky cost question. There's no way to get around it -- these babies are expensive. Taken out of the context of the high-end world -- where we try not to deal with the ultimate logic of price tags -- they might even be construed as obscenely expensive. Certainly that's how my friend Randy, the one with the college bills, sees it. I can't justify it on that level, nor will I attempt to. But if we leave the real world of mortgages and school loans and retreat back into high-end fantasy land, I can say that I don't know what they should truly cost, simply because I've never heard anything else that can do what they do.

I asked Karen Sumner to comment on the subject of cable pricing, and she said, "These products take a long time to build from start to finish -- our cables are quite labor-intensive. The physical relation ships of the components in our networks need to remain stable and constant -- which is the reason we need to pot the networks -- and this means that assembling them requires a lot of skill and training. I liken it to making hard-wired tube amplifiers -- which aren't inexpensive, either.

"Scale factors in, too. We use very few off-the-shelf components, and that means that we pay through the nose for them. And while customers hate to hear that they're subsidizing R&D, we spend a bunch of money on components so that we know firsthand how our cables interact with the equipment our customers are using. We pride ourselves on how much we actually listen to real world systems in order to know what is going on out there."

WHAT WE PLAY IS LIFE

This has been a lengthy discussion, especially considering that some of us still deny that there even are cable differences. But I consider Transparent Audio's Music Link Reference interconnect and Music Wave Reference speaker cable benchmark products; for me, at least, they've completely raised the level of the category.

This doesn't mean that they've cornered the market on audio purity -- God knows, and I know, that I haven't heard everything out there. I am intensely interested in (and now have for audition) the latest generation of MIT products; I'm sure the differences are instructive. Nor am I convinced that networks are the only true path; no cable could appear more different from the Transparents than Kimber's KCAG and 4AG designs, yet the Kimbers have impressed me in short-term auditions.

Disclaimers aside, the Transparent References have done as much -- or more -- for my musical enjoyment and understanding in the last year as any product I've ever lived with. Ultimately, you will have to decide for yourself whether the performance justifies the price. I'm sure I know what your ears will tell you, but your wallet may well have the final say.

Yet look at the benchmark products of the audio past: both Quad loud speakers, the Marantz 10 (which, when the manufacturer tried to keep its cost in line with other tuners, may have bankrupted the company), the Linn LP12, the Mark Levinson ML-2, Audio Research's SP-11, the Levinson Nos. 30 and 31. In their respective eras, people questioned whether their costs could be justified -- yet all are now, quite rightly, revered as quantum steps forward, advancing our expectations of the possible. These two products from Transparent Audio seem destined to join that illustrious list.



aside

(I'm always puzzled why those of the logical positivist persuasion, expounding interminably that L, C, and R are the only parameters that matter in cable design, forget that such well-documented factors as dielectric absorption and hysteresis also play a major role. I remember arguing this with a brilliant RF engineer. Ultimately, frustrated by the non-communication, I asked him if he would use cables with a polarized dielectric such as PVC for his RF work. "Of course not " he spluttered. "It would be useless!" "So why do you continue to insist that the dielectric doesn't matter when it comes to audio?" "Because who cares about audio frequency performance?" was his angry response. "I do!" I said. -- JA)
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retain it

Inductance and capacitance are both reactive elements, which means that they react to AC signals. They differ however, in that inductance becomes more reactive at high frequencies, while capacitance is more reactive at low ones. By more reactive, we mean that the effect increases; thus, capacitance resists the transmission of LF, just as inductance resists high-frequency components.
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modern ears

I mentioned this belief to David Chesky, when he returned from a stay in Seville and his response was unequivocal: "Oh, no-I went back to my hotel and stayed up all night writing them down!" That's the difference between a composer and an ordinary person.
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