Pacific Audio Fest 2024: Part I. [And expensive speaker cables unanimously turned down in a blind test?! 😕]

This is the third year for the Pacific Audio Fest which first started in 2022, basically after the COVID-19 pandemic reopenings. I think the first 2 years of the show were quite similar in size but this third show is clearly a smaller event with fewer display rooms and less stalls in the Marketplace. Correlated with that, I also noticed fewer headphone set-ups to try out.

To be honest, while I think this probably was disappointing for some, I only had a couple of days to visit anyways so this actually worked out driving into Seattle on Saturday morning, stayed a night, and got home by later afternoon Sunday having felt like I spent enough time in each room, even visiting a few of the rooms a number of times to compare.

So, let's have a peek at some audiophile eye-candy and consider the goods out on display this year. Let's be honest, one of the most important specs whenever doing any shopping is the asking price. Unless specified otherwise, all prices are in USD.

The show ran from September 6-8, 2024 at the SeaTac DoubleTree Hilton which is the same as in previous years. I spent the 7th and 8th "hitting the rooms". Let's go!

The Main Ballrooms

Let's start with the largest rooms in the show. These are the headline "ballrooms" and these manufacturers would have spent the most money on renting these spaces.

First up is the Infigo Audio, Alta Audio, Pure Fidelity room:

Press Sheet with model numbers and prices.
Excellent!

Upon entry, there's a section with components on passive display and it's good to see that most rooms this year are either showing their Press Sheet prominently or even actively handling them out.

Nice looking Infigo Audio gear from up here in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Clear plexiglass tops let you see but not touch. Their amplifiers are identified as "Class A" with power rated at around 200W into 8Ω yet cool-running. Clearly these are not traditional Class A designs.

The turntable in the demo room is from Pure Fidelity, another Canadian brand from Burnaby, BC. Pretty nice looking wooden plinths and tonearms with their speed control boxes, and optional metal base:

The demo system running in the listening space featured Alta Audio Aphrodite speakers ($50k/pair, 4-way with ribbon tweeter, dual 6" upper mid, 8¾" lower mid and 10" bass woofer), Hades ISW subs $5k each (can't find details online). They're amplified with the Infigo Method 3 monoblocks ($55k/pair, 200W into 8Ω) with a pair of small Infigo MD-1 sub amps ($5k each, 500W presumably 4Ω, low-passed for bass frequencies only I was told). Preamp is the Method 7 ($20k).

Music playback was with the aforementioned Pure Fidelity turntable with titanium tonearm ($20k) + Ikeda Kai moving coil cartridge ($9.6k). For digital, there's the Infigo Method 4 DAC ($35k).

They were playing the Getz/Gilberto LP when I entered the room which sounded smooth, good vocal and instrumental separation, nice depth. As I have expressed over the years, LPs can of course sound good but the elevated noise level is obvious and the occasional "crackle and pop" shows up which detracts from pristine fidelity during a demo. 

Alta Audio Aphrodite, side/behind:
Mid-Tweeter-Mid arrangement, open back with grille on.

Infigo Method 3 full-range and MD-1 sub mono amps for each side.

Infigo calls their Method 3 amps "Class A" but I'm still unclear about the nature of this since definitely these are not hot-running as one would expect from the typical Class A topology. I specifically asked, and these are also not Class G/H rail switching/tracking designs either. Anyhow, looks like Stereophile found this unclear as well. Hopefully the measurement anomalies including discrepancy between claimed and measured power amounts have been rectified.

On the digital playback side, I heard some Infected Mushroom "Avratz". I'm not familiar to this music; sounded clean, lots of bass, can't complain. Likewise "Halo" by Ane Brun showed good separation of vocals and instruments, nice sound staging and spatial depth. Another few demo tracks included Laurie Anderson's "One White Whale", Mavis Staples' "Stand By Me", and "Mercy Now" by Mary Gauthier - you might want to consider these for your audiophile demo playlists.

Audio Group Denmark room:

AGD was in the other large ballroom with various components from names like Børresen, Ansuz, Aavik, and Axxess. Last year they showed off the Børresen M6 speakers ($550k/pair) and this year they're doing the US debut of the less expensive Børresen T5 ($225k/pair).

In total we're looking at megabuck-level asking price for the whole system with cables:

I love the large LCD screen size on these products.
Notice the "Stream MQA" on the Tower of Power track. 😉 I wonder where they're getting the source material from now that Tidal supposedly has escaped the shackles of MQA. Local streaming library?

Alas, AGD didn't hand out a press sheet to tell me what's up there on the rack unlike last year when they had clear labels on each device so I can look at the photos and immediately identify the model. I believe top left we have the Aavik C-880 pre-amp ($70k), top right would be the Aavik SD-880 Streaming DAC ($70k), in the middle row there are two Aavik P-880 amplifiers (also $70k each, 200W into 8Ω "Pure Class A" amplifiers). Nice looking gear with matching esthetics.

Bottom shelf are their Ansuz line of peripherals, probably the Mainz8 "power distributor" on the left and PowerBox/PowerSwitch combo on the right. The PowerBox is a low-voltage power supply for the "active Ansuz cables" and PowerSwitch is an audiophile-grade ethernet switch. This is obviously snake oil territory unless they can demonstrate with measurements exactly what benefits all this brings to the final music playback.

We can see the ethernet cables and various low-voltage wires behind the system:

Lotsa expensive cables, baby! Thousands...

The Børresen T5, flagship of the "T-Series" speakers looks nice with their thin, tapered design. Looks like we have 4x8" bass drivers with 2 mids and single planar tweeter. Titanium (rather than zirconium on the M-series) baskets, graphene and boron "whiskers" on the drivers. I see that these speakers were first previewed in Munich earlier this year. The company provides quite a bit of narrative on the parts and description of the materials used, but shy on technical details and measurements.

Very high gloss coating, pretty. Lots of reflex ports back there.
Looks like biamping. Notice there are 5 plugs. The bottom one presumably
for their 14V DC "active noise reduction" like the cables.

IMO, recommended best seat in the house. Row 3 with nobody in front.

Notice the way they space the speakers out very wide and with quite extreme toe-in such that if I were sitting in the front seat, the speakers would obviously be well beyond the typical 60° stereo listening angle. They sound great and very enveloping. Sit back at row 3 and the experience is more like being in most listening rooms with the sound stage in front of the listener. At this distance, the speaker toe-in focuses maybe 1-2' in front, so we get a bit of "time intensity trading" to open up the sweet spot.

I don't think I've seen measurements of these Børresen designs, so I wondered about narrowness of dispersion and how controlled the directivity.

To be honest, I wasn't as impressed as I was by the Børresen M6 set-up last year (perhaps correlates with the significantly lower speaker price). The bass was a bit excessive I thought relative to the other frequencies; less tight and clear as well perhaps related to the subjective imbalance. I noticed this on the Tower of Power "Diggin' on James Brown" track which I'm quite familiar with. Not as noticeable with pieces like Daisy Gray's "Wicked Game", or Chris Botti's "When I Fall in Love" during my time there.

On the more modest side of Audio Group Denmark's line-up, they also had on display the Børresen C3 "mid tier" (~$39k/pair) speakers with the new Aavik U-588 integrated "All-in-One" player (I've only seen €30k mentioned and claims of 300W into 8Ω probably Class D, I think the previous Aavik U-580 used Pascal UMAC modules) with its copper chassis, apparently designed in collaboration with Gryphon CEO.

Alas I didn't get a chance to hear these during the times I poked my head in the room. Very little info posted so far online.

On passive display near the back of the room are the much less expensive Axxess L3 ($5.5k/pair!):

Ribbon tweeter, single 4.5" bass/mid, and dual 4.5" bass drivers. 88dB/W/m efficiency, ">4Ω" load, rear ported, "35Hz-22kHz" frequency response spec (is this +/- 6dB in room?). While it's great getting a taste of the "big boys", maybe having these in one of the small rooms paired with inexpensive electronics would be very interesting for show goers!

And here's their standmount version - Axxess L1 ($2,750/pair black or white, ribbon tweeter, single 4.5" mid/bass driver, add another $1k for a pair of stands):

Again, a shame these were not on active display for a listen. Measurements for these small bookshelves should also not be difficult to obtain. I wondered about the inertness of the cabinet in particular with these lower-priced models.

The take-home message regarding Audio Group Denmark's products is that there's certainly some interesting stuff here. They've created a massive line of products from the very inexpensive $2.75k/pair Axxess L1 to $500k+ Børresen M6 speakers for example with vertical expansion - everything from cables to amps to DACs to speakers. The bigger systems generally sound good in these large rooms and it looks like they've got some impressive ways of using materials and construction for their speakers. Whether their "stories" about the high-tech products directly translate into better sound quality and at what significance is obviously not clear. The main components like amps, preamps, and DACs look the part as pieces in a megabuck system. Be mindful however that there are questionable products here as well (like the "active cables") so make sure to examine the more, shall we say, "shadowy", side of some of the products and make sure to be curious, testing to differentiate meaningful technology vs. hype.

Oh yeah, and next time Audio Group Denmark, let's make sure to use some real lossless hi-res music and replace those MQA files for a system of this caliber! 😢

13th Floor

There seemed to be quite a bit of activity up there, let's take the elevator up to the 13th floor of the hotel and check out some of the smaller rooms.

ModWright Instruments / Franco Serblin:

Dan Wright was present showing off his relatively new (I saw/heard them last year) KWA 99 monoblocks ($9k/pair) on the floor at front and center. Class A/B 100W into 8Ω, doubled into 4Ω. 15W of Class A. Balanced XLR and RCA inputs. The pre-amp is the LS 99 ($6.5k), a balanced tube design with a matching PH9.0XT ($5.25k) phono stage.

Notice the Analog Bridge with XLR upgrade ($3.9k) partly
in the picture which is a device that can introduce
"tube warmth" into "thin"-sounding systems.

At first I thought those were Sonus Faber speakers given the general styling and was corrected that they are in fact the Franco Serblin Accordo Essence ($20k/pair, 4Ω, claimed 35Hz-22kHz, 88dB sensitivity); the Franco Serblin brand created by the founder of Sonus Faber (interesting, FS not SF).

Interesting asymmetrical curved box shape. Beautiful luxury cabinet and construction.

Wright was spinning some Ray Brown "Exactly Like You" on LP and later on in digital Melody Gardot's "Your Heart Is As Black As Night". Overall very good dynamics and wide frequency response. I think the speakers matched the room well and not boomy. Clearly a very competent and good-sounding system.

Wells Audio / YG Acoustics:

As you can see in the second shot, they've also got a sub in the room which I was told was mainly to reinforce the sub-bass content (below 30Hz maybe). Those are the YG Sonja 3.2 speakers, about $69k each and I've seen online $100k/pair; aluminum cabinet, 3-way, 88dB sensitivity, 2.8Ω minimum impedance with 4Ω average, 320lbs each.

Note the Looking Glass II Level II Power Conditioners ($7.5k each).

Digital music was supplied by the Innuos Zenith server into the Wells Audio Gruve DAC (Level II starting $1,500); not sure what DAC chip/converter used but capable of DSD512 and 384kHz PCM. Supposedly upgraded components and "Bybee AC purifying noise filters" in the Level II.

Preamp is the Commander Level III ($18k) and we have dual Innamorata III Level II amplifiers ($16.5k in chrome, $15k black, 150Wpc into 8Ω). I think these are all stereo amplifiers and I don't think there's any crossover capability in the Commander pre-amp so I assume they're just running either single channel, maybe passive biamped (of interest, there's an article about this with an older version of the amp)? Oh well, didn't get a chance to ask or look behind the rack/speaker to see how this was all wired up.

Music was Patricia Barber's "White World (live)" and Jeff Buckley's "Lilac Wine". I thought the sound was alright for the most part but could become a little harsh sounding including excess sibilance in the female vocals. Hmmm, I wondered if there's some kind of high treble resonance or ringing in the system as well. Given the nature of this smaller show, I was able to pop in a couple of times and noticed this issue on both occasions with different music playing over the 2 days I was there.

I presume there's nothing unusual about the DAC such as it being filterless that could be sending out high frequency distortions. Not having heard these speakers before that I recall, I also presume there's nothing unusual with its treble frequency response and the heavy enclosure seems inert.

Songer Audio / Whammerdyne Heavy Industries / LampizatOr:

I think that's a Mola Mola Tambaqui on the shelf there, not in use. Also the Whammerdyne DGA-Ultra stereo amp and Circuit Salad Hybrid Amp were on display.

The above was what the system looked like on Saturday afternoon. We've got the Songer S1x single full-range 10" driver ($45k/pair) which comes with their DC power supply that can be varied between 9-12.5V. The reason for this is as per the sign over the equipment, this is a "field coil" loudspeaker where it uses electromagnets instead of permanent magnets as with basically all modern dynamic speaker drivers (like AlNiCo or neodymium). This is an old-skool way of doing things, for example, here's a teardown of an old Western Electric field coil speaker circa 1923.

The Songer S1x is about 140lbs, advertised as highly sensitive at 95dB/2.8V/m (not sure about impedance), with frequency response 27Hz-20kHz +/- 6dB.

We can see the power supply behind the speaker (LCD indicating voltage, I think it said 12V):

The amplifiers on Saturday were the Whammerdyne DAM-2 SE 2A3 monoblocks ($17.5k/pair, 9.5Wpc).

There's a Stromtank S-2500 Quantum ($30k) and the LampizatOr Poseidon DAC ($25k) with volume control, music digitally source from a MacBook laptop in the room. Here's a closer look at the Lampi DAC and Stromtank below:

With the show being smaller, I had time to pop by on Sunday afternoon and noted that the set-up had changed:

Cool, they switched the monoblock amplifiers to these monsters:

According to the Whammerdyne blog page, this seems to be what they're referring to as the "world's first Parallel Push-Pull balanced 2A3-40 monoblocs". There's a single rear input XLR. I don't know if there's a name for this thing but the term "Trifecta" was being thrown around and I see there's a Facebook page documenting the building of this by Pat Hickman of Whammerdyne. I guess if you run into Pat, ask him about power ratings (info sheet 53W into 8Ω, 0.1% THD), THD graph, noise level and such. 😉 I wonder whether we'll see this commercialized (niche product, financial viability?), so for now, seems like this could be a "one off"?

While this is obviously not the kind of sound system I typically talk about on this blog, I have to admit that the presentation at PAF'24 was very impressive. Whether it's the DAM-2 SE 2A3 or the unique "Trifecta" mono amps, the small room was standing-room-only the times when I visited. The bass depth was excellent and the sound filled the room nicely, averaging around 80-85dB(A) SPL. Details pop'ed out and soundstage was wide and deep. Nobody spoke loudly to disrupt others' listening enjoyment. The selection of tracks brought an excitement out of the system to make a positive impression given the limited time attendees generally have. While there, I heard Marcin Patrzałek's "Kashmir", Sara Bareilles' "(Sitting On) The Dock of the Bay", Chris Cornell's "I Am the Highway (Live at Queen E. Toronto)", and the Kazakh singer Dimash Kudaibergen's "SOS d'un Terrien en Détresse (live)" ("SOS of an Earthling in Distress"). The Francine Thirteen track "Queen Mary" incorporates all kinds of phasic surround effects and sitting in the sweet spot, those were rendered beautifully through the full-range driver suggesting excellent time-domain performance (as expected).

Well done on the interesting story, unique technology (for these days), ultra rare hardware, good demo tracks; altogether a memorable experience as an example of how to do demos "right" at an audio show! Bravo.

Seattle Hi-Fi: Accuphase, Soulution, Aurender, Franco Serblin

A "simple" system; not inexpensive though.

Accuphase E-700 ($17k) integrated amp, MOS-FET driven in Class A, 35W into 8Ω, 70W into 4Ω, even apparently stable with 160W into 1Ω! Digital playback via Aurender A20 ($15k) which has its own streamer and its own dual mono AKM4497 DAC but they're opting for the Soulution 360 DAC ($25k, dual mono TI PCM1792 chips released in the early 2000s) instead.

Speakers are the Franco Serblin Goldberg ($13.5k/pair).

The Accuphase amp is quite pretty in a neo-retro way. Very impressive imaging. Good bass for small speakers clearly lacking some lower end but that's to be expected while playing the RY X track "Crawl".

Daedalus Audio / LTA (Linear Tube Audio):

We've got nice looking pieces here. Beautiful furniture-grade Daedalus Argos v.3 speakers ($15.9k/pair) advertised as 97dB/2.8V/m, 6Ω impedance, and frequency response 28Hz-20kHz +/- 2dB. 2x8" woofers, 4.5" mid, 2x1" soft dome tweeters.

Electronics are the LTA Ultralinear+ Power Amp Monoblocks ($6.8k each, 37W presumably 8Ω) with the front wood paneling looks great. On the top rack is the LTA MictoZOTL Preamp Level 2 ($5.75k) and below the monoblocks, we have the Innuos ZEN Mk 3 ($4k with 4TB drive).

Overall, I thought this system presented a pleasantly balanced sound. Bass was adequately deep but I'm not sure about that 28Hz frequency response claim. Nothing jumped out in particular which might be a good thing in the long run; perhaps like TVs with contrast and color turned up too much in the showroom, longterm enjoyment might correlate with a less "flashy" sound?

They were playing Melissa Carper's "Makin' Memories" and the system was able to pump out some nice dynamics on Cody High's "Another Night".

Seattle Hi-Fi: YG Acoustics, Ayre Acoustics, AMG, Benz Micro

Speakers are the YG Summit ($25k/pair) with their "ForgeCore" tweeter, 7.25" mid driver and 10.25" woofer; this is paired with the YG Descent ($7.8k) subwoofer - 11" driver, 1000W amplifier, and frequency response advertised as 18-150Hz.

There's the stack of Ayre Acoustics Series 8 electronics - VX-8 stereo amp ($7k, Class A/B, 100W into 8Ω, zero feedback, balanced), KX-8 preamplifier ($6.5-10k depending on options), PX-8 phono preamp ($6.5k base to $8.5k with ADC).

Here are the Ayre Series 8 boxes opened up:

Ayre VX-8 stereo amplifier. Class A/B, 100W into 8Ω, 170W into 4Ω. Stereophile review indicated that this thing runs hot and needs adequate ventilation. Looks like transistors mounted underneath, using case as heatsink.

This was a vinyl-centric room with the AMG Giro Mk II turntable ($17.5k), and Benz Micro Ruby Z phono cartridge ($4k). They were spinning Ween's "Buenas Tardes Amigo"; what a weird, hilarious track, love it! And more usual "audiophile music" demo, they had some Chet Baker on hand.

Sounded good. Certainly nothing objectionable and overall very nice vinyl reproduction.

Pure Audio Project / Pass Labs:

Nice looking modular open-baffle speakers, the one on display has dual 15" woofers and full-range center driver. This is their Trio15 ($8k/pair). I didn't spend too much time in the room since I had heard these last year at the show.

They were paired with Pass Labs electronics including the XP-17 phono pre ($4.5k), XP-22 line preamp ($10k), and a pair of XA60.8 amplifiers ($14k/pair, Class A, 60W into 8Ω). The Dead South's "In Hell I'll Be In Good Company" sounded pretty good, certainly very adequate bass.

I think that's a Schiit Yggdrasil DAC at the bottom for digital playback duties.

The Marketplace

On the main floor by the sign-in area, we have the show's "Marketplace" with stalls to sell vinyl and show off some products. Just outside the "Marketplace" room are a couple of booths.

Apollo Audio makes some interesting tube amps:

Generally low-powered SET devices like this "4W" (3% THD at 3W already) stereo device based on 2A3 tubes:

But there were exceptions to these low-power amps. Check out this 80W unit based on the 833A transmitter tube. Plate voltage around 1100V. Price quoted as $30k/pair I think:

Looks like lots of color options available to customize your box!

Nearby are the Snake River Audio folks and their booth, they have been significant sponsors over the years:

Selling various cable options with copper and silver wire conductors, gold plating. Depending on the model, most seem to be $500 and up.

Here's a look at the Marketplace hustle and bustle on Saturday afternoon:

We've got a few companies here from previous years and some new faces. To the left out of frame is the Kirmuss ultrasonic vinyl cleaning folks, no longer wearing pretentious lab jackets this year.

Let's look at a few stalls in more detail.

Stax:

We've got the SRM-T8000 headphone amp ($6.1k), the right headphone sitting on top is the current flagship SR-X9000 electrostatic ($6.2k), left is the SR-009S Signature electrostatic ($4.5k). Both sounded very good with excellent "speed" especially with the SR-X9000 which I had heard last year. Comparatively, the SR-009S was noticeably more sensitive and I thought had more body to the bass; up to personal taste and I can imagine some listeners preferring the less expensive model.

And there's the Blue Jeans / Iconolast (Belden gone high end) booth:

Cables look good, sturdy, and I'm sure can be handed down for generations. 🙂

Whether there's good value when it comes to their more expensive Iconoclast offerings is of course up to you to figure out.

Yeah, at every audio show, there's gotta be some vinyl for sale, here are the two booths I saw:

Alas, used vinyl is quite expensive these days. I'm patient and can wait for when the prices come down again; less than 10 years ago here in Canada, I was grabbing very good, clean LPs, similar to what I see here for something like CAD$5-$15. Currently asking for at least twice the price among the boxes here in USD. 

As you've heard reel-to-reels are "coming back". That has been happening for years now with what seems like a decent-sized niche market for refurbished devices. J-Corder of Gig Harbor, WA was here with some examples of their work on Technics machines:

Beautifully reworked internally and externally. I didn't see anything less than $15k on display though and as you know, buying R2R tapes isn't a cheap pastime. It's a family business started by Jeff Jacobs. He and Ken Anderson his grandson who does the marketing and social media were here; nice fellows to chat with about the products and technology.

I had a listen to some 1/4", 15ips Gino Vannelli recording through the refurbished Technics RS-1500 (produced 1978-1987) using the Focal Celestee headphones. Very smooth, unfatiguing sound with low noise floor. I would not want to listen to vinyl through headphones due to obvious imperfections, but this is definitely very pleasant.

Nearby is ATR Service and their Ampex ATR-100 series unit on passive display:

A company called Planet Venus Audio was demoing their "Spectral Coherence Control" DSP ($389 Master Version, $189 Essentials Version) which purportedly cleans up artifacts from the music production process.

As you can see, they have a few computers running to demo the effect. This is a plug-in (AU, AAX, VST3) and I see they're running it in MacOS Audirvāna (looks like Mac-only plug-in):

There are a bunch of presets available just to the right of the FFT display. That live FFT during music playback purportedly shows the original music signal, lower-level distortions, as well as "corrected" signal with various knobs to control levels and amounts of processing done. The algorithm is said to be quite efficient and a decade-old Mac would have no problem with the real-time processing.

It definitely changes the sound and depending on the preset selected, I did find the effect subjectively preferable (in particular, it did seem to clean up a marginal-quality MP3 "Sympathy For The Devil" track being streamed quite noticeably). I'll have to keep an eye on this one down the road. Just as music production has increasingly depended on DSP to process sound, perhaps so too this is a taste of the use of DSP to adjust the sound to one's liking and improve perceived fidelity in our home playback.

Despite audio shows catering mainly to "conservative" audiophilia with standard 2-channel audio technologies, and a lot of analog gear, it's good to see examples of processing techniques like this which clearly affect the sound in ways that can be much more significant than typically subtle hardware tweaks and very expensive upgrades of questionable benefit. Obviously the DSP effect is much more meaningful than things like cables or ethernet switches or bitperfect streamers that some audiophiles spend a lot of money on!

The guys told me that they'll be demoing this elsewhere including upcoming Canjams (I see this video from Southwest Audio Fest 2024 already). Psssst... make a Windows version and make sure it works in JRiver if not already!

[Readers here should not be surprised given discussions on DSP room correction and crosstalk cancellation that I am absolutely supportive of using signal processing in the room. I think audiophiles do not need to maintain some kind of "purist" view against this.

Of course, this is assuming one already is starting with a good high-fidelity hardware foundation and reasonable room acoustics.

For those researching, here's the patent for the Planet Venus product; lemme know if there's anything interesting in there.]

--------------------

Whew. I think that's long enough for this week! There were obviously more rooms and systems at the show so let's continue next time with Part II.

In other news, a friend sent me a link to a speaker cable blind test done at Jay's Audio Lab:

While I would disagree with Jay around products like his Taiko Extreme computer and have discussed his digital vs. vinyl video previously, I've got to hand it to him for the courage and honesty to get this listening test done and presenting the results regardless of the outcome. And likewise to his 2 friends who agreed to do this. Blind testing is not easy, so expressing a bit of nervousness in the video is simply to be expected. Many times, I've had audiophile friends insist that differences would be a "slam dunk" to hear but when the time comes, more often than not, they recognize that it's not nearly as easy as imagined.

Here's the bottom line

Procedure: $27 6' 12AWG Oxygen-Free Copper (OFC) multistranded zip-cord (which Jay claims sounded suboptimal) vs. $20,000 Gryphon Vanta solid core speaker cables (13AWG, probably 2m, "highly-unique 07 Silver-Gold Alloy Technology"). Listeners blinded but not Jay doing the cable switching (single-blind).

Two familiar songs streamed from Tidal at the same output level of the listeners' choosing were used. (Switching time between the cables likely beyond the short-term echoic sensory memory window.)

Result: the 2 listeners unanimously preferred the $27 12AWG zip cord over the fancy $20k cable 4 out of 4 times (probability 1/16 chance or 6.25% for each listener).

It's one thing to find "diminishing returns" to suggest maybe there's some benefit to a higher quality product, but in this test, there seemed to be negative returns on that $20k cable "investment" with preference for the inexpensive zip-cord.

I noticed that after revealing the results, from 33:30 onward, Jay probably was a bit surprised and tried to rationalize why the listeners preferred the cheap cables claiming that the "Vanta is naturally warm when your first insert it" and that "over time it changes" - "cable settling time" he calls it. As far as I am aware, this idea is without merit; where are there tests to show this over the decades? One could just as well say that the brand new 12AWG OFC cable from the hardware store isn't adequately burned-in either and in 100 hours it could still be the preferred-sounding cable! Interestingly, at some point Jay says that the Gryphon cables are actually not new but have not been used for awhile. Hence, I guess whatever "burn-in" or "settling" that must have taken place previously has been lost - how/why is that possible?

The cheaper cable "didn't sound bad" as one of the listeners stated. Of course not when the preference went 4/4 towards those zip-cords! Let's get rational and stop with the parroting of claims by the Audiophile Cable Industry and typical audiophile reviewers who bias towards higher prices and magnify the hype. As consumers, we do not need to engage in the religious-like "conversion" of cable non-believers simply because there's no "salvation" here worth the asking price. 12AWG copper speaker cables with good connections to the amp and speakers will sound great at normal lengths at home (typically 6' to 25'). It's a reasonable standard and if another speaker cable "sounds better", then by all means produce the technical reasons and the blind test results to show it.

While it's possible that the result was purely random, if both listeners preferred the $27 cable, we should ask ourselves what is potentially wrong with the Gryphon Vanta cables? Maybe those Vantas are old and oxidized at the connectors. Maybe the conductivity of their special silver-gold alloy is worse than copper. The obvious next step is to measure the LCR parameters of those cables to check if there could be an explanation for the listening results (as per speaker cable measurement discussions here). Alternatively, REW can be used to check if there are differences in the frequency response (would be surprising), or perhaps change in output level to suggest higher insertion loss especially with the Vanta which is thinner and of unknown conductivity from the use of their alloy.

One more thing, how's it possible to have a "bright cable" when we're talking about passive lengths of conductors with likely minimal reactance?! The recording might be "bright" sounding. The amps might tip high frequencies up. Speaker/amp impedance might affect frequency response. We might mistakenly add EQ gain to the treble in our playback processing. Maybe the DAC has weak bass. But I'm afraid there is no such things as straight "bright cables" - not even with shiny pure silver wires. 😉

While I and I'm sure many of you reading this can easily afford $20k cables in cash if we wanted them, I would also honestly judge myself as being foolish if I spent that kind of money on things that simply are not clearly beneficial. I would maintain this perspective regardless of how much disposable income or the size of one's net worth. I know some audiophile writers have suggested envy as the source of criticisms. I don't think so if there is no actual desire to possess many of these expensive things! If anything, perhaps it's the feeling of disgust toward the hype and nonsense out there.

Enjoy the music, audiophiles! As usual, be mindful of the snake oil out there (of various classes).

Addendum: September 18, 2024

I see that Jay has added another video to explain the difficulties and results of the blind test results.

I didn't watch most of it because it looked like him responding to various comments and questions, some more insightful than others. There was one comment that was interesting and probably encapsulates many of the opinions (1:05):

"The main problem with the haters is that they only think price. They are so stuck on that. But price is only relevant to people that don't have disposable funds :)"

Jay then spins this into certain broke audiophiles with "debt collectors chasing them" or some such extreme comment; seriously, I don't think we have many broke guys around here in such levels of desperation. 😨 And if there are, well, go work on the résumé instead of reading this!

You see, this is the kind of ignorance that is rather disturbing. First of all, I don't think those who criticize with reason and facts are "haters". This is an exercise in intellect, seeking truth, not just evoking emotions. Just because a person disagrees does not imply strong feelings of hate or that Jay or anyone else does not have the right to do or say what they wish. I certainly have no ill wishes for him or others who I'm openly critical of.

As for price, what's wrong with focusing on that in these discussions? The difference between the cheap cables and the Gryphon Vanta is more than 700x! If sound quality improvement is what we claim to be after, then the listening test should be literally an obvious "slam dunk" given the differential. If not, then we can obviously say that there is no value in spending so much more money for this reason; it would literally be foolish to do so as with any other product we buy if they do not achieve clear benefits. I would hope our families taught us that when we were young.

If an audiophile still thinks that there's value with those Gryphon speaker cables, then it must be in other areas like pride of owning this brand name, perhaps they value the appearance, maybe telling others the alloy is gold+silver gives them joy (yes, silver is 7% more conductive than copper, but gold is ~25% lower than copper and more expensive so who knows where Gryphon's alloy conductance lies), etc. These are examples of "non-utilitarian values" which one is free to have - in the spirit of honesty, just don't pretend it has anything to do with sound quality, ok?

As I suggested above, regardless of net worth, as an audiophile, my prerogative is sonic quality; specifically the ability to achieve transparency. If there is no difference, then why pay so much more? Wouldn't that just be transferring funds to another bank account for basically nothing gained? I would personally feel better giving to charities if that's all it is.