Many years ago when I lived in Paris I encountered Jean-Claude Tornior and his HiFi Cables & Cie (On the Ave de Republique). They have been in business ever since, making various nice cables that are highly regarded by many in France and receive consistently good write-ups in the French high-end magazines such as Haute Fidelité. I used and still do use many of his IC's and in particular the MaxiTrans and PureTrans speaker cable. I ended up buying the Puretrans back then. To give you a US reference I have always compared them to the DH Labs cables - over achievers in many ways. The PureTrans cable is about 30 dollars a meter. Two twisted silver plated copper wires, Teflon insulation, PC outer jacket. A No-nonsense and effective cable. Hifi Cables et une boîte très sympa.Recently I acquired the Anti-Cables from Paul Speltz. I also had Element cables, but these I cannot compare because I used them on different speakers. But I have 100 hours on the Anti-Cables now and I thought I'd share my findings so far. I realize that many folks are not familiar with my reference cable, but hopefully you'll get something out of it.
Hifi Cables & Cie are makes really nice cables, but the difference was evident from the moment I put Paul's cables on my Dynaudio Contour 1.3 MkII's (upgraded with internal silver wiring). This short article was only written however after spending many hours listening to different types of music on different media (CD, DVD-A, DAD, SA-CD and Vinyl), but predominantly I listen to Jazz.
In summary:
airy in the sense of a bigger soundstage and when available on the recording the ability to better convey a sense of the recording venue;
transparent in the sense that you can hear deeper into the recording picking-up on more micro-dynamics enhancing your involvement with the performance;
fast and neutral in the sense that they seem to faithfully display what's on the dics and/or record. As a cable they seem to disappear in more ways than one (you can hardly see them for starters :-). I find the sheer presence of instruments astounding in comparison with what I am used to. Not that they spotlight anything, but the neutrality, speed and absence of any grain just let's you hear more.These are very interesting cables, seemingly turning the conventional cable wisdom upside down. It reminds me of this Stereophile headline once which said something like 'if this amp is right, this one must be wrong'. If you read the testimonials on Paul's website you can spot a trend in the comments. Mine echo that trend.
Jw
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Topic - anti-cable vs Anti-Cable - Joel_Waterman 21:56:35 02/18/07 (20)
- 14g magnet wires for me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Norman Bates 16:21:21 02/24/07 (0)
- This is a plain magnet wire, isn't it? - 325xi 12:29:14 02/24/07 (1)
- Well, it is mil-spec magnet wire... - Al Sekela 11:53:25 02/25/07 (0)
- Re: anti-cable vs Anti-Cable - Awe-d-o-file 13:01:23 02/20/07 (0)
- Re: anti-cable vs Anti-Cable - WinthorpeIII 08:56:25 02/19/07 (10)
- Compared to what? - Joel_Waterman 09:37:18 02/19/07 (9)
- Re: Compared to what? - WinthorpeIII 10:04:08 02/19/07 (8)
- I thought he was talking about speaker cable, not ICs (nt)_ - Dave Pogue 10:27:16 02/19/07 (1)
- Yes, it's about the speaker cable. I do not have the IC's (nt) - Joel_Waterman 10:37:11 02/19/07 (0)
- Re: Compared to what? - chgolatin2@yahoo.com 10:22:18 02/19/07 (5)
- Not really. - mattcecil1@yahoo.com 09:53:03 02/20/07 (0)
- Re: Compared to what? - WinthorpeIII 10:58:54 02/19/07 (2)
- Based upon your experience... - rlw 11:12:39 02/20/07 (1)
- Re: Based upon your experience... - WinthorpeIII 12:29:30 02/20/07 (0)
- No... - musetap 10:48:33 02/19/07 (0)
- Touching Anti-Cables ICs will cause soundstage to "collapse"?? Has anybody else experienced this? - hukkfinn 05:07:43 02/19/07 (0)
- Re: anti-cable vs Anti-Cable - jkwinn 23:15:47 02/18/07 (3)
- i don't think this is accurate!!!! - mattcecil1@yahoo.com 10:03:03 02/20/07 (2)
- Re: i don't think this is accurate!!!! - Joel_Waterman 10:48:33 02/20/07 (1)
- Try the twist... - mattcecil1@yahoo.com 11:19:04 02/20/07 (0)