JADE AUDIO Cables

I have two stories about the length of speaker cables. One comes from long ago and Bob Fulton also of Minnesota fame. His were the first special speaker wires that I ever bought although that started a long series of trials. His speaker wires were 57 inches long! Why? Because he had taken various lengths to the Minneapolis zoo in the babbon area and played alarm calls recorded by him. Only when the speaker wires were 57" long, not longer and not shorter, did the babbons react. I bought some. Although they were yellow, they were identical to welding cables I had used and sounded like them. I never cut welding cables to 57" , however.

The other story is much like this. It comes from my experience with the Omega Mikro charged speaker wires. This company sought to remove all insolation material, and refused to make speaker wires shorter than 8' long. When I asked, I was told nothing more than because shorter did not sound as good. This is also the company that still has two power cords, the Red and the Blue, which sound quite differ one from the other on most components. The power cords differ only in that the ribbon draw on the red goes from the wall plug to the IEC and then back. The blue is the opposite. Having heard this, I trusted them on the speaker wires.

Norm

I finally got a chance to get a sneak preview of the Jade speaker cables.

For the last year or so I have been using PAD Opis speaker cables. These have a great tonal coherency to lock in well between the CAT JL-3 amps and SoundLab A1 speakers. The Opis retain that strong PAD characterization of dynamic contrasts. The PAD Aqueous Anniv spkr cables were non-linear in my system with peaks and valleys all over the place.

After trying many spkr cables in the $1-2k range, the only other cable that worked well here was the Coincident xTreme, but the Opis outperformed this in dynamics .... otherwise they perform nearly identical here. I had several of these cables here at one time last year to play for a couple weeks.

Enter the Jade this week: Tonality is nearly identical to the Opis but the Jade has a little more extension in the low end and clearly more reach into the top. This latter difference allows for decays to last a bit longer and give the impression of more air to the notes. This was an 8-feet cable that had several hundred hours of use.

I then tried a 4-feet pair of the Jade cable with no burn-in time. Tonality was very similar but not as extended in either direction. The projection was much reduced which lead to a somewhat flat performance. A return to the burned-in 8-feet pair brought back the openness. All tests were done with the souped-up APL Denon into the Callisto with 2 pairs of Jade Hybrid ICs. PCs were a mix of Dream State and Stealth Dream.

The outcome of this mini audition indicates that this cable may need some serious burn-in. The 4-feet pair will be burned-in on a cable burner for a week or so and the test will be repeated to determine how the 8-feet and 4-feet pairs compare here again.

As it stands now, the Jade 8-feet cable was a very nice step above the Opis. One thing I have noticed here is how much less spkr cables differ vs. ICs and PCs. The difference between the two top ICs I have had here, the Indra and Jade Hybrid, have very dramatic differences from source to pre or pre to amps than the above differences between the Opis and Jade spkr cables. And the same with PCs into the APL Denon CDP and Running Springs Haley PLC: the Dream State PC in these positions is a much bigger step ahead of the Stealth Dream PC than these spkr cable differences. So there is clearly a priority here as to where to invest money in cables.

Osgorth: Oh and yes, that mystery IC was the GG Revelation. It did not work out well for me here at all.....whether straight out of the box or over 150 hours of continuous signal for nearly 7 days. Oh well. Leave it to me to wreck a perfect record! I was very appreciative to get refunded from Steve.

John

Thanks John, things that make me go hmmmm. I also demo'd the 8 ft burn in pair of Vermeil and was very impressed. I await your further testing after the 4 ft pair is burned in. I'd really hate to go to an 8 foot pair, not just because of cost, but my amps are right next to my speakers, and I'd have to coil the wires (alledgedly a no-no) just to take up all the extra slack. I suppose I could run my right monoblock to my left speaker, and switch i/c leads, though this seems a bit odd too.

Cheers,
John

Jmcgrogan2, I am using two different stereo amps now but when I had mono blocks and 8' speaker wires, I put a camera tripod behind each speaker and a Rightway Audio Suspender on top of each. I ran the speaker wires up to the top and down to the speaker inputs. You did not really notice this from the listening position.

I am anxious to get the latest version of the speaker wires, hopefully on my return from Europe in late July.

Jafox, I agree with you that interconnects and power cords vary more substantially in their impact on ones sound. I continue to use Cerious Technologies speakerwires but did try the 8' prototypes from Jade. They were noticably different and I preferred the Jades, but when I had to send the Jades on to Jmcgrogan, I found the CTs perfectly acceptable. In many cases with interconnects and ac cords, I can bearly tolerate some respected cables for long enough to get them broken in. My preferences are pretty cleanly drawn as with the Stealth Dreams, which are the only power cords I use. The Jade Hybrids are excellent but can be used in only one place in my system. They do not work in vinyl and are too expensive for my 4 m. run to my amps.

Good points, John. I have the same situation now where a 4-feet pair would work well. But I am likely to go with a longer pair that would be more universal. Ideally, for summer months, I need to find a cooler but similarly performing stereo amp to the CATs. If I decide to switch over to a stereo amp or want to get the CATs further away from the SLs, I will be happy I bought the longer cables. The SLs throw a lot of energy from behind and all that blowing into the amp tubes is not a good thing.

I'd hate to skimp on cost and get the smaller pair now only to find out in a year or so that I need an 8-feet pair later. And once Jade Audio is sold to a wealthy fellow overseas where the cables are now 3x the price, JD will likely be on a beach in Tahiti. This would be the end of my "upgrade" opportunity. So it's safer to go longer and use some of the posted tricks to dress the cable so that it is not coiled up next to the amp or speaker.

Since spkr cables are not that huge of an influence here, this will very likely be my last pair. I am hoping to say this with my PCs too, but I am not yet done with ICs.

I can bearly tolerate some respected cables for long enough to get them broken in.

I can certainly relate to that comment! I use the home theater setup upstairs for some such opportunities.

They were noticeably different and I preferred the Jades, but when I had to send the Jades on to Jmcgrogan, I found the CTs perfectly acceptable.

Exactly the same feeling when I returned to the PAD Opis.

I hope to hear the Hybrids from the Io to Callisto one of these days. I need an XLR which adds to the cost. Indra XLR cables are tough to find as well. It will take me awhile to find an XLR cable here that locks in. And I want to drop in a Jade Gold here again too as that was soooooo nice in this link. But my system has changed dramatically since then so who knows. The Stealth Hyperphono remains the reference tonearm cable here. The other two IC links will likely be Hybrids for a long long time.

John