Teo Game-Changer IC's - get on the bus!

Argh. Cable listening tests. You may think what you like of them. I have done a number of them, blind, and I often find it hard, not necessarily to hear differences, but to describe them. For example, one good cable recently was lively, almost boosted-sounding, but with a quality that seemed to me like the audio version of the smell of new plastic. Know what I mean? If not, I can’t blame you. It takes a lot of concentrated attention, and then thinking, to come up with meaningful words sometimes.

And of course, it’s absurd to talk about the “sound” of a cable. Cables don’t make sounds, they influence them. But the language makes it hard to keep the distinction in mind.

I wouldn’t have bought the “plastic” cable. I am trying, though, to find a way to buy a couple of Teo Audio’s cables. This time, I’m fairly confident that I’ll be able to tell you why, in a way that makes sense.

A change in an audio system is only an upgrade if it delivers more information to your ears. Everyone can relate to words like “the music came closer”, “it seemed more real” or “a veil was lifted”. Of course these are clichés now, but they reflect people trying to describe what an upgrade sounds like. After the Teos were delivered, my girlfriend was good enough to sit down and listen to a blind cable swap, and that’s what she said.

Well, she doesn’t know the clichés. What she really said was “a veil descended”. That was after I put the old cables back in.

Maybe you can stop reading now! All you need to know is that the reference cable was nothing shabby. Not a recent design, it cost over $500 originally, and it has held up extremely well in comparisons with more modern cables at a similar price. I particularly like the way it doesn’t play with the music’s harmonic structure. Some cables seem faster, but don’t leave that intact. It’s discontinued, and I had put ETI connectors on it, like ones the Teo cables have.

OK, you want a little more detail, you audiophile you.

I used a recording I own in both digital and vinyl versions. It’s a 1980s PCM recording by DGG, so we can’t expect scads of information off the bat. However the performance is of rare intensity and serves the music brilliantly. The two instruments involved are the cello and the piano, whose interplay is one of the charms of the composition. The Teo cables gave each one its rightful place, whereas the reference cable gave a slight prominence to the cello. In addition, the Teo cables provided more complexity of timbre, a greater sense of depth and overall, that sense of a lifted veil which lets you in on details of timing and dynamics and persuades you that you are listening to highly proficient artists and not something vaguely synthetic (like plastic). In particular, the trailing edges of notes seemed prolonged, in a natural way, whereas the reference cable seemed to truncate them before they were quite finished. This helped the flow of the music and was a factor in my letting myself get caught up in it.

What was most remarkable to me was the fact that I got caught up in the music at all. My reference tube monoblock amplifiers were out of service, and I had swapped in my only backup, a chip amp. A highly regarded chip amp, but still, such a downgrade that I had hardly been spending any time with music since the reference left.

The Teo cables made the music so much more interesting that I started listening again.

No, the Teo-branded sonics weren’t enough, on their own, to bring the backup amp to reference level. When I listened to Rachel Podger’s magnificent performance, with her band Brecon Baroque, of Vivaldi’s La Stravaganza concertos in a 24/192 recording made on top-class equipment by Jared Sacks of Channel Classics, the lushness and 3-dimensional interplay I’m accustomed to was reduced enough that I stopped listening after a while. Aww. (By the way, since I’m naming names here, the cello and piano recording mentioned above was the J. S. Bach Sonatas for Cello and Piano played by Mischa Maisky and Martha Argerich.)

But then I did something I now wish I’d done earlier. My connection from preamp to amps is a long one, and I usually use a 2-metre cable for it. However I realized I could get the chip amp closer without moving the speakers much or at all. I tried it, and the second Teo loaner fit. That meant I could listen to an all-Teo interconnect set.

Well, with the Teos between DAC and preamp, and between preamp and amp too, my system was back. Not exactly the same sound quality the monoblocks give; things were a bit more bluff and forthright, less delicate, as perhaps you’d expect from solid state. The resolution was all there, though, and there was even more.

For one thing, the bass. A low piano note in the cello sonata was newly rich with harmonics and weight. The violins of Brecon Baroque allowed the cello and double bass to share the stage equally — all too rare in baroque music recordings. More difficult to describe is the thing I can express best as a change in how my system handled phase relationships. There was an impression that microtiming was better, that all the players were together on the downbeat, and the combined wavefronts from that shared downbeat arrived at my ears at the same time, the way they left the instruments. This was a physical impression. It made the performers occupy space in my listening room, and it seemed to me I was not working as hard to be involved in the music. In fact, I let myself go and let the music caress me in a way I thought I remembered from when I was much younger. It was delicious. I think I found something I didn’t know I was looking for.

Well, that means the Teos pulled off a trick that was worth the difference in price between my tube monoblocks and the chip amp, minus the Teos’ cost. That formula works out to much more than the cost of two pairs of Teo Game Changers, and puts the cables’ price in a new light.

Unfortunately, my tube amps won’t be back until I have to send the Teos on to the next participant in the round-robin that brought them to me. I’m sorry to see them go, but I’m happy for the next guy. And I’m intensely curious to see what Teos do with my tubes. Which is why I’m scraping up the cash I will need to get my own Teos, on their money-back guarantee. My hunch that I’ll be keeping them is very strong.

I’ll report back...