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Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit

Has anyone tried this "minimalist" cable kit? After receiving a recommendation from someone with similar musical values to myself, and whose ears I trust, I could not resist ordering one. I will report on how they sound in a few weeks, but am interested in others' opinions too.

For those that have not heard about them look at www.sakurasystems.com for an interesting read. The cable sounds as if it is very close to the specification of the conductors in Belden Cat5. So I may have spent around 100 times what the kit is worth. We shall see.

If you have not heard this cable, please don't bother posting your opinions of how it MUST sound here. Nor am I that interested in hearing how stupid I must be to order this kit - it's my money and you are free to make different decisions with yours. Sorry for this condition, but I am bored with those that have nothing positive to offer on this site, and post their opinions based on deductive logic rather than actual experience.
redkiwi
redkiwi OP
1,092 posts
 
The cables have gone through some interesting changes. But at all times there has been excellent PRAT, a grainless smoothness and minimal smearing - each parameter being significantly better than with any stranded cable I have heard. The lack of smearing means transients are not accompanied by any noticeable distortion, the soundstage is fab (and very deep), and fine detail resolution is excellent. All this is not exceptional because many solid core cables I have heard have had these qualities to some degree, but fell down in really only getting a narrow band of frequencies right. The problems I have encountered have been with tonal anomolies and an occasional swimmy vagueness. But these problems only last an hour or so and then are replaced by another.

My assumption is that all the good points will remain intact and the problems are just burn-in issues. I just have to be patient enough to wait for that to happen. Most of the time the mid-band is pretty good (except when the lower-mids occasionally disappear. The biggest changes are in the bass and treble where they are occasionally good to very good, and then do a disappearing act.

Something about the sound of these cables make me very optimistic.
dekay's avatar
dekay
5,721 posts
 
I would like to make a few notes on IC assembly for those that may be ordering the kit (or that have already received it). When assembling the Black portion of the RCA, the cable insulation needs to be beveled at the edges in order for it to fit into the channel (along with the bare copper wire). When you have the kit in hand you will see what I mean by this. I shaved the end of the insulation from approx. 1/16" out to the end, at an angle with a razor knife. Before figuring this out I botched two sets of IC's twice and then made up one pair successfully (which means that I now have 20 connections involving the Black RCA portion under my belt, though have wasted quite a bit of the cable in the process:-(. The White portion of the IC does not require this treatment to the insulation and is a snap. When initially stripping the wire for both the Black and White section of the RCA's 1 3/4" to 2" is adequate to work with, so take this length into consideration as a portion of the bare wire will double back instead of extending the length of the cable (again this will be clear with the kit in hand).

Sound wise (so far) I find RedKiwi's comments about lack of "smearing" interesting as I suspect that he is describing something that I did not previously have the proper "words" to describe. I have referred to this in the past as a sound that somehow accompanies but that is not really a part of the music as it kind of rests behind (though is attached) to each note (I like "smearing" a lot better:-). What I do notice with the speaker cable at this point is that the background is very silent and that the notes seem to manifest in the air and not from the speakers (with well recorded CD's). The "smearing effect" if that is what I am describing, always hinders this illusion to some extent and the speakers are more evident in the mix. I have rejected a number of CD sources and IC's in the past because they did this to the sound and am now discovering that my previous Kimber Kable was also adding (though slightly) to this affect. Otherwise, I do not have a clue as to how the cable will sound as it has been all over the map in my setup as well and will post again in a couple of weeks.
redkiwi OP
1,092 posts
 
Just a comment on what I term smearing. If smearing of sounds occurs due to cables then it tends to happen to all sounds (as opposed to vibration which tends to just affect one narrow band).

The effect it has on all sounds is to obscure the fine detail, but accentuate transients by making them last longer. So the cymbals spit, voices are overcome by sibilance and go hard when they are pushed hard by the singer, and the bass seems nicely weighty but lacking articulation and seemingly behind the beat. If you approach these effects thinking they are merely an issue of tonality you will be wanting to tighten up the bass, but smooth the upper frequencies. A warmer cable or component may tame the harshness of upper frequencies, but the bass gets worse. A leaner cable or component gets you more articulation in the bass but the upper frequencies get harder. Sound familiar at all?

Solid core cables tend to be better at avoiding smearing, and the sound is smooth and grainless, with black silent backgrounds. You don't get that crispy crunchy sound accompanying the transient (which I think is what Dekay is describing) that comes from smearing the initial attack. So instruments like classical guitar can sound wonderfully natural with solid core cables. But finding one that performs well over the full frequency range has always eluded me. It is too early for me to tell whether the 47Labs Kit is the exception, but Ken (Caterham1700) reports that it is, and so far the 47Labs sounds more promising than any other solid core cable I have tried.

The most interesting part to me is the fantastic PRAT that is emerging from this cable. I reckon PRAT comes from minimising smearing, so that the listener perceives the transients to be happening at the correct time, thereby perceiving the band to be playing "in the groove" together. That should suggest that all solid core cables have good PRAT, but not so, which comes down to the fact they tend to only work well over a narrow band. But this time the speed of this cable has a coherence top-to-bottom that I cannot recall hearing in my system before.

All of that makes me think I should have tried some Tara Labs cables before now. I would be very interested to hear from some Tara owners on this one.
dekay's avatar
dekay
5,721 posts
 
RedKiwi: Both of the IC's that I was using before are solid core (pretty sure that the Mapleshade is, though I can barely see the wire itself, and I know that the Homegrown Audio's are). Are you using analog IC's made from the 47 Labs kit as well or the speaker cable only at this point? I am going to try using one of the 47 Labs IC's as a digital cable once my DAC arrives back from Bel Canto and currently have 47 Labs IC's installed with the speaker cable (thought that I would let it all run in together to get it over with).
redkiwi OP
1,092 posts
 
Hi Dekay. I am using the 47Labs for interconnect and speaker cables. I couldn't stand the idea of running them in separately either. I no longer use any digital interconnects and only need a stereo pair of ICs and a stereo pair of speaker cables in either of my systems. I have not used solid core cables for a while, except that the cables I have been using each use several or many solid cores separately insulated. Given I am getting quite excited by these 47Labs cables I feel I need a reality check with a good solid core cable in case it is just my system context that is causing me to like single solid core cables now, when I did not before.

The impact of twisting the cables is an interesting point. I first ran them untwisted, and the sound was a bit vague, so I twisted them together loosely and the sound tightened up a bit. Later the system was sounding a bit thinned and congested and flattened, and so following Ken's advice I untwisted them again and the sound was better. It is hard to know where the sound of these cables will end up but I feel untwisted is probably going to be better. Very hard to know since moving the cables results in more burn-in.

I emailed Yoshi of Sakura Systems on the twisting issue but his reply was non-committal.

By the way, I didn't have any of the problems you encountered with threading the cables into the ground connectors - which is a little bit odd because we must have ordered the cables at about the same time. I just held my mouth right and gave the cable a shove and it went in.
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