Hi James,
Thank you for the kind words. This is probably my first post on a public forum in more than a year.
Since I was hoping to meet you, I wish you'd raised my attention by making the reference to our earlier correspondence. It was chaos in there as you could see but regardless...
»At the High End 2001 Trade Fair in Frankfurt last week, three wise, attentive and artistic engineers from 47 Labs proudly displayed their System, trying to leap gracefully over the very tall linguistic barrier between them and the German audiophiles asking about "those cables."«
Well, there was only one engineer, really, Kimura san. Other members of the crew were Teramura san, Sead san, Buba san (funny I didn’t know Japanese address female with san as well) and Ichihara san (Kimura san's friend, not into music and audio but a nice guy nevertheless!). We were missing Yoshi san but he couldn't make it to Frankfurt this time. He was there with us spiritualy, so it's ok. :-))
Oh, yeah, it was a great fun, really! We had many people coming in for few times in disbelief that we actually use the VERY SAME wire from the mains outlet to the speaker drivers.
»When, all of a sudden, Slawney noticed in cold sweat what was connected to the 4 Power Dumpties (the high capacity transformers feeding all of their components)! Well, they were all connected in parallel to a single plastic AC plug (German wall outlet) with very thin fishing-line wire that looked very similar to the STRATOS wire 47 Labs were using on all of their components (maybe the Power Cord wire was a little thicker than 0.4mm OFC interconnect and speaker wire, but not by much).«
We were short with power supplies so we had to improvize with only four of them. PiTracer takes two power supplies.
Please, the wire you’ve seen that we were using as power wire IS 47Labs Storatos cable, not thinner nor thicker than 0.4mm OFC solid core copper we use for everything else.
Very nice touch was the fact that this power cable is arranged in a bouquet arrangement, reducing the number of power connectors, thus reducing quantity of metal as well. Not to mention the convinience of not having to check all the cable polarity once one of them is set right, no need for extension cords etc.
»I know that the KIT says about the Stratos wire: "do not use them as power cords!"«
And, I will repeat the warning. Reason for this is very pragmatic in many countries it is illegal to have electric appliances connected without ground and/or with such thin cable diameter and/or with the level of insulation that Storatos cable provides. So, we wouldn’t stimulate our customers to break the rules and/or safety regulations in any way. No, we’re not crazy to kill ourselves by using Storatos as power cable but certain precautions are necessary.
I was very precise in Frankfurt explaining to the visitors that we do think it is sonically beneficial to use this wire as power cable as well, however that using it presents a clear break of safety regulations that are in power in Germany.
» This system was the most jaw-dropping demonstration of the effects of bare-essentials component parts, short signal paths, and minimalist cabling I have ever experienced!«
Thank you very much. I take it as a personal compliment as I was the one who made a risky decission about the setup (bringing some unheard of speakers to a setup that aspires for a high acceptance level on a show is was a VERY risky thing). Btw, what was seen in Frankfurt is my personal setup (except for the turntable which was too complicated for me to carry and Willy Bauer was kind to land us one of his nice DPT decks). Just, it all sounds MUCh better in my demo room as it doesn't have such dissasterous acoustics.
»It compelled me to adopt a new mode of understanding and experience. (So here comes the poetry.) Every event in the music communicated itself to me with supreme intelligibility--a system internally and externally illuminated and inflamed by the music itself!«
Can we discuss the copyrigh of these words? I find this as one of the most inspired compliments I read on 47Labs.
»And what WERE these speakers I was listening to? Three-way speakers with gigantic active sub-woofers! Just kidding. It was just a plain, single tiny 6" Jordan driver in a wood tombstone with no binding posts, the STRATOS going directly into the cabinet to the speaker itself.«
Many people were very seriously asking us to disclose where we had subwofers hidden in the room....
I particularly enjoyed drilling the cabinets with a very thin drill, knowing it would just have to let in the cable and not to fit binding posts (I hate these shiny interference antennas!). Unfortunately, unless specifically requested, retail version will have some binding posts. We still haven’t figured out the ones small enough_ Probably will use something similar to what Gaincard has_ just plain screws.
Best,
Sead
