Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit

G'men, would DarumaII support ~50lbs (weight of my cdp)? Also, how far does the movement go: I have little available space on the lightweight table the player is sitting on.

Thanks!

One last point, Darumas II have no weight limit listed, and should work fine for 50lb unit. MIBs seem more robust and better suited for very heavy objects, I believe Aurios says they can support up to 1000lbs. Max sway is @1/2 inch in any direction but only occurs if you push/touch unit, swaying stops soon and unit appears stationary in actual use.

Now who else has an ultrathin cable experience?

Thanks, Mega.

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

Hi,

Me again_

“Caterham1700, I was wondering where those isolation shelves came from! Nice work. 47 labs had them all resting directly on the floor (no rack at all).”

I must admit that we were planning to use the rack_ Since it was late on delivery, by the time it arrived, we had things layered on the floor, as you could see it. We liked it and decided to keep it that way.

There were the cones underneath the shelves but, since there is a double layer of carpet in Kempinski, even the speaker spikes couldn’t reach down to the floor, I wonder if these coned had any positive effect. Nevertheless, Neuance has done a good job. Yeah, Ken was very specific about the placement but I took some liberty of judgment since I am reasonably familiar with Neuance from before, so who’s Ken Lyon to tell me how to use them_ ROTFL :-)))))))))

“Did you intend them to be used this way?”

If he hasn’t answered yet_ NO. On a hard floor_ YES.

“ Either: they have a very casual attitude towards resonance and vibration; or: they place absolute trust in your shelves.”

If nothing, we don’t have any sort of neglect nor casual attitude toward resonance and vibration. Perhaps some ideas we have may sound unusual, even heretic but mechanical aspects are among the first aspects of design behind 47Labs.

We, however, have a casual attitude toward the possibility of a sound achievement on the shows. I had great laugh looking some brands booking their rooms weeks in advance, bringing sound engineers, decorators and architects, trying to, by remodeling the rooms entirely, alter the acoustics, and still ending up with a pathetic results_ yet expensive one, that is for sure!

Absolute trust? Until I stepped in Kempinski, I didn’t have trust in myself, not to say Neuance. But, when we started the setup, in like two hours it took us to relatively satisfied go to the town for some fun, the trust was back. : - )

I was never shy over the fact that I like Neuance. It is a well thought of product that has proved itself in both show and home applications. So, it was me pushing Ken to send me these and not, as it usually goes, the other way round.

“They also had a very relaxed attitude about moving the STRATOS cables around.”

Why bother? It ain’t glass to break. ;-)))

“They continually moved one between the FLATFISH CD Player to the PITRACER CD Player without any noticeable signs of anxiety that this would jeapordize the sound of their display system.”

As I said in my other post, we were short with power supplies, so we had to share one DA converter between PiTracer and Flatfish. So, we had no option but to move the cable around. Really, we were not worried about breaking some molecular structures within. I leave this fear to those thinking they can do a policeman work within a cable and have particular electrons directed through some particular strands and some other very particular electrons directed through the other, now different strands_

“ As for the geometric arrangement of the cables, they did not twist the two cables around each another, but ran them parallel and adjoining with sharp bends to ensure a rectilinear cable infrastructure.”

Cable behavior is dependant on the arrangement but, in a well balanced setups no twisting we find necessary. It’s a complex issue and certainly exceeds the scope of this discussion.

“It was difficult to detect the type of movement-induced anomalies to the cables that have been referred to here since each move of the cable was continually accompanied by a change of component, and because the speaker system was limited low frequency, and also because they played recordings with limited bass _.”

I didn’t notice any particular bass specific selection of the music we’ve played. The speaker goes to a healthy 37 Hz so, why bother? We had some very bass demanding material on play, especially as we were gladly playing other people’s material. Playing low registers of an organ in such room would be a disaster to anyone at the show, not just us but, I would disagree over the complexity (dullness perhaps, lol) of the bass in Tracy Chapman or Peter Gabriel (synthesized bass) recordings. Nor I would say playing double bass on Oscar Peterson’s Live at the Blue Note is a sign of a deliberate avoiding of a bass heavy material. Or, and that is also possible, our understanding of bass differs. Or, Miles Davis “Tutu”_As the final argument, I would stress out that we were playing on numerous occasions a very famous speaker crusher, Rickie Lee Jones “Under the Boardwalk”. I would love to take this particular recording to someone else at that show and see if the setup would collapse in a physical sense under the same SPL we had it running smoothly.

“_and also because the listening session had to satisfy the demands of product exhibition for a large mass of people.”

Indeed, this is very much correct.

“Despite all that, I thoroughly enjoyed this system's lucidity.”

Thank you very much.

Best,
Sead