Hi-fi importer Audiospace Ltd organised a weekend at the Stormont Hotel Belfast; showcasing products from our good selves, Focal loudspeakers, Naim Audio and Rega Research.
Our room was supplied with a pair of the new Focal ARIA 926 floor standing speakers. This was their first public showing and as their drive units feature a composite material containing flax, Belfast seemed a very appropriate venue as it was once home to a great flax industry (they even have a flax plant on their coat of arms!).
The rest of the system was made up of the NAIT5 XS CD player (used as a transport), the NAIM DAC, NAIM NAIT XS (the DAC had an XP5 XS power supply connected to it; the NAIT was being aided and abetted by having its own FlatCap XS).
The room was a typical, slightly larger than standard meeting room with a false ceiling
, but not too terrible!
The Chord Company has never had many dealers in NI so it was a good opportunity for us to try to show people how our cable designs have evolved in our attempts to meet the new challenges of modern music systems, as well as overcoming the ever increasing amounts of high frequency noise that is now permeating our listening rooms. The main culprits of this noise are mobile phones, Wi-Fi’s (especially now everyone is getting into streaming), switch mode power supplies etc. etc.
It’s always very hard to work out what to demonstrate at these events as different people are interested in different aspects of any system.
I had decided to give the visitors a brief demonstration of the evolution of our Crimson cable – from its launch nine odd years ago, through the Crimson Plus, Crimson VEE and finally the Crimson VEE 3. The reason for this was simple. The first Crimson is a perfect example of the way we used to make cables (only really dealing with LF noise, or as we experts call it – HUM!). Fortunately, most of our competitors are still making their shields the same way. The Crimson Plus had a foil spiralled just under the outer red jacket, the other innards being identical as were the metal RCA plugs. The foil is not connected electrically so it keeps out a fair bit of the now ever present HF noise.
Before playing this I explained how the two cables differed. I think it would be fair to say a few eyebrows were raised as people struggled to see how the foil could make a significant difference. After playing a short burst of Van Morrison (very appropriate!) I changed the Crimson over to the Crimson Plus; the difference was substantial (thank goodness) to the surprise of almost everyone sat there.
The next demonstration was changing from the metal skinned RCA plug onto the Crimson with the VEE plug (basically the metal jacket has been changed over to a moulded casing fabricated from an ABS plastic). Removing as much metal from the connector further reduces the HF noise pick up. ABS is also a pretty resonance free material. Again this change resulted in a massive improvement to the system. Being a salesman I couldn’t resist pointing out that years ago, using big metal plugs was the expectation of many audiophiles and considered essential in obtaining a decent electrical connection. In fact massive metal plugs are still found in many cable ranges!
The fact is, nowadays it is probably working against you! If you don’t want to change your cables, at least think of getting rid of your old over metalled plugs!!!
The last demonstration was to change over to the current version of the Crimson (Crimson VEE 3). The only thing this cable has in common with the earlier versions of Crimson is the colour. This model is the evolution of what we have learned over the years about the new challenges currently facing our music systems.
From this introduction we moved up our interconnect range in big jumps; playing the Anthem Reference next. Again the differences surprised everyone there.
The last section of the demonstrations was introducing the first version of the Sarum into the system. One of the best parts of demonstrating cables is that the biggest differences happen at the top of our range. So it was no surprise that this cable totally transformed the system both rhythmically and melodically. I think it was fair to say that people were very surprised at how much better the system got by this change.
From a money point of view it seems quite bizarre to be using a cable at £1500 with a CD player that weighed in at £2000 and a DAC of £2200. From a performance point of view, people that I spoke to agreed that they would be hard pushed to get that size of difference by buying a component for that amount.
The last demonstration was to compare the original Sarum to the latest Sarum Tuned ARAY. I know I work at Chord but the difference that the ARAY makes is still quite incredible.
If you ever want something to do on a wet afternoon, grab a few cd’s, make sure you include something that you have never really got on with and go annoy your nearest Chord Retailer…….. I’m sure we can breathe some new life into it. Alan Gibb