- Are your cables cryo-treated?
We cryo-treat every cable in a unique double immersion process developed through extensive listening tests. We determined 7 years ago that cryo-treating cables was a significant improvement.
- How do your cables differ in sound as compared to other "recommended cables"?
The most immediate sound differentiation is the ability to preserve the space in the sound stage quite a bit better than other cable designs. Preserving space and sound field cues requires the cable design to pass
through the smallest details. This is where most other cable designs fail, and ours shines (in our opinion). Our cable is also coherent and balanced from top to bottom, with no emphasis or filtering of any frequency registers. Regarding dynamics, we have yet to hear another cable design that exceeds the Reality Cable line. It's all about getting the wire "out of the way," and this is what our cable does much better than most designs.
- How much break-in time do your cables need?
Our cables are mostly broken in when you receive them. We use a proprietary break-in technique on the RCA and XLR balanced interconnects. When you receive
them, they will already have 120 hours of our proprietary break-in. The speaker cables use a different type of proprietary break-in technique and will have over 60
hours on them. All cables will require about 48 hours on your system to become fully acclimated. Very few other cable manufacturers that we know of do any break-in on their cables. This is one of the reasons that our cables outperform other high-end cables regardless of cost.
- What is the "proprietary secret copper material" that you use in your cable
design?
We call it "secret" for a reason. All that we will say is that it is much better than your typical "six-nines" or "single crystal" types of copper. It also sounds superior to any silver wire conductors we investigated. This is one of our many secrets, and we don't plan on letting the "cat out of the bag" anytime soon. Sorry.
- Why don't your cables use connectors like WBT, for instance?
The entire cable is considered to produce the clearest signal path from one end to the other. In our quest to develop the most real-sounding cable, we found that the connectors played a big part in how much information the wire would transmit. Unfortunately, most big-name connectors hinder our cable's absolute performance capabilities. Ultimately, our proprietary ends were custom-made based solely on how they sound (not how they look). We can offer WBTs, Eichmen Bullet Plugs, Cardas, etc., though if you prefer that type of connector, we will not guarantee that the cable will be nearly as good as our current design. Those are the connectors that most other high-end cable companies use.
We also offer Vampire's oxygen-free copper connectors, which we feel (after cryo freezing) are the best money can buy.
- Why haven't you submitted your cables to a magazine like Absolute Sound or Stereophile?
Magazines like Stereophile and Absolute Sound require you to advertise with them for about 6 months before they review your products. The money necessary to spend on advertising for a future review would substantially increase the cost of our cables. We felt that by offering a 20-day money-back guarantee and allowing you to listen to the cables yourself, you could hear what our cables can do in YOUR system and not a reviewer’s system.
- How does your 20-day money-back guarantee work?
We offer a 20-day money-back guarantee on 3-foot and 6-foot interconnects and the same guarantee on 8, 12, and 16-foot speaker cables, less shipping.
Note: The money-back guarantee only applies with standard spade lugs and no sleeving. We will provide a money-back guarantee with bananas or other spade lugs, but there will be a $50.00 re-termination fee. We will give you a money-back guarantee on cables with sleeving, but we will not credit the cost of the sleeving.
- Why do you not put sleeving over your cables?
In listening tests, we determined that the black or colored sleeving that other cable manufacturers use degrades the sound of our cables. We heard a soundstage collapse compared to no sleeving at all. Also, not using the sleeving helps us keep the cost down so that we can provide you with reference caliber
cables at near entry-level pricing. We will put sleeving on if you ask. We feel that the cotton sleeving does the least damage to the sound. We only recommend the black sleeving if you require it for cosmetic reasons.
- Do you prefer spade lugs or banana plugs?
For the best sound, we prefer spade lugs. When designing our speaker cables, we did numerous listening tests with different brands of spade lugs and banana plugs. We discovered that with speakers and amplifiers that use a 5-way binding post, the worst-sounding spades still sounded better than the best-sounding banana plug.
We then listened to speakers like Magnapans that use a banana connection. In that case, where you cannot use a spade lug, the banana plugs are the best sounding for that application. We realize that banana plugs are much easier to connect, but if you want the best sound our cables can provide, the spade lugs we selected for our speaker cables are the best way to go.