Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Crystal Cable , Crystal connect and Crystalspeak

Crystal cable crystalconnect interconnect 1 meter pair

Crystal cable crystalspeak speaker cable 2 meter pair.



A relatively new cable company that run by Gabi Van der kley from Holland. If you knew Siltech and this 2 company is closely related.

If you believe in small is beautiful and this is the cable that will suit you. Pack like a jewels using leather casing and my wife mistakenly thought I bring her jewels when she first saw this and later disappointedly found out it’s my new toys again.


The cable use gold/silver alloy as the central core conductor helically wrapped in a dual layer of ultra thin kapton foil as a shield and makes a silver colour in appearance.

I plug in the interconnect follow the direction of the ding ( a small clip with crystal logo) although the manufacture mention the cable is none directional.



The speaker cable is very unique that there a connector at the middle. You can either change spade, banana plug and length by pluging in different length of wire.


At first I plug in the piccolo crystalconnect interconnect and later together with the piccolo crystalspeak

speaker cable and found out both have a almost same characteristic.

Sound;

The first thing I notice is a wider and deeper soundstage. Singer seems to be singing further back at the rear speaker. This make the positioning especially accompany musical instrument more spaces among them.

This cable exhibits a very low noise. Background become darker and makes detail much easier to pick up. The scale proportion is and I enjoy more especially realistic in size orchestra.

The bass is tight and shift lower. It is like comparing the bass characteristic of the kt88 tube with an el34 tube. I think this cable is more suited to a floor stander. The balance of the cable is smooth and neutral. Sometimes I feel it’s too analytical or shimmering .It’s like back in my 20’s where I tune my equalizer at a V shape where the bass and treble all the way up but the mid all the way down. This will make the sound of the string instrument lack the immediate attack. It also always present string instrument like guitar as secondary to the music. I can sense that system with strong mid range may benefit from this cable.

As I’m writing this, the cable is run in at around 50 hours from new and the sound is not yet stable. I am expecting the cable to further open up. The manufacturer recommends a longer time is needed to run in the cable.



Associate equipment

Amp;quad 606, quad II, Pioneer A400,Musical fidelity A1,
Pre;passive 100k, 250k, clone marantz 7, audionote 7

Speaker:Ls3/5a biwire LE + Foundation designer 2 stand

Cable:Zu, gryphon guideline mk2, vandenhul the first, wireworld silver eclipse, diy cable.

Cdplayer;denon(modified)

Rooms:9ft x 15 ft  x 10ft


KLau

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