Empress and Michael Wolff cables

Category: Cables

Grover Huffman has been building cables for members of Steve Hoffman’s forum for some time and has now embarked on a joint venture with Michael Wolff, who builds power cords. I decided to try Michael’s Source cable and the Empress interconnects.

First, the power cord. Michael makes two models: one for source level gear, another for power amps. I got a cable for my Grover linestage; I had been using a power cord built by a local audio shop. The improvement was enormous. It was on the level of changing the linestage. I had been a little concerned about some brightness in my system, but the power cord removed a lot of it. Music now had a more natural top end so that concerns about edginess evaporated. Bass lines were cleaner and sounded deeper, and everything sounded more fleshed-out. This degree of improvement surprised me. It made the Beatles 1 CD listenable - a little tilted up, but not painful anymore. Michael believes that a lot of edge is actually RF effects on the signal, and he may be right.

The Empress interconnects arrived and they went into the system. The improvements were of the same character, just cumulative, so I could hear deeper into the performance and everything sounded more natural. What struck me this time was that transient information was filled out more - a guitar attack revealed the make up of the chord and not just the sound of the attack. Vocals were also more revealing. I was impressed.

The drawback is that these cables are costly. But again, there are more expensive cables out there. Luckily, I haven't cable rolled much since discovering Grovers, and never in the stratospheric price range. These cables seem to be reasonable priced when you see them, feel them and hear them.

Michael Wolff's site address is below. Click on his Ribbon Source link to get to the other links. There is also a link to Empress cables.