Empress and Michael Wolff cables

I recently purchase a biwire pair of the Empress speaker cables. I have only had them about two weeks and although they are not yet fully broken in they seem harmonically well balanced, not emphasizing any frequency range at
the expense of others. They have dimension and clarity, and let all the
width and depth on particular recordings come through as engineered. They
mate well with my Pass XA 160's, which are a little fussy about cables. I can recommend these as excellent cables, equal or better in performance than megabuck cables. And they have yet to reach their full capability, which I would guess would be after 150-200 hours.

It took me 10 tries to finally find the right ic for my system, and the empress is the one. I'm working on a review right now, but for now I'd like to say I agree with gophers comments having compared the same two cables.

Biggie.

Introduction:

My journey to find a reasonably priced cable able to do all the little things right has been a long one. Each cable that has entered my system came with it’s own strengths and weaknesses, but not one seemed to do everything right. I would occasionally ponder what one of the mega-bucks cables could do for my system but reason always prevailed and I continued to swap cables within my budget hoping to find the right one. The list of cables I have had in my system in chronological order is:

-Virtual Dynamics Audition
-Belden 89259 with Cardas SLVR
-Cardas Neutral Reference
-Grover mkII
-W Enterprises NW Gold Alloy
-Aural Thrills Active Gold (used Topline WBT’s, gold tri-alloy wire)
-Grover Reference mkI
-Aural Thrills Active Gold (used Midline WBT’s, solid gold wire, silver return wire)
-Aural Thrills Beryllium Copper

Of course these are not the only cables I have listened to, but they are the ones that have stayed in my system for a reasonable amount of time. The first 3 cables all have the typical copper flavoring, which I do not like. They give warmth and body to the music but cloud the details and do not do anything particularly well. The Grover mkII cable I owned was a real bargain for the price. It easily best the copper cables for clarity, imaging, focus, speed, detail and tonal balance. The Grover Reference beats out its kid brother the mkII by bettering what the mkII does well. I ended up selling these cables because while not bright or thin sounding, they add an edge to the music that I find to be unnatural (this accentuated edge shows up in almost all silver cables I have listened to). The Aural Thrills Active Gold cables I owned were very pleasing to my ears. Each cable gives a rich inviting midrange, large open soundstage, black background and a very smooth full-bodied sound. The solid gold wire version is superior to the older version because it has superior imaging and crisper, albeit more laid back highs that have a touch of sweetness to them (kind of magical). While not as fast as the Grover cables, these cables are both detailed and creamy smooth. Next up was Aural Thrills Beryllium copper cable. This cable is more detailed, faster, has less soft edges while still remaining smooth and just as full. I ended up returning it though, because I did not like its tone in my system. It has that copper warmth that puts a sonic blanket the whole music spectrum. I still hadn’t found the right cable for my system. Next up was the Grover/Wolff Empress.

Build:

I can tell that this cable is solidly built and will be able to handle many connection swaps. It is fairly flexible and none too heavy. The connectors look like the NOS ones used for the Grover Reference cables. They make a snug connection and are malleable enough that you can adjust their grip if needed. The sheathing looks to be the same type used for the Wolff carbon power cords (of which I own and highly recommend the Wolff carbon source cord). My only gripe with the cable is that the colours used for the shrink-wrapping aren’t attractive as the rest of the cable. But overall the build quality of the Empress is very nice and the looks are a definite improvement over Grover’s older cables.

Sound:

The first thing that stuck me about the empress cable is how smooth it made my systems playback. Perhaps this was because in my past experience with silver cables I longed for this very trait. That typical silver edginess is in no way characteristic of this cable. Now I’ve heard this claim about other silver cables before, and I haven’t always agreed with such comments, but this is the real deal. Poor recordings are just as easy to listen to as good recordings but still do sound the poorer. I believe there is nothing worse then a highly resolving system that renders bad recordings almost unlistenable (hmm unlistenable does not show up on my spell checker but its too good a word not to use). I’m not sure how the carbon ribbons in this cable work, but they must be doing a lot of good to rid the cable of the infamous silver sheen. Now I have heard smooth cables before, but have I heard ones that are as detailed, as tonally accurate or as fast? The answer is no, and now let me go into more detail.

In my system I exclusively use Grado headphones that are known mainly for two things, great mids and prat (pace rhythm and timing). The Grados let me know which cables can keep up with the music and which cannot. To determine if an interconnect can recreate these complex passages I like to use tracks with some intense cymbal usage. Cables that get left in the dust cause the cymbals to smear into each other and kill the prat. In my tests the empress’s were never caught with their guard down; they flowed through the music with a natural grace and never sounded compressed or slow.

The mids of Grado headphones is another reason I enjoy them. I have found that some silver cables tend to bleach the mids and other cables to substantially colour them. Either of these flavors lead to one thing, what I hear played back does not sound as realistic, nor does it sound as the headphone was intended to sound in my opinion. Thankfully, the empress cables allow the Grado mids to shine in all their glory. Vocals blossom out of a black background and never sound coloured or held back. I would go as far as to say the mids of the empress cable are holographic while not being euphonic (although I do like that). The all-important midrange is just a pleasure to listen to using the empress interconnects.

The soundstage on these cables is large and well defined. It is open and never compressed. The empress does depth well and imaging is very precise. Great imaging is a characteristic of all Grover’s cables in my opinion. The sound produced by the empress shows no signs of thinness and is very well balanced. This is as neutral a cable as I have heard. The wonderful tone keeps the Grado’s notoriously forward highs in check (I didn’t try them with bowl pads mind you). Bass is detailed and full; everything is in its right place.

The detail of this cable is what I would call ‘natural detail’. Unnatural detail would be when a cable derives its detail from an emphasized high end (magnifying hiss and the like). The empress simply gives you what’s there, without emphasizing any part of the sound spectrum. This is detail without fatigue, while not rounding off the edges as some cables may do. There is no veil over the music, everything is there for you to touch and feel. The timbre of the music is what I would call accurate and believable, certainly much care was put into voicing this cables just right. Simply put, the empress makes digital played through my system sound like real music, and that’s all I could ever ask for in a cable.

Conclusion:

As I see it there are two types of audiophiles, those that just want what was is on the recording played back as accurately as possible with as much detail as possible, and those who want to recreate the live event with a very musical and involving sound. Can a cable really combine both of these worlds into one? Well now I know that yes a cable can, but only the really good ones. Which leads me to my final point; the empress really does impress.

Notes:

I mainly listen to rock music, so all my impressions were based on good and bad rock recordings. If you are interested in seeing what my system consists of, here is a link:
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/member.php?userid=2093
I hope to be able to update this review with a direct A/B comparison with another cable once my rig is all settled in later this fall. I recently switched from Grado rs-1’s to Grado ps-1 pros.

Biggie.

The Empress Phono Interconnects are the finest cables made. I have upgraded from the SRII cables. The Empress uses the same internal wiring; however, the shielding common to virtually all Phono ICs is a metal type shield. Unfortunately, the SRIIs are so revealing and transient rich that the metal shielding elevates record noise and blurs timing, etc. relative to the Empress ICs. The new carbon shielding is non-metallic/non-magnetic and serves the same purpose but with extremely superior results. The Empress removes all of the noise inherent in common shielding designs and provides the SRII wiring to sing music sweeter than I have ever heard. This is a revolutionary change in phono cable sound. Grover and Michael have invented the ideal phono cable (and I've tried dozens of brands and types over the years). Analog is king with the Empress. (Digital remains the queen of sound with the Empress unshielded ICs, it can=t outdo analog). My friends come over and salivate at the sound of my system since I upgraded to Empress cables (although they always enjoyed Grover=s ICs before). My wife agrees that her rock records have the best vocal sound she has heard recorded or live. It=s difficult not to listen for hours into the night. My advice is to purchase the line stage to amp ICs first, then the analog (if you have it), then another pair for CDs. I also purchased Empress ICs for my Alesis Masterlink CD burner-unbelievable, great CDs from all analog sources.

I feel I am providing a necessary service to all you audiophiles and music lovers out there reading this. You will feel that the biggest bargain you have made is in purchasing the Empress ICs. You will change your equipment before you will change these wires. I am an amateur musician, music lover and audiophile (without the high end gear pretensions, quality always over snob appeal).

Caveat Emptor, a truly bad recording will be just that much worse sounding with the Empress Phono ICs - you can hear the electronics used in recording and cutting records, the ICs are that revealing. I heard bad cutter head amps and noisy microphone pre-amps revealed on previously okay sounding records. Now they show how bad they really are. On the bright side, most of my 17,000 LPs sound good to great. Average sounding records which may have restricted dynamics, highs, lows, etc. are just that much more interesting with better timing, openness and transients to reveal the essence of the music. Good music is just that more interesting and musically involving.

I recently bought a set of empress ics and spkr cables and have been delighted with the results. I gave them a week of burn-in time on the audio dharma cable cooker before listening. Initially they seemed competent but uninspiring; then i discovered that one of the speaker cables was on back to front. I turned it around and the system really came alive! That was a week ago, during which time they've settled in in-situ and are revealing greater depths of prowess. My overall impression is that they're well balanced and confer a greater enjoyment of our hobby. They offer the incisiveness of silver without the harshness and fatigue that sometimes accompanies it. That may imply to some that there is a dullness to the sound but that simply isn't the case. I've played mostly jazz through them over the past few days and there's a great palpability and insight into the ambience of the recording. They offer a natural presentation and a pretty broad frequency range. I've yet to do some AB comparisons against my previous cables (valhalla ic and xindak fs2 spkr cable) however given the enjoyment I'm having with the empress, probably won't rush to do so. I can furthermore highly recommend the service offered by Michael and Grover; they're really nice people and true enthusiasts. They let their product do the talking and I can't imagine that there'll be many returns under their 60 day trial policy!

Finally (if there is such a thing in this hobby), my system is as follows:

Audio Synthesis Transcend (ASL) and blackgated Dax Discrete
CJ 140 Amp (unmodified, as yet....)
Diapason Adamantes 3 speakers (modified)
Townshend stand
Shunyata Hydra 8 plus Anaconda vxs / Xindak Gold pc on the amp