High Fidelity Cables?

He is just not a good business man.

Was talking to a distributor and he said this is Ricks second strike. He may need a real business advisor. 

But you have to keep taking shots to make shots. Michael Jordan.

I met Rick in person very very nice guy And very passionate to his products

I hope he pulls through and I hope you guys get your money and/or products. This whole thing makes me sad. I been to his shop maybe 25 times. 

As I understand it he is Canada. 

I met Rick in person very very nice guy And very passionate to his products, His q45 solutions does wonder, I hope Rick can post and say I refund and fulfilled all orders.Ozzy I agree , I only saw couple not receiving their orders.

High Fidelity Cables left a LOT of unfilled customer orders when they closed the doors.  Rick might be a wonderful designer, but he obviously is not a good business man - this is the second go-round, the first being Virtual Dynamics.  Maybe he is trying to catch Mark Levinson?

+1 lordmelton

@ozzy +1

Rick is a great guy and I've had excellent dealings with him. Whatever has happened I hope he gets it resolved because he makes fantastic cables.

I would think that by now most purchasers of the Hi-Fidelity products have been taken care of. I have not seen or read about anyone not getting the product or a refund.

ozzy

I've noticed that HFC's website is no longer active , at least according to my search engine ? A shame , they were/are great cables . Repair work could now be an issue ?

Thanks Tom.

Or repossessed. 

CNC machines so they could make many of their own small parts. The machines were probably leased thru a 3rd party. Tom

What machines jactoy?

High fidelity bought two new machine when they went on sale last year. I was shocked when they closed.i hope the money were return if orders not fulfilled.

I’m curious if customers ended up getting the product they paid for. Unfortunately there is a long history of small audio manufacturers taking orders they know they could not possibly deliver for one reason or another (usually bankruptcy). I’m not saying that’s the case with HF Cables.

It’s one thing for fortunes to change and a manufacturer be unable to deliver product after spending a customer funds. It’s another when a guy keeps accepting cash long after he knows he’s never fulfilling those orders, see Merlin Music. It’s ultimately tragic that Bobby committed suicide, but he burned a lot of people. If you're a friend of his or a family member that is of course irrelevant. However, if you’re a guy that gave him $10k of hard earned cash that he pocketed, I’m sure you’re pissed at having gotten burned.

JMHO

ricevs,

I didn't express myself clearly. I didn't mean to say that I had boought that brand, just that I had bought and used rf filters attached to the speaker terminals by Electronic Visionary Systems I think. It was a long time ago. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

roxy54,

If your post is about the product that tweak1 is posting.....then you are confused.  The Music Purifiers (speaker rf filters) are a new product....just released in the last month.  I also sell Ground Enhancers....these have been available for 10 years or more.  They both produce good results....but the new Music Purifiers are way, way more powerful than the Ground Enhancers.....quite mind blowing for very little money.

@teo_audio 

That is exactly what one would expect a magnetic addition/integration to a conductive pathway, to do. It is part why the rest of the industry avoided it for the past 30 plus years. Audio fanatics and cable manufactures have been playing with adding magnets in various ways, to audio cables, for literally decades. They all ended up letting it go. Too ’fi’ and not enough musicality. Different is not automatically better, it can be -- just... different.

OK name me one other example of a cable company that used magnets inline in the signal path? As far as I know there is none.

Yes plenty of companies have used rare earth magnets placed in the connectors to surround the wire with a magnetic field, and they have all been abandoned because they do not work well. HFC did not do this.

I bought them years ago. I don't think they made a noticeable difference.

RicEVS has a new product for speaker cables

The EVS Speaker rf filters

According to Ric make the sound more musical and more detailed.  You hear more separation of instruments, more hall sound, more air, lowering of noise and lowering of edginess and distortion.   You hear more micro details....string resonances.....lips smacking.....more of the wood sound.  This is not subtle....you have not heard your system till you have filtered the noise coming down your speaker wires.  Even at low volumes you enjoy the music more......just more real.

@agisthos 

Thanks. I did not know that. I received a sample of PPT from HFC and assumed it was from EVS Ric

The Rick Schultz of High Fidelity Cables and the Rick Schultz of Tweak EVS are two different people, two different companies.

@tweak1 you may not be aware of this. Apparently both of them are Canadian as well!

I have products from both of these guys. TweakEVS also does some very clever mods to amps and dacs.

Well I hate to see this post Rick was great to me. Loaned me cables and equipment and honestly allowed me to grow as an audiophile. Amazing inventor of a great product. Met him 15 years ago. Invited me to his house and was my friend ever since. Taught me a lot and we had some great listening sessions along the way.  Introduced me to a lot of folks in the community. I pray that folks get their stuff and that all is well in his family and business situation. Sad to hear all of this. 

The irony of Mr. Teo's post is his cables sound really good, more natural, with magnetic adapters.

I have 3 of their products and they scoop out the upper bass and midrange- the classic wow it sounds clearer- but only at first. Very amusical. They do not offer auditions or trials or refunds or credit. That did not express much confidence that people would like their products. Oh and playing a DEmadnetizing disc weekly makes my system sound better so what do we want with magnets?/

That is exactly what one would expect a magnetic addition/integration to a conductive pathway, to do. It is part why the rest of the industry avoided it for the past 30 plus years. Audio fanatics and cable manufactures have been playing with adding magnets in various ways, to audio cables, for literally decades. They all ended up letting it go. Too ’fi’ and not enough musicality. Different is not automatically better, it can be -- just... different.

This part of my complaint about how so many people in the realm of audio, have been training their ears, er, not as well as they could have. Where if you take a group of Class A rated ’revealing’ rated gear... and make an audio sytem out of all of them together, you get horrific screech and a surreal level of ’unlistenability’.

There is a side of audio where people seek detail for the sake of detail and it can be totally out of realistic context and be the ruination of a high fidelity attempt. I am guilty of this at times, like we all are. It’s part of the human male hearing design/utility pattern. The problem arises when one piece is not truly neutral and revealing, and then it multiplies from there like a series of badly arranged equalizers, cascaded. We can end up with a system that is neutral in complex measurement but half the components are obscuring dark haze...which is then filled in with falsified detail from noisy smearing components. Ouch!

Happens all the time, but such systems end up having very narrow windows of acceptability in the music they can satisfyingly play. That's the big clue, where the window of dynamics and music choices and the even sounding varied volume levels -- are narrow, and small.

I don’t exempt myself from it, it is just a thing we have to really really watch for. I found that I had to, finally, go in and deal with each individual component, down the characteristics of the noise factors emergent from the substrate, alloys, and so on. Termination complexities in a resistor, physical shape/displacement regarding field integration and propagation, thermal aspects in it’s entire complex envelope of concerns, or a solder’s molecular noise levels, and much much more.

Just to try and find a way to get it all as right as possible.

Arranging a good high fidelity system is no simple task, if one is aiming high. Many false paths will be part of the journey, as that is the way the world works.

It is a shame they went out of business but in my opinion it was an unsustainable business model.  If there were one thing in audio that was a sure bet for sonic improvement it was HFC products, no matter the gizmo or how many you already had.  Other products in audio, not so much.  Some are improvements, some make little difference, and some even make the sound worse.  I hope that once the dust clears Rick develops a new business but also hope that pricing is a little more sane.

jeff4598

The magnets make my system sound great and after years of use no loss of sound quality.

I have 3 of their products and they scoop out the upper bass and midrange- the classic wow it sounds clearer- but only at first. Very amusical. They do not offer auditions or trials or refunds or credit. That did not express much confidence that people would like their products. Oh and playing a DEmadnetizing disc weekly makes my system sound better so what do we want with magnets?/

HFC stuff are very good , but costumer service and communication is very poor.

clivet+1 sorry

civet +1

You guys made some valid points. I believe a company can make fantastic products but their business model can have some problems. I dont think any HFC product becomes obsolete when new ones came out. The older stuff/ cables is still better than a lot of stuff currently on the market. Some audiophiles get hung up on the high price items. There are a lot of companies out there selling components 200K and up. A lot of the HFC products under 10K are really excellent. You check out the list and, the first thing  someone would look at are the high priced items and then they would start slinging mud. I love the HFC products. That is what I use. Yeah, thats it, Excellent products but maybe, the business was ran the wrong way.

I really dont know.

I believe there were a number of reasons HFC went out of business other than escalating stratospheric pricing. First, their customer service was weak to put it mildly. Second, the constant innovation and model upgrades quickly obsoleted current technology and undermined the value of the cables you now had. Third, HFC became dependent on huge discounts offered directly through their website. In other words, if you paid full price you really weren’t trying hard. Fourth, the deep discounts offered directly undermined the profitability of their dealers. Fifth, they suffered increasingly pricey and difficult to obtain raw materials which adversely affected cash flow. I submit that these problems in a product area that is misunderstood and ridiculed by many audiophiles and laymen alike doomed them to bankruptcy. It was good while it lasted.

es347

 Transparent comes to mind alone with Synergistic Research, MIT,  the list could go on. No joke on High Fidelity Cables or Power Conditioners I own several and they are worth every penny. Ricks products are great his business model needs work!

Just because a items is priced high does not mean its not good or is good. the High fidelity products stand on their own.

..lots of $100K ICs?  Really?  Please name a few.  My point is that the HFC fanboys have missed the fact that Rick Schultz has moved into the exorbitant pricing strata too.  The $100K ICs are a joke as are his “power conditioning” offerings at $50K.  Much like he did with Virtual Dynamics he’s short himself in the foot once again with jacking prices to ridiculous levels.  I’ve always been wary of his products and with good reason.  I wonder how many prs of those megabuck ICs he sold?…LOL..

es347 what is your point??? Lots of expensive cables out at that price range.

..some who are bemoaning the greed of Ansuz (sp) for their outrageous pricing are forgetting that their buddy Rick Shultz was offering a pr of ICs for $100K…yep $100K.  I saw them on his website which is now closed but trust me it was there.  

Hoping HFC makes it back some really good products

When I heard word of this, I put in an order with the Cable Co. hoping they had what I wanted in stock. They didn’t but said a shipment is expected next week. Their understanding is that there’s a reorganization going on, which if true suggests a Chapter 11 filing. That could be good news for those with pending orders.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, I'm sure that I'm not the only one that bought/paid for cables on the black Friday sale that they offered in December and didn't get our cables. I'm concerned that he would offer a big sale, collect a lot of money, knowing that they were on the verge of closing and possibly not to be able to deliver the cables that were paid for. I'm not going to rush to judgement because it's sad to see any company go out of business and honest people lose their jobs. I hope he does regroup, for his and his workers sake and also makes good on the purchases that we made for our cables.

Has anybody just simply emailed Rick ?

It really saddens me that (if) HFC is really out-of-business.  It all started with me with the original CT-1 interconnect (which I still have).  Everything, and I mean everything that I purchased from HFC made my system better.  Even their entry level Reveal line was an ear opener.  I have so much HFC in my system, and every time I introduced another HFC product into my system, everything sonically improved. 

Rick is a true innovator. Assuming his health is okay, I hope he can find a true balance. Work on his projects and let someone else run the business.

There is always two sides to the story. I heard there were a lot of internal problems with HFC that had to do with staffing, along with supply issues . Maybe some head bumping ?. Someone will get pissed and sling Mud, say bad things ?. They are closed for now. Rick will have to regroup. I think he will do that and,  like calgarian said, come up with a different management model. I am a big fan. I use just about all of his products. The thing is with HFC cables , the materials used are quite different from regular cables. A lot of other  cables use simpler production methods. Its like cooking. if you cant get a certain spice, that meal is not going to get prepared, a lot of hungry bellies. I guess thats one way to put it. That insane pricing comment from roxy, yeah I get it. A lot of Audiophiles would zero in on the big money stuff even though the Cable manufacturer produce bang for the buck cables that performs pretty good. There are cables out there that cost more than HFC. Anyway, I dont say much on Audiogon. I just stay on the sidelines. I must say ,most of you guys seem to be pretty smart Audiophiles, from what I read.

Good Luck to Rick/HFC.

calgarian5355 +1

If HFC is forever closed, it really is a sad day for audiophiles....In my 45+ years in this hobby, I've really only experienced 2 or 3 a-ha moments....and the HFC power cords/interconnects was one of those moments.  I think Rick is a brilliant audio inventor.  Based on what I've read about his contact enhancement products, I'm thinking this was a potential a-ha moment as well....If Rick does re-invent himself....I hope he sticks to creating new products....and finds someone else to manage all other aspects of the business.....

ruff2001,

If you read the post referred to earlier written by one of their long term employees, you will see that she clearly states that the company is closed for good. I hope that they have not filed for protection and that you are able to recover your money in some way.

I hope that this is temporary, I paid a good amount of money for cables when they had their black Friday special in early in Dec 2021. I haven't received the cables or any correspondence from them since. I got really worried when I checked their website recently and it said 'closed due to covid' especially now that covid isn't such a big concern now and most companies are back up to 100% production :(  

@lowrider57 - it relates to an earlier post slagging off Ansuz's pricing. However, seeing as HFC's cable are/were in the upper end of pricing, I think it's reasonably on topic.