Review: Jw audio interconnect and speaker cables

Category: Cables

I am submitting my impressions of the RCA interconnect (Jw audio cryo nebula) and unterminated speaker cables (Jw audio cryo nova). I listened to the RCA terminated speaker cables and the unterminated ones were clearly better on the top end.

I tried these cables because, they were, quite frankly very cheap. 8 foot pair of speaker cables was 80 bucks; 1 M pair of interconnects was 79.00 with each additional foot being 10 dollars extra. I purchased the 1.5 M IC's.

First, I will review the speaker cables. The system they were put into was comprised of the following: Alesis ML 9600 CD player/recorder (modified by Balanced Power technology), EAR 834 L tube preamplifier, Joseph Chow/Ralph Mueller modded 250 wpc Audio VanAlstine TETvalve hybrid amplifier, Emerald Physic CS 3 speakers, Zentara Interconnects (my reference), and Tritium Triphazer IC's.

I first listened to the RCA terminated cables and thought they were very good. The only real shortcoming I could hear was the lack of top end extension and sparkle. That was easily solved by getting the unterminated solid core speaker cable which was excellent in every way. Nothing is accentuated across the frequency spectrum. The music comes out effortlessly with an impressive amount of air and space in recordings that I know have it. Tone colors and instrument timbres are very realistic sounding. Male and female vocals are rendered superbly. Overall, this speaker cable is uber impressive. The break-in time is minimal - they sounded great right out of the box. I have listened to lots of really good speaker cables over the years - LAT international, Zentara (my reference made by Neng Kue), and AudioHorizons, all fine cables in their own right. Nevertheless, after listening to the Jw audio speaker cables it seriously calls into question spending the big bucks for speaker cables.

The interconnects were a different story. Yes, they are excellent and share the same family feature of imaging beautifully with lots of air and space when a recording has it. There is a big but though - the break-in time was considerable longer than the speaker cables. The system they were inserted in was my reference system consisting of: Magnepan 1.7 speakers, Zentara copper speaker cables, Canary 140 wpc tube monoblock amplifiers, Canary monoblock tube preamplifiers (modded by Bob and Gary Backert), dcs Purcell upsampler, dcs Delius DAC, AudioHorizons tube phonostage, Music Hall MM-7 turntable with a Goldring Eroica Cartridge, Musical Fidelity V-Link, iMac computer with iTunes and Pure Music functioning as my server for digital files.

When the IC's were first inserted the images were locked onto the speakers with minimal center fill. I was taken aback as I was expecting the same high level performance out of the box as I got from the speaker cables. Patience paid off big time. I cued up my list of favorite songs (130) and played this file all night long and during the day while at work. After a couple of days I settled down for some serious listening and was very, very pleased with what I heard. Tone colors and instrument timbres were excellent. There was a sense of organic richness and space that was not previously in my system - very noticeable on Jen Chapin's song entitled "You Haven't Done Nothing". Over time images filled the center of my soundstage and extended deeper than before.

What I got were very clean, clear, textured cables that were very much at home in two excellent sounding systems; these cables improved the sonics of both systems. I almost did not try them because they were so cheap. And if any component, cable or tweak is going to have any longevity in either of my systems, it has to work well with my existing system components and result in improved sonics. These cables fit this bill to a T.

I have no affiliation or connection with the company. I just like to share my thoughts on affordable products that give you outlandishly good performance. I will not venture to say these are the best cables that you will ever hear nor that you will even like them. All cables that I have listened to sound different. Yet, for the money, you can try them and you just might feel the way I did and save yourself some cash that you can buy music with or even other components. Cables make a difference. I think for many that these cables will give you a healthy dose of upper echelon cable performance. The performance:cost ratio is enormous. These cables get my billing as "stupid good" at their price point.