Cable Pro Panorama Sennheiser Upgrade cable and Dimension RCA Interconnect review

Introduction

This is mainly a review of two Cable Pro products, the Panorama Sennheiser Upgrade cable for the HD580/600/650 Series and Dimension RCA Interconnects.  I will also be posting some listening notes on the Apogee ONE DAC/Recording Interface and my Meier-Audio Corda Arietta Headphone amp.  I listen to a wide variety of music, and I have incorporated as many genres as possible when performing my listening tests (well-recorded of course), and I will include file format, sample rate, and bit depth information for each album I mention in my listening tests.  As the results I mention with the first album are very consistent with my other well-recorded tracks, I did not find the need to mention the hundreds of albums I listened to during the preparation of this review.  Most music used in preparing this review was lossless 44.1KHz/16Bit or 48KHz/24Bit files. My system is as follows:

Listening System:

Apple iMac (running Snow Leopard 10.6.4) via iTunes

Apogee ONE (DAC/Source)

Cable Pro Dimension RCA interconnects via AudioQuest Mini to RCA adapter plug

Meier-Audio Corda Arietta (headphone amp)

Cable Pro Panorama Sennheiser Upgrade Headphone Cable

Sennheiser HD580 headphones with HD600 Grilles and New Version Drivers (I will be referring to these headphones as HD600's in this review for simplification purposes as they are essentially HD600's with a plastic headband and replacement drivers less than 8 months old).

Product Introductions

As I assume you are reading this review to learn about the sound quality characteristics of the products under review, I won't bore you with a long background of how my system came together or a long history of all of the headphones, cables and headphone amps I have owned.  Let's just say that I have been on this forum for quite a while and have listened to many different headphones, except for headphones above $400 (I'm a not so rich college student after all).  That said, I have listened to high quality setups and I do know good sound when I hear it.  On to the review.

First up is the Cable Pro Dimension interconnects.  This is Cable Pro's entry level interconnect and my first good pair of interconnects.  I say this because though I liked my old AudioQuest ICA-1 interconnects (sold by Audio Advisor as their in-house built "Scarlet Viper" interconnect IIRC), they never struck me as having a good sense of refinement or spatial detail.  The Cable Pro Dimension Interconnects give me the refinement that I was looking for with a level of detail that I didn't expect at their low-end price tag (less than $80 for a 3 foot pair currently).  I will describe this in more detail later on in this review.

Second is the Cable Pro Panorama Sennheiser Upgrade Cable.  I previously owned the Cable Pro EarCandy Sennheiser Upgrade cable (a nice cable in it's own right--Warm, detailed, and very clear sounding), but I was quite shocked when I first listened to the Panorama cable as it was considerably more detailed and had a great sense of dynamics and micro resolution that I had never experienced before out of my HD600's.  It is as if the Sennheiser's morphed into a unique hybrid of the Sennheiser house sound and the AKG K701 series sound in that it was more laid back like a typical sennheiser, but it possessed a greater amount of clarity and speed with a very neutral tonality to the overall sound, without sounding sterile like the K701 sometimes can.  While it didn't give me the speaker-like presentation that a K701 can give, it still made fine detail in my well-recorded music stand out, while not so well recorded material became very obvious.  If you are looking for a cable that will smooth the edge off of death metal, this isn't the cable for you.  However it doesn't discriminate in its' sound quality based on genre, it just makes the music sound like what was recorded.

The Apogee ONE I am using as a source is a key component in the sound quality that I am experiencing as it is a very clear sounding DAC with a very neutral, yet liquid tonality to it.  The Corda Arietta furthers this neutrality, but I have noticed that it isn't quite as liquid as the built in output on the Apogee when powering headphones.  Still, the dynamic power and control of bass notes is better overall on the Arietta, so I will use it for the remainder of my comments with regard to musical examples from different genres.

Musical Examples and Cable Comparisons

For the listening descriptions I will be listening to Peter Gabriel's new album "Scratch My Back" in 24Bit/48KHz apple Lossless converted from FLAC.  The differences between the Audio Quest ICA-1 interconnects and the Cable Pro Dimension Interconnects when listening through the Panorama Headphone cable is that the ICA-1 Interconnects are more two-dimensional in their presentation and do not possess the fine detail that the Dimension Cable exhibits.  Both cables possess a similar level of smoothness to their sound, but the Dimension cable has a greater amount of clarity, detail, and spaciousness to it, and a sense of refinement that the ICA-1 possesses.  Moving to the Stock HD650 Cable produces a similar degradation in sound quality that was exhibited with the ICA-1 Interconnect vs. the Dimension interconnect, but this time the main difference is exhibited in a loss of front to back depth and a loss of the fine micro detail that the Panorama possessed.  Moving back to the Panorama is accompanied with a considerable jump in micro-resolution, expressiveness of micro and macro dynamics, and front to back and left to right depth and width.

Conclusion

On all of my well-recorded music regardless of genre, these results have been very consistent in my setup and would prove to be highly repetitive if I went on further.  If anyone has specific questions on how the cables or surrounding equipment performs with different genres or any other questions regarding my musical selections for this review, please let me know.  Note that my Apogee ONE will be taking a trip to the repair shop in a few days due to a problem with its internal microphone, so I may not be able to answer specific questions regarding that piece of my system for a week or so after this review has been written.

The Cable Pro cables in this review represent a high level of quality and a great value in my opinion for their price ranges, due to their high level of build quality and exceptional performance.  I highly recommend these cables, especially to those who are convinced that cables do not make a difference.  Those people in particular may change their minds once hearing these products.

--Eric

July 8th 2010 Addendum: I just wanted to note one important characteristic regarding both the Panorama and Dimension cables that I forgot to mention earlier.  The conductors on these cables are very well damped and do not exhibit handling noise (crackling, etc) unlike the Cardas Headphone Cable I used to own.  This is especially important for people who use cables on the go as handling noise can be very distracting when listening to quiet passages in music.  However, the Panorama cable does exhibit some microphonics due to the techflex style covering on the cable, most likely due to the techflex rubbing against itself when the cable is coiled and when the cable is on fabric surfaces.  I didn't find this to be awfully distracting for the most part, but I probably wouldn't jog with the Panorama on my ears. Cable Pro's EarCandy Headphone Cable would be more appropriate for those who are on the go and whom are highly distracted from any type of cable microphonics.

July 15th 2010 Addendum:  The comments that used to be here about distortion in the Arietta proved to be clipping on the recording I was listening to at the time, and not a problem with the Arietta itself.  Playing the signal from the ONE's output through the Arietta into my HD600's using the Cable Pro cabling I reviewed proves to be highly resolving of flaws and detail in the recordings, and thus revealed distortion that wasn't being resolved through the ONE alone.

--Eric

Well, it has been at least 3 or so years since I owned the Cardas, but IIRC, the Cardas had a similar level of neutrality, if not a bit warmer than the Panorama, but the Panorama has a higher level of detail than I remember the Cardas having.  The one thing that stands out the most in my memory is that the Cardas had a lot of handling noise, whereas the Panorama has no handling noise. By handling noise I mean the slight crackling that Cardas cables exhibit when they are moved around.  I would say that the Cardas would be more similar in level of detail to the EarCandy headphone cable I used to own, though the EarCandy is considerably warmer than either the Cardas or the Panorama.  The Panorama sounds closest to dead on neutral than any other headphone cable I have owned, and they are also very revealing of flaws in upstream components.  I'm so impressed by the Panorama that I plan on trying out the Reflection RCA cables that CablePro makes as they are the interconnects in the CablePro line most like the Panorama, with the Eichmann Copper Bullet RCA connector option.  I'll report on those when I get them after they are broken in.  The Panorama headphone cable is a really nice cable especially for its low price.

EDIT:  One thing I forgot to add was it is very easy to tell my AAC files from my lossless files with the Panorama, so it is equally important to have high quality music files and a transparent source to maximize sound quality with the Panorama cable.

I think that may be a website malfunction, but IIRC, the longer cables aren't much more than the 10' versions.  

EDIT:  Looks like the problem has been fixed; FYI, the 15' cable with the standard Neutrik 1/4" plug (the one that is on my cable) is $189; the 20' cable is $219 with the standard 1/4" plug.  The 10' version is $159 with the standard 1/4" plug, and all of the prices above are excluding shipping.

Hey everyone, I added a third note to the original review, edited from an earlier revision today.  I have found that the Arietta doesn't have a good synergy with the rest of my system so I am now using my old RCA input MINT headphone amp (with 1/4" output).  I'll probably be upgrading my amp sometime this summer.

EDIT:  The "problem" with the Arietta was user error, not an actual problem with the Arietta.  HINT:  If you think there is distortion happening in your equipment, first turn the volume down before jumping to conclusions ;)

--Eric

Quote:

Originally Posted by priest 

Although, it's still good to know that it gave you distortion at moderately high-ish volumes, right?
 

Yeah, it is unfortunate that it distorted at the volumes it did, but that was actually at pretty loud volumes.  EDIT:  I did another comparison at roughly the same volume level, and the Arietta is a touch grainier, and this could explain my preference for the ONE's output.  If I had a less detailed cable on my headphones the Arietta might sound a touch more "exciting", but the Panorama is very revealing, and thus, the Arietta does exhibit a very slight hardness in the treble and upper midrange.  I think my best move is to get the Panorama adapter for the ONE, and use the ONE's internal output for the HD600's.

EDIT 7-16-2010:  I edited the original post yesterday to reflect the realization that what I was hearing as distortion in my amplifier was actually clipping in a couple of recordings themselves, and wasn't the fault of the amp or anything else in the signal path.  I also switched Audio playback programs from iTunes to the latest build of Cog 0.08, and the sound is both more detailed and cleaner than what I was hearing through iTunes.  (Cog 0.08 sounds much different than Cog 0.07 on snow leopard, and is an improvement even over Play)

Since I wrote this review, I have been introduced to the Channel D Pure Music audio engine for iTunes (Mac only) and it has alleviated many of the problems that I was hearing that I had associated with the Arietta.  Now the Arietta sounds fantastic with the Cable Pro cables, and only on grossly distorted music does the distortion issue become apparent.  With the Pure Music audio engine, even my music with mild clipping sounds wonderful, and both the headphone output of the ONE alone and going through the Arietta are very clean, with the Arietta making micro-detail in the music more apparent.  In a few days I will be receiving a new pair of K701's with SAA Equinox cabling, and I am contemplating writing a comparison review between the recabled K701 and the HD580 with Cable Pro cables once the long break-in period of the K701's is over.

--Eric

I'm not sure if the HF2 can be recabled with the panorama or not, that would be a question to ask Todd from TTVJ about.  No worries about the mistyping, I do that a considerable amount myself, but there is an edit function on posts you write that can easily fix that error without the need for a separate correction post.  I find that the Panorama is good across genres as well, but it does best with well-recorded music.  Anyway, thanks for your impressions, they seem similar to mine.

--Eric