INTRODUCING THE RUBI (Prototype) Shielded headphone cable for r70x
Coming fresh of the heels of my brainchild involving much custom design for the most optimal design I could reasonably attain for a Y-cable (3.5mm to dual RCA), the variant for r70x was born and man am I ever pleased with the result!!! This began from my quest to find the best possible Y-cable for serious duties between my DAC and huge tube amp. I reached out to numerous vendors on Etsy for quotes and design ideas and it turns out the Darren from the Arctand store was not only the most helpful and willing to go custom, but that the result FAR surpassed anything I could have ever expected.
My initial order was for the Y-cable, which I was upgrading from an Audioquest Evergreen. The difference was really eye opening, noticing my system really blossom from what could be described as a "good" sound and now I'm experiencing sound in greater dimensions of space, robust drums, absolutely impeccable handling of drums and PRaT that has seemingly no limits of perfection to mimic any recording be it dark, bright, fast, slow and anything in between, in it's most pure, pristine true to life character with never a single detail added or removed (quite transparent and musical, never clinical.). I do not come to such conclusions lightly, having used the former Y-cable full time for a month, completed 4-6 A/B's critically listening on a hi-end full size rig with lossless songs of multiple genres that I'm deeply familiar with, and have had it now for almost 2 months. The result really left the former in the dust. I had also compared it to another Y-cable SKW High end WG Series that's supposedly "made of ultra-high purity single crystal copper and single crystal silver", but to me it sounded horribly dull and un-detailed compared to this total transparency and quite the showstopper. Also I had zero desire to further move up the Audioquest ladder, being even their top design "Angel" for $1,000 lacked the design and shielding I was getting from Darren with Arctand (for about 1/8th the cost).
I actually had to try twice to get it right. My initial r70x headphone cable from Darren was designed around 4x wires each wire 26AWG Neotech copper + silver hybrid cable. My theory was that Neotech knows what they're doing (they usually do), and copper / silver should be the magic bullet! But I was immediately disappointed with a quite dull sound that lacked dynamics and energy, aside from perhaps a good soundstage. Multiple A/B comparisons were done with the stock r70x cable over several days and I still had a much higher preference for the ATH r70x stock cable (helped along nicely with addition of 6 specific ferrite clamps I was using on it).
So naturally I wanted Darren to make an r70x cable using the same stuff as the Y-cable! And to my luck, he was happy to oblige. To further sweeten the deal he said this design improves on the Y-cable, using a fully balanced design and some other detail. YES PLEASE!!! When I received it I was surprised at the craftmanship, but I am blown away every listen to the sound!
Model: RUBI (Prototype) Shielded headphone cable. Mega 18AWG conductors.
Construction: 18AWG Varistrand OCC (-Ve), 18AWG stranded Pure Silver (+Ve)
For inquiries: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Arctand (message Darren and ask for Levi's y-cable or r70x design)
To me this has helped me truly realize the potential of Audio Technica's R70x headphones. What used to be a very good sound is now downright jawdropping. Formely hazy / fuzzy bass and decent treble are now replaced with very proper and robust / precise bass and treble that is totally pure a to me without any flaw. Everything has really opened up, and it's as if things may be further improving with burn-in! They've come into their own, retaining the same sound signature. I'm now using both Y-cable and R70x cables in my system and I'm getting a truly resolving sound and a feeling this system can scale to infinity.
Darren is a custom cable builder in Singapore, but shipping was nevertheless fast and cheap to the US all 3 times. He can of course make this for any headphone balanced or SE, and RCA interconnects. He said the next cable will be further improved for better flexibility between the Y-split and the headphone.