Effect Audio needs no introduction in the world of bespoke IEM cables. Founded by Sy (Zou Su Yang) in 2009, EA quickly became one of Singapore’s go-to companies for custom cables, and remains so to this day.
I’ve personally had limited experience of EA’s products to date, the Ares II – which I received as the stock cable with the Empire Ears Legend X – was technically my introduction to the brand, but Cleopatra is my first exposure to the type of cable that put Sy on the map as an innovator and groundbreaker.
The pitch
Cleopatra forms part of EA’s Heritage Series, second only to the company’s Hall of Fame ‘Summit-Fi’ cables. It’s an unmistakably well-made, precision-engineered, high-end cable, made with pure silver wire and a plethora of technologies EA considers its own. But unlike traditional silver cables, Cleo’s claim to fame is that
the effect it has on sound is nothing like the bright, cool, shimmery cables that silver is often known for.
Instead, Cleopatra is a smooth seductress, infusing my IEMs with subtle warmth, but retaining the sparkle and open treble of a pure silver conductor. While I’ll get into specific tonal characteristics and pairings later, it’s fair to say that, like its namesake, Cleopatra is beautiful, soft, and oh so easy on the eye.
Like jewellery
If you’re anything like me, buying a high-end audio cable is as much about the look and feel as it is about the sound. With Cleo, however, you’re getting more than that. This becomes immediately apparent as soon as you hold the oversized box in your hands and feel the sheer weight of the packaging. The dark grey exterior features a slide-out section, with
Cleopatra screen printed in clear white on the top half, and the Effect Audio logo embossed on the pull-out ‘drawer’ at the bottom.
Sliding out the bottom section reveals a velour-covered lid, below which sits one of the most elegant cases I’ve seen on any audio product, let alone an IEM cable. Like a fine piece of jewellery befitting a queen, Cleopatra is housed inside a solid, heavy-set box of carved stainless steel, hand-polished to a perfect mirror finish with a small, etched EA logo on the lid.
For a minute I completely forgot what I had in front me, and simply lost myself in the reflections of this orb-like object, as if it were some strange artefact gleaned from a visiting spaceship. Hesitating, I realised that touching any part of this glorious edifice would smear it with fingerprints, but, eventually, I just had to get on with it… (
video of me polishing the mirror case for half an hour goes here)
Look, feel and features
Cleopatra takes the silver theme quite literally, with a see-through PVC jacket revealing the fine silver strands, and a custom polished steel Y-splitter that looks like a solid silver nugget. Even the chin slider is mirror-polished. The only part of the cable that looks ‘out of place’ is the 4.4mm Pentaconn-certified plug with its gold-plated finish and black carbon motif (which I suppose you can’t see when in use).
I ordered Cleo with EA’s new multi-connector system, ConX, which comes with matching polished steel housings (though you can select a glossy black option too). This being the
Reserve Edition of ConX, EA included a small case with spare gold-plated 2-pin and mmcx screw-on plugs. ConX makes Cleo usable with all my IEMs, and is a highly recommended, inexpensive ($30) add-on to any new EA cable order (see my ConX impressions
here).
Compared to the Ares II cable, which I’ve always considered quite stiff, wiry and tangle-prone, Cleopatra’s is finished in EA’s silky smooth UltraFlex PVC jacket that makes it both supple in hand and almost totally tangle-free. Try as I may, I’m yet to see an errant kink anywhere, and however I fold it, Cleo always returns to its svelte original form. Even the moulded ear guides are made of an ultrathin material that almost looks like part of the jacket itself, and disappears when wrapped around my ears.
Speaking of which, Cleo has to be one of the most comfortable cables I’ve had the pleasure of using. The combination of not-too-thick wire and an ultrathin, ultra-supple sheathing means once it’s in place, chances are you’ll soon forget you’re wearing a cable. The combination of the PVC jacket and cleverly designed Y-spit also makes Cleo the
least microphonic cable I’ve used to date. No matter how much I rub the cable, against hand or fabric, almost zero friction noise makes it to my ears.
Not only is Cleopatra good-looking, like the feeling of soft, pampered skin, there’s some serious technology beneath the surface too. For starters, the cable itself is made up of four 26AWG gauge, extremely high-grade purity UP-OCC silver wires, Kevlar-reinforced, and arranged in a multi-strand formation based on the Golden Ratio principle. The 7-core wires are made with Litz materials, meaning each individual strand is enamel coated, giving it a larger surface area for signal conduction.
Whether or not you believe that arranging multiple strands of varying thickness wire in a naturally occurring pattern makes any difference whatsoever to how a cable conducts electric signals, you have to admit there’s a certain romanticism behind the idea. What’s not in question is the quality material that went into making this cable, which makes it as much a precious object as it does a utilitarian accessory. If you ask me, that’s exactly what you want if you’re spending the better part of $1000 on a cable.
Sound impressions
Before I start dissecting how I hear Cleopatra, I just want to clarify that I’m not actually
hearing Cleopatra at all. It feels silly to even say it, but cables don’t make any sound. Duh, you say, but read enough cable reviews or engage in enough heated cable discussions online, and you’d almost swear they do! But alas, all cables do is move a signal from point A (your amp) to point B (your IEMs or headphones). Yes folks, it’s true, shocking as it may seem, it’s the IEMs you’re hearing, not the cable.
Silliness aside, I’m a firm believer that cables
can and
do affect how you hear the sound coming from your IEMs. Without getting into a scientific dissection of measurements and whatnot (cable deniers, please feel free to leave the room at this point, if you haven’t already), it stands to reason that if your IEMs sound warmer, cooler, thicker, duller, clearer or punchier, with the only changing variable being the cable, then the change in sound must be coming from…the
cable,
right? This is especially true if many different people in different parts of the world hear similar changes,
right? Otherwise, the power of suggestion and hive-mind placebo must be a serious force to be reckoned with!
But I digress. This is how
I hear the
actual,
audible changes Cleo makes with the IEMs I use:
Tonally, I hear Cleo to have a subtle warming effect on the sound. I believe that’s because it’s affecting the level of midbass, or midbass focus, relative to how the IEMs themselves present midbass. For example, the Sennheiser IE 900 has a more sub-bass-focused presentation, with a linear midbass that Cleo amplifies slightly and, in doing so, changes the balance of how I perceive the bass overall.
To my ears, sub-bass rumble is slightly reduced in favour of a smoother, more organic but less weighty bass profile, so the bass-heavy undertones in Katie Melua’s
Red Balloons is not quite as solid and slightly more nimble when listening with Cleo (compared to the IE 900’s stock cable).
I’ve read some impressions that suggest Cleo elevates bass levels quite significantly but compared to the pure copper cables I’m using, the bass elevation is modest, at best, and tending more mid-than-sub-bass, as I described above. That means it’ll affect different IEMs in different ways, depending on the stock or aftermarket cables you’re already using with them.
Switching the Legend X’s Ares II for Cleo, for example, reduces the overall bass saturation, tightening up the bass notes and revealing some additional texture that may be missed with the stock cable in place. Switch out Cleo for a Cardas copper cable, however, and the impact and power of the Legend’s bass is pushed upward without the additional warmth of Cleo’s midbass saturation, tightening the sound further and giving it more slam while opening up the higher frequencies and revealing more detail in the midrange too.
While I don’t find cables affect the midrange frequencies directly, Cleo’s midbass lift adds a smoothness and musicality to the midrange compared to the brighter midrange voicing of the stock cables on both the IE 900 and Legend X, and is also smoother than how I perceive midrange of the new Legend EVO with the Cardas copper cable, albeit at the expense of some vocal detail. Lana Del Rey’s sultry vocals in
Yosemite are more whisper soft with Cleo than they are crisp and ever so slightly coarse, but more nuanced, with the Cardas cable.
Where Cleo differs most from the generally warming copper cables I’ve used is in its effect on the treble, which is to say, it doesn’t necessarily brighten it up (as you’d expect of silver), but rather opens it up with the same smoothness it has lower down. As such I’m not hearing any added bite or sharpness to the music, but am hearing a touch more air and definition up top.
This is more apparent in IEMs that have a relaxed mid-to-upper treble emphasis, like Legend X and EVO, with less influence on the already sparkly IE 900, for example. Jethro Tull’s instrumental intro to
The Waking Edgehas a touch more bite and ‘ping’ to it with the Legend X than it does with the stock Ares II, but it’s not through added harshness but rather more space for the instruments to breathe. How Cleo manages this juggling act while raising the temperature on the lows is something only Sy can tell us.
I’m not going to claim I hear any mind-bending technical improvements with my IEMs using Cleo, rather, that their technical abilities are highlighted (or downplayed) consistently with the subtle tonal shifts Cleo introduces. The more open treble does add to the sense of space in the soundscape, but that’s countered by the somewhat warmer midbass and smoother midrange. As such, I’d say Cleo isn’t going to magically expand the soundstage of your IEMs, but you might find it slightly easier to discern fine details in the music, especially in the upper midrange and treble.
Select pairings**
Sennheiser IE 900 vs stock cable. I hear a slight reduction in sub-bass weight and a slightly lifted midbass, which does change the overall bass presentation, integrating it more into the mix. Mids, especially lower mids, are rendered smoother, but the open treble does highlight the occasional treble peak that creeps into poorly or brightly recorded music with this IEM, more so than the stock cable. Overall I hear the IE 900 to have a smoother sound with Cleo, dialing down its inherent liveliness a notch or two.
Empire Ears Legend X vs stock cable. I hear a slight elevation of bass (possibly both sub- and midbass, but more evident in the midbass). This raises the overall perception of the bass, but doesn’t come at the cost of details, which are brought slightly forward by the more linear, extended treble response. The smoothness I heard with the IE 900 repeats here, and the Legend X’s already organic mids take on a more earthy tone as a result. This is a great pairing if you want to keep the Legend X’s legendary bass boost without smothering the rest of the frequency range and actually cleaning up the upper registers a touch more than stock.
Empire Ears EVO vs stock cable. Oddly I’m not hearing the same level of bass elevation using Cleo with EVO, and if anything the bass impact is either shifted slightly or reduced somewhat compared to the stock Genesis cable. This could be because the effect is skewed by the Weapon X bone conduction driver, but overall I’d say Cleo smoothens the EVO’s sound and takes a bit off its edginess but at the cost of some bass slam and impact and definition.
**All testing was done with a HiBy R8 in high-gain Turbo mode using the 4.4mm headphone output.
Closing thoughts
Cleopatra is a simply sublime silver cable that defies what most of us have come to associate with silver cables. Instead of pushing detail with a brighter, more forward treble tonality and/or a reduction and tightening of the bass frequencies, Cleo pleasantly surprises by adding a subtle warmth and deft smoothness without any loss of detail or clarity (with my IEMs anyway).
Depending on the IEM you pair it with, you can generally expect a healthy midbass bump and perhaps a touch of sub-bass elevation, which will present differently depending on how your IEMs present the bass in the first place. It also filters out some graininess in the midrange, possibly from the added warmth, but just as likely from the clever combination of rich, pure materials and ‘secret design sauce’ used in its construction.
I’ve resisted making too many subjective comments about the positives or negatives these changes have on my personal IEMs because, as we know, everyone hears these IEMs differently. What I will say without pause is that from a purely aesthetic, build quality and ergonomic perspective, Cleopatra takes pride of place among the very best luxury cables I’ve used.
It’s not too thick (though an Octa version is available for those that enjoy hosepipe cables), not too thin, with almost no microphonics. It’s also silky smooth and supple, making it virtually tangle-free, and takes full advantage of the high-purity silver in its core for a premium look and feel.
If you want a silver cable that behaves more like copper but without the occasional ‘copper veil’, or simply want a high-end cable for your high-end IEMs that won’t simultaneously break the bank with a daft multi-kilobuck pricetag or finger-thick aesthetics, I’d put Cleo at or near the top of your list.