The Grovers are the first silver cables I’ve ever liked. Of the two dozen different cables I’ve owned, 5 were pure silver and two were silver/copper hybrids. People who praise any given silver cable always seem to do so with the exact same disclaimer—“wow-- these silver cables are great; they don’t even sound like silver cables!” Well, if the only good silver cable is the rare exception that doesn’t sound like a silver cable, why not just stick with good ol’ copper? The stereotype of silver interconnects used to be that they were “bright”, “tipped up”, “edgy” and “forward”. Makers of silver cables are now always quick to tell you that their cables defy that stereotype.
And sure enough, none of the silver cables I tried exhibited these characteristics. Instead, each of the pure silver cables I auditioned were *thin*-sounding with a sort of gauzy, soft-focus Vaseline-on-the-lens, foggy quality. They did lack bass somewhat but they weren’t necessarily bright. They were tipped up in the high frequencies but remained too soft and silky to be objectionable. Yes, proportionately they had more high-end than bottom, but at least the silver cables produced clean, smooth and polite treble response. I would have actually loved for them to exhibit a little more of the crispness and focus that stereotypical silver cables were "supposed" to deliver.
After those experiences, I had given up on silver as a conductor. I chalked it up to a sort of scam perpetrated by cable makers who hoped that gullible customers would assume that since silver is more expensive than copper, it must therefore be a better conductor, and thus get them to upgrade. After all, where can you go really with a copper cable after the $500-$700 price point without arousing a lot of suspicion about how much those cables *really* cost to make? Incorporating silver conductors seems like a useful marketing gimmick to enable $1000 + cables. (Not that that’s stopped cable-makers from producing $5K+ copper cables!) I suspect there are lots of electrical/chemical factors involved in making one metal a better conductor than another, but I doubt that scarcity on planet earth is one of them. I still do get a good chuckle out of the recent proliferation of cables with *gold* conductors, though.
Anyway, my experience with the Grover Ultimate Reference pure silver cable has really changed my mind about silver interconnects. (EDIT: Grover has verified that his latest revision of the UR uses both silver *and* copper, unlike previous versions and previous models that were 100% silver). I now realize that the debate between copper vs. silver is on the same sort of shaky footing as the tubes vs. solid state debate, the CD vs. SACD debate, the speaker cones vs. electrostatic debate—the answer is, *it all depends on IMPLEMENTATION*. A well-executed CD will sound better than a badly-executed hi-rez disc, a well-executed tube circuit will out-perform a badly-executed solid-state device, etc. etc. I don’t know if in the abstract silver is a better conductor than copper, but I do know that the Grovers are the best-sounding cables I’ve ever heard.
How much of that is due to its use of pure silver (or despite it), I’ll never know, frankly no longer care. Still, what’s inside a Grover cable? I suspect only Grover knows for sure, and at the moment he ain’t talking. No web site, no brochures, no marketing bullet points, no graphics showing cross-sections of his cables, no outrageous claims. Just one model, no big product line with multiple upgrade points to cause anxiety and sleepless nights ("would I be happier *if only* I had ordered the next model up?"). You get the feeling that as far as Grover is concerned, the Ultimate Reference is IT, there is no upgrade path, just one cable that represents his best effort, period, and there’s something both elegant and comforting about that.
And the cost of entry is a mere $140. That makes this cable available essentially to everyone. |
