Okay. I've been spending some time today listening and switching between the Kimber Axios, Danacable Lazuli Reference FC and the stock cable. Compared to the Axios and Lazuli, the stock cable sounds rather "smeary", like there's a bit of temporal blurring/ringing around every sound that obscures everything around it slightly. Both the Lazuli and the Axios clear up that smearing, but other than that, they're very different.
The Danacable Lazuli Reference FC is probably the easiest to talk about, so I'll start there. Other than clearing up the smeary sound from the stock cable, it has a bit of a laid-back, mellow character that makes it very easy to immediately enjoy. It has a non-fatiguing, slightly sweet/euphonic sound that reminds me a bit of the HD650 or HEKv2, like you could put the headphones on, turn on some music, and work for hours without ear fatigue. It may give up just a little bit of absolute dynamics, but it's hard to tell.
The Kimber Axios is sort of complicated. I think in terms of absolute performance, it's quite amazing. The smeariness of the stock cables is completely gone. What's left feels incredibly exact in terms of describing the harmonics, attack, release, and decay of every sound in the recording. It's hard to describe without rambling. My first night with this cable, I stayed up late listening to stuff like The Black Keys, White Stripes, Margaret Glaspy, and The Kills because I couldn't get over how richly *complicated* guitar distortion sounded, like several distinct waveforms laid on top of each other, building on and interfering with each other. There's a My Brightest Diamond song called "Pressure" that starts with some marching-band style drums with some very fast drum rolls. Listening with this cable was the first time I felt like I could hear every single strike of a stick on the drum head, *as well as* the resulting rattle of the snares (and subsequent decay) as completely distinct sounds. The harmonic overtones of acoustic instruments and female vocals stay distinct and don't get lost in the fundamental tones. In multitrack vocals, it feels like I could pick out each individual take. The dynamics are at least as good as the stock cables, maybe slightly more snappy feeling due to the lack of smearing. For me, this cable really refines all the aspects of the Utopia that made me buy it in the first place. That being said, it's also incredibly unforgiving of everything in your chain. My regular desktop DAC is a PS Audio NuWave DSD, which I've been pretty happy with. It does, however, have a certain high-frequency "sizzle" and a certain percussive crispiness that I could hear hints of in previous incarnations of my headphone setup, but it's too obvious (and fatiguing) to ignore now, especially now that I've compared it to the DirectStream in my loudspeaker system.
I think you can probably tell that I prefer the Axios over the Danacable. I may keep both (and shop for a new desktop-sized DAC as well), as the Danacable is considerably more forgiving than the Axios and some of the more poorly recorded music I listen to might not sound great with such a revealing cable.
The final cable I plan on auditioning is the Lavricable, which hasn't arrived yet. I'm not sure on ETA for that one.
. Must be very stiff eh
. But more impressions - more choices for people
