[muski]

I just got a tweak for my Utopia's.

Me too—my Lazuli Reference arrived this afternoon. I was super skeptical that I'd be able to hear a difference. Fresh out of the box, the improvement in soundstage, detail, attack and mids is right there. Guess I won't be taking advantage of Dana Cable's 30 day return policy...

 

[pervysage]

I just got a tweak for my Utopia's.

Me too—my Lazuli Reference arrived this afternoon. I was super skeptical that I'd be able to hear a difference. Fresh out of the box, the improvement in soundstage, detail, attack and mids is right there. Guess I won't be taking advantage of Dana Cable's 30 day return policy...

Welcome to the family, Lazuli brothers.

 

[Slim1970]

Me too—my Lazuli Reference arrived this afternoon. I was super skeptical that I'd be able to hear a difference. Fresh out of the box, the improvement in soundstage, detail, attack and mids is right there. Guess I won't be taking advantage of Dana Cable's 30 day return policy...

Yes, the difference in sound is immediately heard. No “burn-in” required. I only expect it to get better sounding.

 

[Slim1970]

Welcome to the family, Lazuli brothers.

Thanks, it’s an amazing cable. I was a cable skeptic until I heard this one. Now, I want to try the Ultra for my Susvara’s.

 

[SilverEars]

My Dealer has had my Clear in for warranty repair for over a month, so I asked them to send me one of their “Lending Library” Utopia. Wow, even with my pedestrian system (BlueSound Streamer>Vinshine R2R Reference DAC>Cavalli CTH ((Amprex A-Frame EC88)) or Lyr 3 ((Ken Rad VT231)), the Utopia has an incredible ”jump factor!”

Listening to the Dave Brubeck ”Live at Carnegie Hall” that was recommended a dozen or so pages back, ”Castillian Drums” and damn, I almost spilled my beer. It's beginning to look like I'll be telling the Cable Company to keep my Clear and keeping the Utopia. As several of you have noted, the treble doesn't sound harsh, its close, but not over my desired threshold. I'm loving hearing deep into tracks, the impact, explosion of drum strikes, really these are an ideal companion to the Abyss.

Yeah, the drum strikes are striking with these. I think these have very convincing or realistic sounding drums. Also, that recording has pretty good textured drum impact as well (Take Five track). The combination of the two really suits.

Take Five track isn't just about the drums, cymbals sounds as sparkly as it should.

 

[rgs9200m]

Yep, the Utopia + Lazuli Reference combo is a revelation. (And Danacable a.k.a. Gingko Audio are very nice and easy to deal with and have quick turnaround.)
It really fills out the texture of vocals and instruments.
It significantly adds to the ooohhh and ahhhhh factor of the Utopia experience.

 

[Progisus]

Yep, the Utopia + Lazuli Reference combo is a revelation. (And Danacable a.k.a. Gingko Audio are very nice and easy to deal with and have quick turnaround.)
It really fills out the texture of vocals and instruments.
It significantly adds to the ooohhh and ahhhhh factor of the Utopia experience.

Being in the electrical industry for 30 years I really agree with the design philosophy of Danacable i.e. low resistance, low capacitance, low inductance. I have always said that the only way to change the sound of a cable is to add capacitance or inductance and actually alter the sound for the worse.

 

[471724]

Being in the electrical industry for 30 years I really agree with the design philosophy of Danacable i.e. low resistance, low capacitance, low inductance. I have always said that the only way to change the sound of a cable is to add capacitance or inductance and actually alter the sound for the worse.

In my opinion this is oversimplified. At least two other electrical parameters of cables have a profound effect on the sound of a good system. Of course the system needs to have good resolution for these effects to be important.

The skin effect phenomenon is one major signal degrading effect that is not in itself simple capacitance, inductance or resistance (though of course it is related through the physics of signal transmission through wires). The sonic degradations of skin effect due to utilization of relatively thick wires include smearing of musical details, smearing together of instrumental images, flattening of the sound stage, and usually a general overbrightness. This is time smearing, where part of the musical signal is slightly time delayed to various degrees due to having been propagated through the interior of the wire, while other parts of the same signal at the same frequency have less or no time delay due to having been propagated close to or on the surface of the wire.

This is proven through the immediate improvements in clarity and transparency that result from using a good Litz cable like the Dana cable. The Litz design greatly reduces skin effect due to the use of very fine separately insulated strands winding in an out of the interior of the overall conductive wire.

The other major degrading effect in cables that is not simple capacitance, inductance and resistance is dielectric absorption. It also is a time smear phenomenon.

Of course this will bring out all the science buffs who deny the reality of the extreme sensitivity of the human ear to perceive these effects.

 

[Progisus]

In my opinion this is oversimplified. At least two other electrical parameters of cables have a profound effect on the sound of a good system. Of course the system needs to have good resolution for these effects to be important.

The skin effect phenomenon is one major signal degrading effect that is not in itself simple capacitance, inductance or resistance (though of course it is related through the physics of signal transmission through wires). The sonic degradations of skin effect due to utilization of relatively thick wires include smearing of musical details, smearing together of instrumental images, flattening of the sound stage, and usually a general overbrightness. This is time smearing, where part of the musical signal is slightly time delayed to various degrees due to having been propagated through the interior of the wire, while other parts of the same signal at the same frequency have less or no time delay due to having been propagated close to or on the surface of the wire.

This is proven through the immediate improvements in clarity and transparency that result from using a good Litz cable like the Dana cable. The Litz design greatly reduces skin effect due to the use of very fine separately insulated strands winding in an out of the interior of the overall conductive wire.

The other major degrading effect in cables that is not simple capacitance, inductance and resistance is dielectric absorption. It also is a time smear phenomenon.

Of course this will bring out all the science buffs who deny the reality of the extreme sensitivity of the human ear to perceive these effects.

That science is a little over my head but the basics are the place to start and have the most effect.

 

[SilverEars]

In my opinion this is oversimplified. At least two other electrical parameters of cables have a profound effect on the sound of a good system. Of course the system needs to have good resolution for these effects to be important.

The skin effect phenomenon is one major signal degrading effect that is not in itself simple capacitance, inductance or resistance (though of course it is related through the physics of signal transmission through wires). The sonic degradations of skin effect due to utilization of relatively thick wires include smearing of musical details, smearing together of instrumental images, flattening of the sound stage, and usually a general overbrightness. This is time smearing, where part of the musical signal is slightly time delayed to various degrees due to having been propagated through the interior of the wire, while other parts of the same signal at the same frequency have less or no time delay due to having been propagated close to or on the surface of the wire.

This is proven through the immediate improvements in clarity and transparency that result from using a good Litz cable like the Dana cable. The Litz design greatly reduces skin effect due to the use of very fine separately insulated strands winding in an out of the interior of the overall conductive wire.

The other major degrading effect in cables that is not simple capacitance, inductance and resistance is dielectric absorption. It also is a time smear phenomenon.

Of course this will bring out all the science buffs who deny the reality of the extreme sensitivity of the human ear to perceive these effects.

Skin effect is frequency dependent. Audio signal and our hearing is at max 20khz. Skin effect is really irrelavent to audio application. It's not all that complicated.


Some cable sellers will try to complicate things to install beliefs in your mind for subjective bias. It's basically marketing, but not fact. It's better to verify the info rather than take it in as fact.

It's simple as impedance of cable relative to headphones. Full sized headphone impedance is quite large comparatively to cable impedance, and should not be of concerned compartively to amp output impedance, and there are plenty of amps with much smaller scale output impedance relative to headphones.

If the impedance of the cable is high, there's something wrong with the cable.

There's too much subjectivity beyond what is really evidant for one to be sure about factual effects of cables.

 

[mulveling]

As for the science: anti-cable guys will say "none of that matters at all for audio frequencies! you can't hear any of that". Who knows. Personally I have some very nice, pricey solid silver air-tube dielectric interconnects, and like them a lot. I realize it's usually not the most cost effective upgrade, and the correlation between price and quality/sonics is weak. But I still like them; it's a part of this hobby on the high-end, for better or worse. Either way, injecting cable discussion is a surefire way to derail ANY audio topic. We should stick with Utopia-specific cables and their perceived impact on the sound, not theoretical discussions and high-end cable hating. Or this will go downhill quick.

I tried a few cables on my Utopia and think they can have some positive effect (stock, Silver Dragon, Draug Silver), but at the end of the day it's still gonna sound like a Utopia, and that small soundstage isn't really going anywhere. Haven't tried the Danacable, though. Have to defer to those who have actually heard it.

 

[youurayy]

Of course this will bring out all the science buffs who deny the reality of the extreme sensitivity of the human ear to perceive these effects.

It's actually the brain that translates signals into perception, an organ we are still very far from fully understanding and emulating. Of course the buffs in their arrogance will claim that we understand it fully or about 99.9%, when the truth is that until we understand it 100%, which impossible not having a firmer handle on metaphysics, it's safer to say that we don't understand it at all.

Their other attack vector is measurability -- the changes in the cable sonics must be measurable -- which, again, may be true if you have a measuring device of the power of the human brain. Or I don't know, maybe run massive GPU clusters with Fourier-transforms and neural-nets -- which, nobody ever does this in the name of sound research, problems like cancer being naturally of more importance.

Many people today confuse science with being a brain-dead fundamentalist simpleton (washed ashore of a local optimum, blinded by their religious implementation of Occam's razor), whereas it takes the best (e.g. Feynman) to realize and admit that "we know almost nothing."

Ultimately, what we are after is the _feeling_ of amazement and satisfaction when listening to music, that we often think is completely invoked by the music and our audio equipment, when much more is at play. In the future, we may be listening to music through a neura-link interface, a computer connected directly to our cortex, and simulate these feelings directly, although I'm already sorry for the early pioneers to terribly eff up themselves trying to advance this cause, while the rest of us hold on to our audio gear for a little longer.

// rant? rant. but i've already written it so i press Post

 

[youurayy]

Personally I have some very nice, pricey solid silver air-tube dielectric interconnects, and like them a lot.

Could you share the name? I've just replaced copper (QED 40) with silver on my RCA interconnects, and I'm not entirely sure I like the increased brightness. (I already had the Utopia cable upgraded and I love that change.)

 

[NYanakiev]

Me too—my Lazuli Reference arrived this afternoon. I was super skeptical that I'd be able to hear a difference. Fresh out of the box, the improvement in soundstage, detail, attack and mids is right there. Guess I won't be taking advantage of Dana Cable's 30 day return policy...

I recently got my Utopias- really happy with them thus far.
I am also considering getting the Lazuli Reference cable but not really sure which B-connector options is the right one?

Thanks in advance!

 

[muski]

I recently got my Utopias- really happy with them thus far.
I am also considering getting the Lazuli Reference cable but not really sure which B-connector options is the right one?

Thanks in advance!

This depends on what headphone amplifier you have. The 1/4" is a single-ended/unbalanced and the most common. It's what I have to use with my Chord Hugo 2. The other two options are XLR connections for balanced headphone amps. What brand/model headphone amplifier are you using?