I have been reading and seeing good things about Wave cables, here on the forums and also a video the other day. I thought to myself whilst watching the video, “that’s an area that I haven’t yet focused on, cables”.
Now that I have moved up to division two in the audio hardware category, I thought, maybe I should be focusing on getting some decent cables now that I have got the goods to exploit them.
I got in touch with Nick aka
@Triode User who makes Wave cables. I asked him what range of cables he sold and since he knows I’m from here and he knew that I had an Mscaler and a TT2, he suggested that i try his Wave Stream cables and if I didn’t like them, I could return them for a full refund.
Fair enough, nothing to lose except £10 shipping them back if I didn’t like them, so I asked for a set of his Wave Stream cables and they arrived on Friday.
Anyone who knows me, you will know that I like my iem’s and their cables. But although I have bags of iem’s and cables, I never ever buy iem cables for their sound. Buying iem cables is purely for the bling factor, plus 99.5% of them all sound the same. True story, but don’t mention it to some iem cable fans.
Before I got the Wave Stream cables, I was already very dubious about them being able to transform music, as I was going from my iem cable experience, where schiit all sounded the same, but just looked different. I was really sceptical about them doing anything to the sound.
Anyway, Friday arrived and a big box was handed to me, all professionally printed and inside was a leaflet and two of the nicest cables I have ever seen.
They screamed quality and looked very very nice in real life. They have the same design philosophy that Chord uses, built like a tank and bombproof. I couldn’t wait to hook these bad boys up. Once done, I decided to see what they sounded like, ( remember, I’m still thinking “iem cables are useless” ). I loaded up Qobuz and selected a playlist and pushed play, within the first 20 seconds I could tell the sound had totally changed, and changed for the better.
The brightness that was there has now gone, the tone is softer and warmer and more realistic. The cables have made a huge difference, I no longer get fatigued after an hour or two of listening, like I previously did with Hugo 2 and TT2. More so with H2 than TT2, but I honestly can’t believe that 2 cables can have this much of an impact. Although all my Chord dacs sound good, these cables make them sound even better.
Rob mentions that if his dacs sound overly bright, then RFI interference is causing it. My HMS & TT2 was sitting next to my 6 aerial triple band wifi router. My music was being contaminated by my wifi router and other electrical products, which cannot be fixed by just changing positions of the electricals.
Using these cables makes the sound silky smooth compared to what it was like before. The cables have helped in a big way and they help make Robs MScaler and TT2 sound much better by eliminating external RFI. It’s amazing how much RFI there is in an average home nowadays.
With the wave stream cables, I can do a 3+ hour listening session easy, so easy that I fell asleep whilst listening with my HD800S on. When I woke up the music was still playing and it was 6 hours later. I NEVER fall asleep with headphones on, and to do that and stay sleeping shows how much the sharp and bright sound has been tamed / killed, as that would of woken me up had it still been present. Infact I probably wouldn’t of fallen asleep to start with had I been using the stock cables.
The music seems warmer, softer and more realistic now, compared to the digital sound that was audible with the stock cables. Even with the mscaler and TT2, you could still notice that the source was a digital source when using the stock cables. With the wave cables, any external RFI that was plagueing my MScaler and TT2 has now gone, it no longer exists and high pitched female vocals no longer sound like a “blind date gone bad”.
The tone has an overall sense of warmth and realism about it, but it does not interfere with the mscaler doing it’s thing, the same micro details are still there, timing, timbre etc etc, everything is still there but it sounds so much better and realistic.
I’m not one for trying to describe all the small nuances that makes up a track like some of you here can, but I don’t claim to be an audiophile, and I’m cool with that. When I hear something good, I can tell, and I can tell these cables are good.
