[Ryokan]

Back to the Ace now....no more twiddling the knob.
The Zenith II is good, but the Ace is special. Bob just got it right with the Ace.

It's when you start trying to twiddle the knob and realise you're wearing the Ace's

 

[dakchi]

You can contact him here on HF.
Here is his instagram so you can see his work: https://www.instagram.com/khanyayo_cables/?hl=en
Hes well known here and his prices for the quality are pretty good.

Thanks for the info. The quality looks excellent. Are you sure he has cable within my budget? (200$ max)

 

[DrewVz]

Tried the black stock silicone tips with the Ace. Ugh. Definitely chokes off the sound, makes it distant and muddled. Kills the treble and the background atmosphere. I'm shocked Bob chose these tips as presumably a good match for the Ace. They definitely didn't work for me.

Oh well, back to my SS20's.... Best tips I've ever used. The Azla Crystals are good as well, but a bit dry sounding. The Whizzers are melt-in-your-ears good.

 

[Shadowelite]

Tried the black stock silicone tips with the Ace. Ugh. Definitely chokes off the sound, makes it distant and muddled. Kills the treble and the background atmosphere. I'm shocked Bob chose these tips as presumably a good match for the Ace. They definitely didn't work for me.

Oh well, back to my SS20's.... Best tips I've ever used. The Azla Crystals are good as well, but a bit dry sounding. The Whizzers are melt-in-your-ears good.

I found the ace to be good with a range of tips
Using the azla tips, the colour ones? Cant remember the name now

 

[paggio]

Regarding cables.
I would find out some OCC copper litz cable. Or pure silver one with which personally for my ears I've got the best experience with Elan/Asta Ultraque/Avalon. The main reason are more forward and transparent mids, well equilibrated scene and punchy sub bass.
Hybrid cables are probably more sophisticated with multiple type drivers iems. So you have to listen to before you buy.

 

[flu_fighter]

I found the ace to be good with a range of tips
Using the azla tips, the colour ones? Cant remember the name now

Azla Vivid Editions?

 

[dakchi]

Regarding cables.
I would find out some OCC copper litz cable. Or pure silver one with which personally for my ears I've got the best experience with Elan/Asta Ultraque/Avalon. The main reason are more forward and transparent mids, well equilibrated scene and punchy sub bass.
Hybrid cables are probably more sophisticated with multiple type drivers iems. So you have to listen to before you buy.

XINHS has a nice pure silver cable. My understanding is that pure silver will decrease the quantity of bass but will make the highs more airy and sparkling. Isn't this true in your experience?

 

[paggio]

XINHS has a nice pure silver cable. My understanding is that pure silver will decrease the quantity of bass but will make the highs more airy and sparkling. Isn't this true in your experience?

Slightly less mid bass and punchy sub, but better mids and clear treble. In my case I've used Satin Audio Medusa II.

 

[holsen]

As long as we're talking cables ... Can anyone help me with the difference between these two? I'm a definite noob when it comes to deciphering cable specs.

8 cores pure silver and single crystal copper
Conductor: 4N pure silver+6N single crystal copper
Number of cores: Pure silver 10*0.08*4+single crystal copper 100*0.05*4

8 Core 6N OCC
Conductor: 6N occ
Number of cores:10*0.08MM*8+200D

Linking to a resource is fine.

The first one, 8 cores pure silver and single crystal copper, is 4 cores of pure silver and 4 cores of pure copper where a core is a woven series of individual strands. In other words, this is a hybrid cable where you are getting two individual materials working together to bring the benefit of both. If you look at the supplied IMR Cable (provided you got the copper coloured cables and not the black sheath) it's obvious by looking at it that it is a 2 core copper cable.

Sticking with the the 8 core cable it says 4N Silver and 6N Single Crystal Copper. The letter "N" comes from metallurgy and is short form reference for 9. In the gold and silver trade (and platinum, copper, etc..) 4N, 5N, 6N etc., is a system of fineness grading called the millesimal fineness system which denotes the purity of a metal in parts per thousand of pure metal by mass. So here we have the purity of the metal is expressed at Four 9's, Five 9's, etc.... where each 9 is a 99 point N part per thousand of purity. 3N = 99.9% or 999 parts per thousand, 4N = 99.99% or 999.9 parts per thousand, 5N = 99.999 or 999.99 parts per thousand pure. Honestly when we're getting to these levels we're talking highly pure raw material with infinitesimal differences between 3N and 5N. These numbers start to make (some) difference when trading or accumulating gold and silver but the differences are not that great. In that use case it comes down to what's known in the trade as the "Melt Value" but that a whole 'nuther discussion.

So sticking with the 8 Core cable above you have 4 cores of high purity (no junk metal) silver and 4 cores of no junk copper - in other words, you should get pure transmission and get the benefits of both pure copper and pure silver, unadulterated by junk alloys.
Lastly the number of cores are denoted by how many strands and the thickness of each strand. Continuing with the same cable each silver core is 10 strands of 0.08mm (super thin silver wire) and there are 4 of them. Each copper core is 100 strands of 0.05mm and there are 4 of them

Looking at the 8 Core 6N OCC
it's 999.999 parts per thousand pure. You can calculate the cores.

Of course there are several tangential discussions or threads that come from this:

• The sonic differences between copper, silver, aluminum, platinum and other materials used to transmit the electric signal that the transducer (drivers) will convert to sound
• the difference between Single Crystal, OCC, UPOCC, Furukawa etc, etc, copper
• The benefits or disadvantages to blending or coating one metal with another
• Whether cryogenic or heat treatment makes any difference
• And countless other tangential issues

But I'm not going to open up any of those cans of worms here! Hope someone finds this helpful.

 

[AlexFL]

Good write up, but I sold my 900's soon after and still have DM, which after 500hrs I now really like, and at one point I considered selling them.

Agree, DMs are addictive, I was also confused with them some time ago, but my brain finally accepted them. I have U12T with DX300 amp 12 and while they do almost everything simply perfect DM get my ear time the most, along with Ozar. I took a plane trip recently and realized that Ozars are no go in airplanes - you're losing the bass, DMs are perfect as well are U12Ts.

 

[AlexFL]

Full 500, as prescribed, and still the highs did not open up much. Neither did the midbass hump settled down. They are not bad, the bass is fun and the mids are quite organic, but the clarity and treble have not improved. Paired with warm and organic source, like Shanling UA3 and L&P W2, the bass becomes unbearably overblown. Not exactly feeling that I made a score with it, the way I felt with Elan. DM is currently paired with ISN S4 cable.

Try JVC ++ tips, they extract the most air out of any iem, definitely blue filter and try red or grey stem. You can also try some silver plated cables, they responded well but I still went back to stock.

 

[Zeppmeister]

The first one, 8 cores pure silver and single crystal copper, is 4 cores of pure silver and 4 cores of pure copper where a core is a woven series of individual strands. In other words, this is a hybrid cable where you are getting two individual materials working together to bring the benefit of both. If you look at the supplied IMR Cable (provided you got the copper coloured cables and not the black sheath) it's obvious by looking at it that it is a 2 core copper cable.

Sticking with the the 8 core cable it says 4N Silver and 6N Single Crystal Copper. The letter "N" comes from metallurgy and is short form reference for 9. In the gold and silver trade (and platinum, copper, etc..) 4N, 5N, 6N etc., is a system of fineness grading called the millesimal fineness system which denotes the purity of a metal by parts per thousand of pure metal by mass. So here we have the purity of the metal is expressed at Four 9's, Five 9's, etc.... where each 9 is a 99 point N part per thousand of purity. 3N = 99.9% or 999 parts per thousand, 4N = 99.99% or 999.9 parts per thousand, 5N = 99.999 or 999.99 parts per thousand pure. Honestly when we're getting to these levels we're talking highly pure raw material with infinitesimal differences between 3N and 5N. These numbers start to make (some) difference when trading or accumulating gold and silver but the differences are not that great. In that use case it comes down to what's known in the trade as the "Melt Value" but that a whole 'nuther discussion.

So sticking with the 8 Core cable above you have 4 cores of high purity (no junk metal) silver and 4 cores of no junk copper - in other words, you should get pure transmission and get the benefits of both pure copper and pure silver, unadulterated by junk alloys.
Lastly the number of cores are denoted by how many strands and the thickness of each strand. Continuing with the same cable each silver core is 10 strands of 0.08mm (super thin silver wire) and there are 4 of them. Each copper core is 100 strands of 0.05mm and there are 4 of them

Looking at the 8 Core 6N OCC
it's 999.999 parts per thousand pure. You can calculate the cores.

Of course there are several tangential discussions or threads that come from this:

• The sonic differences between copper, silver, aluminum, platinum and other materials used to transmit sound
• the difference between OCC, UPOCC, etc, etc, copper
• The benefits or disadvantages to blending or coating one metal with another
• Whether cryogenic treatment makes any differnece

But I'm not going to open up any of those cans of worms here! Hope this helps someone

Vast storehouse of knowledge in this group. Thanks!

 

[rawrj]

Still loving the sound of this ACE but I have to say this driver flex is the worst I've experienced. Imagine if we had the option to run an open configuration....

 

[mekap]

I've got the new Ares S, Cadmus and Eros S from EA and I can hear the differences between them when using them back to back on the same IEM. Ares S certainly exhibits what I would expect from Copper, Cadmus as SPC takes some of the weight out of the bass but leaves lots of detail and enhances the upper registers. The Eros is Pure Copper and Pure Silver. Its a great cable and brings out all the qualities of both Copper and Silver. I've also got 3 of these 8 Core Pure Silver and Single Crystal Copper cables from XIN and and I hear not much difference from the EROS. and 3 of them are still $150 less than 1 Eros. The hardware isn't as sexy looking as the EA cable but they still look nice and while it is a fatter cable, it is very soft and supple. It's my new go to cable, hence 3 of them. You can but dont need to spend $200 on a cable.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002350509830.html?pdp_ext_f={"sku_id":"12000022700423055","ship_from":"CN"}&gps-id=pcStoreLeaderboard&scm=1007.22922.271278.0&scm_id=1007.22922.271278.0&scm-url=1007.22922.271278.0&pvid=40714d5f-7e4b-4cee-b031-5b2069ef42af&spm=a2g0o.store_pc_home.smartLeaderboard_6000198554711.1005002350509830

Hi. This aliexpress link is not opening

 

[mekap]

...I've also got 3 of these 8 Core Pure Silver and Single Crystal Copper cables from XIN and and I hear not much difference from the EROS...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002350509830.html?pdp_ext_f={"sku_id":"12000022700423055","ship_from":"CN"}&gps-id=pcStoreLeaderboard&scm=1007.22922.271278.0&scm_id=1007.22922.271278.0&scm-url=1007.22922.271278.0&pvid=40714d5f-7e4b-4cee-b031-5b2069ef42af&spm=a2g0o.store_pc_home.smartLeaderboard_6000198554711.1005002350509830

what are these XIN cables? Link to site not working