Patrick82
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- Mar 1, 2003
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I have had the Valhalla for my headphones for 6 weeks now and it appears that this tweak makes the biggest improvement out of any upgrades to the audio system.
It appears that the cable for headphones is far more important than the cable for loudspeakers is. Since headphones use smaller signals, it seems that the dielectric is the most important thing in the cable. When using simple logic, the Tara Labs Zero with the vacuum dielectric would be the most neutral cable for headphones, however, it would need connectors (to keep the vacuum inside) which would degrade the sound. But when you keep reducing the dielectric contact you get an overkill of low-level detail which is boring and "noisy". If you cut off the deepest layer of low-level detail, it makes it sound cleaner and blacker. This is what the silver plating of Valhalla does, it trades low-level detail for more surface detail which makes it sound both blacker and whiter than what is on the recording. It also makes it heavier and smoother which would normally make it muddy and veiled, but since the silver plating makes that muddiness whiter, it appears to sound neutral and clean. And since the deepest layer of low-level detail is missing, it makes it sound more open. The end result is that it sounds like real life because it distorts the sound.
- Going from stock cable to Stefan AudioArt cable didn't make an improvement, it just made it warmer. People are raving about this like it made a huge improvement, but it didn't make a significant improvement for me because I only care about real night and day improvements.
- When I upgraded to Solar Wind it made the biggest improvement I ever heard. I sent out that cable to a few people and they agreed, it even turned a skeptic engineer into a believer. That's how big the improvement was.
- Further upgrading to Valkyrja made almost as big improvement, but most of the improvements were in bass texture, soundstage size and smoothness. However, it was still able to keep the same detail that the Solar Wind has, even when the conductor was much thicker! The reason for that was because of the Mono Filaments wrapped around the conductor. But there was still a lot of dielectric contact with the conductor, so further improvements were possible.
- The Valhalla power cord has Dual Mono Filaments which reduces the dielectric contact even further. Upgrading from 1 to 2 threads wrapped around the conductor made one of the biggest improvement I have heard. For me, it was a much more positive improvement than going from Benchmark DAC1 into a dCS stack.
It appears that the cable for headphones is far more important than the cable for loudspeakers is. Since headphones use smaller signals, it seems that the dielectric is the most important thing in the cable. When using simple logic, the Tara Labs Zero with the vacuum dielectric would be the most neutral cable for headphones, however, it would need connectors (to keep the vacuum inside) which would degrade the sound. But when you keep reducing the dielectric contact you get an overkill of low-level detail which is boring and "noisy". If you cut off the deepest layer of low-level detail, it makes it sound cleaner and blacker. This is what the silver plating of Valhalla does, it trades low-level detail for more surface detail which makes it sound both blacker and whiter than what is on the recording. It also makes it heavier and smoother which would normally make it muddy and veiled, but since the silver plating makes that muddiness whiter, it appears to sound neutral and clean. And since the deepest layer of low-level detail is missing, it makes it sound more open. The end result is that it sounds like real life because it distorts the sound.
