gpalmer
We are the weird ones.
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- Apr 27, 2002
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EDIT, Sorry, this one got away from me (a little too much enthusiasm) and I didn't have enough time to prune it down for quick reading.
So if you want the bottom line, skip to the last two paragraphs!
RnB Audio "Diamond Class Mini" reference interconnect
Over the last couple of years I've been searching for a first-rate mini to mini cable. I have drifted in and out of this search as my gear and needs changed, but one thing that remained constant was that I really haven't heard any cable with mini to mini connectors that really gave me the wow feeling. At this point I've tried most of the 1/8" to 1/8" cables out there. During this time period I have had a very disreputable looking 1/8" to 1/8" cable that an amp manufacturer made for me for a few dollars with the amp he sold me. While this cable was about as ugly as a cable could get and made everyone who saw it break out laughing, it was still the best cable I heard during my search. What it got right and the others didn't seem to get right was neutrality and balacne across the audio spectrum. Generally, I think that cable has a lesser impact on headphone systems than it does with speaker systems and that is even more pronounced among the mini to mini wire I've heard where the differences seem vanishingly small except for a couple cables which degraded the sound.
I'd like to mention what I was looking for in the cable so that the reader has a context to place my opinions into. I feel the "best cable" for your needs is going to vary for every person (and even for each person by the system the cable is used in). The number one characteristic I was looking for was neutrality. There are a lot of viewpoints on how to put a system together. My personal take on it is that I want a system that is as neutral and revealing of the components as I can put together. In my opinion, to downside of not having a neutral system is that the system is not neutral it is inevitable that the colorations will improve it's performance for some types of music but hurt it's performance with other styles. Of course, since there is no neutral standard, that neutral will vary by the person judging it.
There are two main benefits I see with having a neutral system. First, I enjoy the different reproductions and accents that different components will give to the same piece of music. Second, I buy the best components I can and I want to hear exactly what they are capable of and not limit them.So, getting back to my long search for the perfect mini connector for me, I found again and again that nothing that I tried matched the neutrality of the cheap connector I had. Honestly, none of the expensive cable I tried was as good as the $10 connector I already had, even though they looked much better.
I had heard of RnB cables from some of the postings in the cables forum, some of them from people whose opinions I respect very much. So I contacted the manufacturer and after a bit of discussion I decided to try the "Diamond Class Mini" reference interconnect. The "Diamond Class Mini" is a cable meant for portable use as is immediately obvious from the 1/8" connectors on both ends!
It's bling value is pretty decent (although with my history, I'm not sure bling really matters to me
). The cable I received was terminated with right angle 1/8" plugs. On disassembling the ends to check construction quality, there were several things noticeable. The first was that the Switchcraft plugs were very professionaly built of heavy gauge materials and meant to survive considerable abuse. The second thing that was noticeable was the quality of the assembly. The solder joints were first rate and the stress relief on the cable end was clamped down nice and tight so it looks like this cable could stand up to some pretty serious abuse before it experienced any sort of problem. This strikes me as a requirement for a portable cable since they seem to go through a lot of rough treatment, much more so than cable used in a stationary setup. The cable itself is housed inside a purple semi-translucent covering which has a very attractive appearance. The cable is pretty flexible and you can bend it around easily to meet your particular needs.
I was using this cable with the HeadAmp AE-1 amplifier and the Ray Samuel's Emmeline SR-71. These are two of the better portable amplifiers out there and if you want to get everything out of them it requires better quality components around them in the system. Generally speaking the character of the diamond class mini was the same for both the amps, so I will only discuss the SR-71 here.
The source I used for this comparison was my Panasonic DVD-LA95. This is a portable DVD-Video/DVD-Audio/CD player which contains a 192 KHz 24 bit DAC. This player was at one time Panasonic's top of the line portable player. I would categorize this as the equivalent of a upper mid range home disc player. The errors it commits are on the side of omission instead of commission which I find much easier to tolerate!
The headphones used for listening impressions were my HP-1s. I also listened to these with the ATH L-3000s, Grado PS-1s and Sennheiser HD-650's. Since the character of the interconnect matched across these headphones, I decided to go with the impressions from the HP-1s to simplify things.
Initial Impressions
I was very impressed with this cable right out of the box. What first struck me about the sound was it's neutrality. It was as neutral as the cable I had been using previously but seemed to have more extended treble and bass. One characteristic I had noticed with many of the other cables I tried was that they muffled the high end. This might be intentional and might actually be an improvement with some of the portable players to cut their digital harshness but is not required with the Panasonic. Personally, I think that if you have to cover up what the component is doing then the right place for the component is in the nearest trash recepticle. The second thing that struck me was that I was finally hearing blackness from the SR-71! This is one of the characteristics of Ray's amplifiers which has been noted by many listeners. It was something I had heard from his SR-71 when I listened to it at shows but had never really heard with my transportable setup. Of course, this setup also doesn't include a 508.24 so I hadn't been too surprised it didn't sound the same. I sure was surprised when it appeared after swapping in a cable!
I didn't hear any huge differences with this cable as it burned in, it seemed to become more transparent and more open but those were the largest changes I could detect.
The Listening
I have been on quite a kick lately listening to some of the Stereophile CDs which I have recently picked up and since they are generally quite well recorded, I decided to use them for the music selection. Of course, a few other selections crept in there...
stereophile - Mosiac Clarinet Quintets by Brahm's and Mozart - SR-71
This was absolutely gorgeous on the system. The notes seemed to rise out of pure blackness, the notes were well fleshed for a solid state system and were rendered with great subtlety. The definition of the musical events were not as crisp as they could have been but this was due to the source not the amplifier or cabling. This is why I would classify this source as upper mid fi rather than high end. The Diamond Class mini really made a notable contribution on this selection since I have not gotten the same blackness out of the system without it. Another area where the Diamond Class mini seemed to improve the performance was in the liveliness of the notes. A layer seemed to be stripped from between the player and the reproduction taking you closer to the music.
Gary Jules - trading snakeoil for wolftickets - Mad World - SR-71
This one snuck in since it was a recent birthday gift! Mad World has a sparse arrangement of instruments that makes it very easy to seperate and follow each instrument and judge it's reproduction. It also features a very exposed male vocal with some rather obvious effects applied. These efffects are a good place to seperate out the men from the boys when it comes to DACs. A good DAC will really nail these effects and keep the reverberations crystal clear, especially the heavy ones applied during the phrases "enlarging your world" and "Mad World" at the end of the song while lesser DACs will stumble over these same effects. In this case, the Panasonic really wasn't able to keep the effects crystal clear. The blackness of the SR-71 really came through though and made this quite enjoyable to listen to. I could hear the character of the SR-71 more clearly than I ever had before with the other cables I tried. It was crystal clear that the SR-71 was warming up the sound of the music, but not in any objectionable way, the character was more evident but wasn't shoved down the listeners throat in any way.
stereophile - Music for a Glass Bead Game
This is a stellar recording of violin and cello. Again the sparse arrangment makes the instruments stand out clearly and let's the listener follow them easily. The rendition was excellent, though it didn't have quite the depth to the sound that I would expect from a high end DAC nor did it have the definition that I would expect from a high end DAC. Again I attribute these to the shortcomings of the DAC in the portable player.
Stereophile - Robert Silverman - Ludwig van Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatos
This is an excellent recording of exceptional material through an instrument which could have been improved on sonically. For me, it's a recording I've heard hundreds of times through a gamut of audio gear from Krell and Watt Puppies on down the line. In this case the reproduction was very good. Again, the source not being able to keep up with all the demands of the recording was discernable though not objectionable. Sorry, that's all there is and there ain't no more! Again, I was able to pick out cleanly what each component was adding to the sound, excepting that is the Diamond Class mini which just seemed to get out of the way and let the music flow cleanly.
I could go on with the other tracks I've listened to with this cable but the results were always the same. The Diamond Class mini just got out of the way and let the other components perform. I have listened to hundreds of tracks with this cable and at no time was I really able to discern the Diamond Class mini imparting it's character on the system, the most defining characteristic it had was it's transparency and neutrality. Differences between gear like the HeadAmp AE-1 and the Ray Samuel's SR-71 were clearer using this cable than with anything else I have tried with my portable system previously. I never really felt like I was running into a limitation imposed by the cable, instead it was the source that wasn't up to it (or very rarely) the amplifier. In the opinions of some who have tried many portable sources, Headroom in particular, the Panasonics have the best sonics of any of the portable players but when used with the AE-1 and the SR-71, it was the source that couldn't keep up, not the cable and not the amplifiers.
While it would have been interesting to have tried this cable with some of my higher end components to see where it ran into problems, ultimately it seemed pointless since I'm not going to be lugging around a Meridian or a DAC1 under my arm in a portable setup.
So bottom line is, this is the best cable for portable use I have heard so far. It is neutral and transparent and just gets out of the way and lets the music shine through. And it sells for less than the competition. If you're considering any of the mini to mini cables out there you really owe it to yourself to listen to this one, it's a very special cable and a keeper!
RnB Audio "Diamond Class Mini" reference interconnect
Over the last couple of years I've been searching for a first-rate mini to mini cable. I have drifted in and out of this search as my gear and needs changed, but one thing that remained constant was that I really haven't heard any cable with mini to mini connectors that really gave me the wow feeling. At this point I've tried most of the 1/8" to 1/8" cables out there. During this time period I have had a very disreputable looking 1/8" to 1/8" cable that an amp manufacturer made for me for a few dollars with the amp he sold me. While this cable was about as ugly as a cable could get and made everyone who saw it break out laughing, it was still the best cable I heard during my search. What it got right and the others didn't seem to get right was neutrality and balacne across the audio spectrum. Generally, I think that cable has a lesser impact on headphone systems than it does with speaker systems and that is even more pronounced among the mini to mini wire I've heard where the differences seem vanishingly small except for a couple cables which degraded the sound.
I'd like to mention what I was looking for in the cable so that the reader has a context to place my opinions into. I feel the "best cable" for your needs is going to vary for every person (and even for each person by the system the cable is used in). The number one characteristic I was looking for was neutrality. There are a lot of viewpoints on how to put a system together. My personal take on it is that I want a system that is as neutral and revealing of the components as I can put together. In my opinion, to downside of not having a neutral system is that the system is not neutral it is inevitable that the colorations will improve it's performance for some types of music but hurt it's performance with other styles. Of course, since there is no neutral standard, that neutral will vary by the person judging it.
I had heard of RnB cables from some of the postings in the cables forum, some of them from people whose opinions I respect very much. So I contacted the manufacturer and after a bit of discussion I decided to try the "Diamond Class Mini" reference interconnect. The "Diamond Class Mini" is a cable meant for portable use as is immediately obvious from the 1/8" connectors on both ends!
I was using this cable with the HeadAmp AE-1 amplifier and the Ray Samuel's Emmeline SR-71. These are two of the better portable amplifiers out there and if you want to get everything out of them it requires better quality components around them in the system. Generally speaking the character of the diamond class mini was the same for both the amps, so I will only discuss the SR-71 here.
The source I used for this comparison was my Panasonic DVD-LA95. This is a portable DVD-Video/DVD-Audio/CD player which contains a 192 KHz 24 bit DAC. This player was at one time Panasonic's top of the line portable player. I would categorize this as the equivalent of a upper mid range home disc player. The errors it commits are on the side of omission instead of commission which I find much easier to tolerate!
The headphones used for listening impressions were my HP-1s. I also listened to these with the ATH L-3000s, Grado PS-1s and Sennheiser HD-650's. Since the character of the interconnect matched across these headphones, I decided to go with the impressions from the HP-1s to simplify things.
Initial Impressions
I was very impressed with this cable right out of the box. What first struck me about the sound was it's neutrality. It was as neutral as the cable I had been using previously but seemed to have more extended treble and bass. One characteristic I had noticed with many of the other cables I tried was that they muffled the high end. This might be intentional and might actually be an improvement with some of the portable players to cut their digital harshness but is not required with the Panasonic. Personally, I think that if you have to cover up what the component is doing then the right place for the component is in the nearest trash recepticle. The second thing that struck me was that I was finally hearing blackness from the SR-71! This is one of the characteristics of Ray's amplifiers which has been noted by many listeners. It was something I had heard from his SR-71 when I listened to it at shows but had never really heard with my transportable setup. Of course, this setup also doesn't include a 508.24 so I hadn't been too surprised it didn't sound the same. I sure was surprised when it appeared after swapping in a cable!
The Listening
I have been on quite a kick lately listening to some of the Stereophile CDs which I have recently picked up and since they are generally quite well recorded, I decided to use them for the music selection. Of course, a few other selections crept in there...
stereophile - Mosiac Clarinet Quintets by Brahm's and Mozart - SR-71
This was absolutely gorgeous on the system. The notes seemed to rise out of pure blackness, the notes were well fleshed for a solid state system and were rendered with great subtlety. The definition of the musical events were not as crisp as they could have been but this was due to the source not the amplifier or cabling. This is why I would classify this source as upper mid fi rather than high end. The Diamond Class mini really made a notable contribution on this selection since I have not gotten the same blackness out of the system without it. Another area where the Diamond Class mini seemed to improve the performance was in the liveliness of the notes. A layer seemed to be stripped from between the player and the reproduction taking you closer to the music.
Gary Jules - trading snakeoil for wolftickets - Mad World - SR-71
This one snuck in since it was a recent birthday gift! Mad World has a sparse arrangement of instruments that makes it very easy to seperate and follow each instrument and judge it's reproduction. It also features a very exposed male vocal with some rather obvious effects applied. These efffects are a good place to seperate out the men from the boys when it comes to DACs. A good DAC will really nail these effects and keep the reverberations crystal clear, especially the heavy ones applied during the phrases "enlarging your world" and "Mad World" at the end of the song while lesser DACs will stumble over these same effects. In this case, the Panasonic really wasn't able to keep the effects crystal clear. The blackness of the SR-71 really came through though and made this quite enjoyable to listen to. I could hear the character of the SR-71 more clearly than I ever had before with the other cables I tried. It was crystal clear that the SR-71 was warming up the sound of the music, but not in any objectionable way, the character was more evident but wasn't shoved down the listeners throat in any way.
stereophile - Music for a Glass Bead Game
This is a stellar recording of violin and cello. Again the sparse arrangment makes the instruments stand out clearly and let's the listener follow them easily. The rendition was excellent, though it didn't have quite the depth to the sound that I would expect from a high end DAC nor did it have the definition that I would expect from a high end DAC. Again I attribute these to the shortcomings of the DAC in the portable player.
Stereophile - Robert Silverman - Ludwig van Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatos
This is an excellent recording of exceptional material through an instrument which could have been improved on sonically. For me, it's a recording I've heard hundreds of times through a gamut of audio gear from Krell and Watt Puppies on down the line. In this case the reproduction was very good. Again, the source not being able to keep up with all the demands of the recording was discernable though not objectionable. Sorry, that's all there is and there ain't no more! Again, I was able to pick out cleanly what each component was adding to the sound, excepting that is the Diamond Class mini which just seemed to get out of the way and let the music flow cleanly.
I could go on with the other tracks I've listened to with this cable but the results were always the same. The Diamond Class mini just got out of the way and let the other components perform. I have listened to hundreds of tracks with this cable and at no time was I really able to discern the Diamond Class mini imparting it's character on the system, the most defining characteristic it had was it's transparency and neutrality. Differences between gear like the HeadAmp AE-1 and the Ray Samuel's SR-71 were clearer using this cable than with anything else I have tried with my portable system previously. I never really felt like I was running into a limitation imposed by the cable, instead it was the source that wasn't up to it (or very rarely) the amplifier. In the opinions of some who have tried many portable sources, Headroom in particular, the Panasonics have the best sonics of any of the portable players but when used with the AE-1 and the SR-71, it was the source that couldn't keep up, not the cable and not the amplifiers.
While it would have been interesting to have tried this cable with some of my higher end components to see where it ran into problems, ultimately it seemed pointless since I'm not going to be lugging around a Meridian or a DAC1 under my arm in a portable setup.
