I know I promised a review of Shuoer’s brand new mono-crystalline cable a while ago, so sorry to everyone this one took a little bit of time to crank out! I struggled a little bit with this—why to follow. I first want to give the biggest shoutout to Shuoer for hooking me up with a generous discount on this TOTL cable (I’m gonna call it the TOTL for this review) and accommodating my request for unterminated on the source side.
Background
This is the brand new [potentially unreleased as of this posting?] top-of-the-line cable from Shuoer featuring a mono-crystalline gold-silver
alloy, not gold-plated silver. From examination of the actual raw wire itself, I can confirm that it’s not the usual plating, but is instead a unitary metal inside the stranded metal.
Most of the hardware on this cable is actually non-standard. I had Shuoer leave the source side
unterminated, both so that I can do some “destructive” testing of the raw wire without destroying too much, and so that I could put on a mini-XLR 4-pin connector for use with my modular system (similar to Hart Audio Cables). The splitter is also non-standard so don’t expect something so large on the actual unit, I did some custom work to that myself. The 2-pin connectors on the cable
are standard though, and mimic that of the Shuoer Conductor cable. I went ahead and soldered on the mini-XLR 4pin with some Kester 63/37 solder, well regarded in the cable world, so that shouldn’t have an impact on overall sound.
Note that I’m in the firm camp of “cable metals and construction inherently make a
tiny but noticeable difference.” However, differences are minor at best apart from issues attributable to build/design/comfort. A cable doesn’t necessarily sound “better” for being more expensive, but it certainly sounds “different.” Whether it’s worth the money, is a personal judgement call on your comfort-point in the curve of diminishing returns.
Technical Specifications
A lot of these specs are coming from my own measurements and testing having worked with the raw wire. The TOTL is a 4-core individually sleeved design. Each core consists of a 32AWG wire with, what seems like, 19-30 strands of mono-crystalline gold-silver alloy. The core comes out to about 0.75mm unsleeved and around 1.2mm sleeved. Together as a braided bundle, the cable is around 4.5mm thick, so in line with most other thicker 4-core IEM cables.
Did a few resistance measurements too using a fairly accurate multimeter:
- TOTL cable: 0.62Ω/m
- Linsoul EST cable: 0.55Ω/m
- Shuoer Mono-crystalline Pure Silver [EJ09 Stock]: 0.39Ω/m
- Hart Audio Cable [Mogami OFC @ 28AWG]: 0.78Ω/m
These numbers probably don’t mean much, but there ya go, if you are curious. Linsoul’s EST cable is much higher gauge than Shuoer’s TOTL so these numbers make sense, despite the TOTL being pure silver and having a theoretically higher conductivity. All three cables are actually finished the same way, in a mini-XLR 4pin, and measured across all 4 pins, they were within margin of noise/error.
Sound
Now that we have the technical mumbo-jumbo out of the way, time for the fun part. I’m comparing this cable
exclusively on the Shuoer EJ09 (see my full review on the EJ09 here), with the stock mono-crystalline pure silver cable, as well as the Linsoul EST cable.
Compared to Stock Mono-crystalline Pure Silver Cable
Those that read my 09 review will know that one of my main gripes was how
sharp the 09 presented with its stock cable. While not “emphasized” in the treble, the 09 with the stock cable had a very sharp attack to the leading edges of notes that often sounded abrupt. Having spent more time with the 09’s, it seems like may even potentially negatively affect the timbre, making it everything around a little more forceful than natural.
Swapping to the gold-silver cable alleviated this to some extent. I’m not going to say there is a
massive difference that
blew me out of the water, since it’s just a cable after all. However, it definitely softened up much of the leading edges and make some previously unlistenable songs (
Coheed and Cambria, Colors, 1:40) a lot more palatable. At the same time, the cable swap added a little bit balance to the overall mix, taming the upper presence registers just a hair.
Seori’s Lovers in the Night felt more cohesive in the brassy chorus and the reverb of
Tristam’s Over the Edge was slightly more delicate.
The TOTL didn’t do much to the mid-range if anything at all. As before, the 09’s presented cleanly and upper-mid-forward, with resonant vocals and a lot of energy. Trying hard to pull out some changes, the highest registers of female vocals get pushed back a hair (
See, e.g.,
Nature, Girls;
Minx, Why Did You Come to My Home - 1:55–2:10, 2:35–2:45). However, this change is so subtle it might be a result of short term acoustic memory than the cable itself.
The TOTL did seem to bring back a little bit more more texture to the bass. Compared to the stock cable, the bass seems even more detailed rather than relying on a singular low rumble.
WE ARE FURY, Poison presents with a more vivid bass in the main drop. Additionally, it seems to impart more energy into difficult-to-drive tracks like
Excision & Illenium, Gold (Stupid Love), one of the 09’s weakest tracks in my usual rotation.
Soundstage takes a small hit with this cable. Instruments lose a bit of their lateral distance (
Audiomachine, Remember Not to Forget;
Evanescense, Lithium - Synthesis Version). Thankfully, the change is fairly minimal and the additional balance the cable imparts helps to alleviate any placement issues. Imaging still remains clear and pinpoint accurate. (
Rolling Quartz, Blaze).
Overall, the new TOTL cable is a great pairing with 09’s—fixing many of the complaints I had in the stock configuration, at the expense of a bit of soundstage depth.
Compared to Linsoul EST
I actually had my customized Linsoul EST cable for that long, so thoughts are sparse. As a complement to the 09’s, the TOTL allows details to be reproduced with “less effort,” letting the micro-details like recording venue background noise (
Audiomachine, Remember Not to Forget) and vocalist “ticks” (
DREAMCATCHER, Eclipse - (JiU’s breathe tremor at 0:03; Gahyeon’s vocal vibrato at 2:09)) be just a hair more noticeable. The EST also suppresses the 09’s treble and leading edge annoyances much more significantly in the 09’s weak tracks (
See AleXa, Never Let You Go;
Coheed and Cambria, Colors). I personally feel like the EST does overstep here and blunts some of the EJ09’s upper energy character though, and I don’t like this pairing at the end of the day. Soundstage is also much more compressed with the EST, than with the TOTL.
Build/Design/Comfort
The TOTL is a fairly light cable and the individual fabric sheathing keeps it comfortable when worn under the shirt. However, my biggest gripe on this cable is its microphonics. The cable is extremely loud in the first foot of cable around the ear hooks, and no amount of cable finagling was able to get rid of it. Even just hitting my jaw or side of head when moving would result in a fairly large noise with the 09’s. I’m sure this would be less noticeable on something less sensitive, but I didn’t have a chance to test that fully. Talking to Shuoer, this seems to be caused by a combination of both the thin inner strands and the outer sheathing material. However, I didn’t notice this with the Shuoer Conductor cable, sheathed with the same fabric. This unfortunately caused me to take a bit of time with this review, since I had to be fairly stationary when listening to prevent microphonic from getting in the way. Below the splitter, microphonics lessened greatly, and was much less of a problem.
I’m honestly not sure if Shuoer will be able to solve this in the production run, but it’s something to watch out for. If microphonics aren’t a huge problem to you though, I have nothing else bad about the cable construction. Everything is well finished like usual coming out of their factory.
Miscellaneous
Source used was the RME ADI-2 DAC FS throughout this review. MSRP is still undetermined at the time of this post. Will edit once full retail information is released.