Hi, Sorry for the late reply, season madness..
It's still in the early stages of burn-in, Haru recommends 10 hours but in my experience it takes longer for a cable to settle down. I'm at around the 30-40 hour mark.
Early impressions compared with ref1's V2 gold/silver cable are:
- copperish sound for those familiar with copper cables
- fuller, larger image
- very 3D
- detailed
- bass more weight and slightly fatter
It's a very engaging sound and pulls at the heartstrings. I'm having an especially good time with DSD classical string music.
Used the balance output of the AK240 mostly. It's definitely better than from the single ended output. To compare with the ref1 original cable, I used the Haru made connector with SS material.
The cable has VentureCraft termination with a nice metal strain relief coil at the end. And the gold and silver flake decoration inside the plastic connectors are a nice touch, very classy.
The solder points are nicely done, especially for the balance connector. It's tight given the thinness of the connector. The SS material connector termination comes across as loose as there isn't a filler between the cable and the connector but looking inside it seems sturdy enough albeit astetically wanting.
Haru says the SS cable was originally for Pro studio audio cable (mastering studio).
The diameter of Sieve Sheep is about 22AWG with 60 copper wires each in a silked wrap.
It's more flexible than the silver/gold wire and definitely more comfortable to wear and easier to store. It's surprising how important this is and until I started to use it, didn't realise what a pain the original cable was to handle.
The balanced connector side solder points above. Below shots of the SS material connector for single ended use.