Claris Sound of Orlando, FL, is the high-end daughter company of Tributaries® Cable. The Clarus line of cables is assembled in the USA using ultra-quality foreign and domestic parts. In Part 2 of the Clarus Cable reviews, I will review the 4-meter Clarus Crimson Bi-wire Speaker cable – spade lug version, Part Number CCA-010D (MSRP of about $6,400 for a pair). This cable was allowed to “burn in” to the manufacturer’s suggested play time of at least 120 hours before final evaluation.
The audio evaluation system consists of an OPPO BDP-105
Bluray player (firmware version 58-0719) directly connected to a highly-modified
McIntosh MC2100 power amplifier via this Clarus Crimson 1-meter cable. Both devices are connected directly to a
modified PowerVar ABC1200-11 Line Conditioner (ground loops removed, all
terminal lugs soldered). The speakers are a pair of highly modified Bozak
B-302A speakers bi-wired to the McIntosh amp via my own hand-made 3-meter Litz
speaker wires.
All evaluations were done in the evening after the sun had
set for at least one hour, all window shades drawn, and all furniture in exactly
the same position. Everything that could
have influenced change from external and environmental sources was eliminated
so that “apples were consistently compared to apples.”
Evaluation:
The Clarus Crimson speaker cables (designed by Jay Victor)
are very attractively bundled in a flat ribbon-like configuration, although the
contents of the cable are anything but flat. Each conductor contains a variety
of wire sizes, shapes, and orientations; each conductor insulated from any
other; and each wire strand is sized specifically to better handle a given
frequency range much like a passive crossover network does for a loudspeaker. The
custom-designed wire is produced in China and the cables are assembled in
Orlando, Florida USA. Below is a view
inside of what makes up one of these cables.
Clarus Crimson Speaker Cable Internals
I must begin with a note about wire. Many speaker wire
manufacturers offer PCOCC stranded copper wire in 12AWG values, others may
offer flat wire, and still others silver-plated individually-insulated
configurations, but this manufacturer takes the art of designing speaker cable
to entirely new level. All other loudspeaker wire manufacturers employ
off-the-shelf wiring configurations to create their own cables, that is, they
use whatever strand configuration is available from a wire manufacturer and
change up that single strand design
to their specifications. But no other manufacturer has currently created a
loudspeaker wire from scratch using multiple
strand configurations to their unique specifications. Let me say that again
since it is highly worthy of note: NO
ONE ELSE IN THE BUSINESS MAKES THEIR WIRE LIKE THIS. It is truly unique in the classic definition
of this word, something welcomed to the high-end wire manufacturing industry.
This wire is so different from any other it is difficult to
fathom how something so innocuous could impact the ability of an amplifier to
accurately transfer its signals to the speakers. Despite the numerous
double-blind tests that unequivocally prove under the conditions of that test
no difference can be reliably detected between #18AWG zip cord and other exotic
wire claims. Skeptics in this regard are 100% correct: wire is wire when tested
in this manner.
However,
audiophiles continually insist that these double-blind tests are somehow flawed
and that exotic wire does make an audible difference. Such believers are
relegated by skeptics to the same category as snake oil and flying pigs. But
then skeptics rarely own high-end systems and until one becomes familiar with
the sonic signature of that system can one’s ear be trained to discern those
subtle but audible differences. Such training takes time and once this level of
familiarity is achieved, audiophiles prefer this wire over that wire because
they are able to hear these differences.
And so the battle ensues. I recently held a listening party
at my home for the Suncoast
Audiophile Society whose members included wire skeptics and supports, of
which one skeptic came from the well-known Boston Audio Society. This person
had participated in such listening tests before as did other skeptical members
and although the evaluation was not performed scientifically, every single
person at this party easily heard differences in wires although these
differences were reported differently by these members. For example, one person
may have heard an emphasis in the treble region while another heard an increased
size of the sound stage. Regardless of what these individuals heard, they all
left with a new respect for the assertion of wire-difference believers,
something that was unexpected.
Personally, I have heard many differences in wires and the
Clarus Crimson cables are definitely in that category. These wires are about as
different sounding to #18AWG zip cord as tubes are to transistors. So let’s see
what the hubbub is all about.
COMPs:
First, let me say that the Clarus Crimson speaker cables
take a VERY, VERY long time to burn in. Recommended burn in by the manufacturer
is 120 hours and I believe that to be a low-ball
figure. I found that after 200 hours, things settled down and the minor
changes in their sound finally stabilized. Be patient; be patient; be patient!
Initially these cables sound fine but nothing about them
significantly improved the sound over my reference hand-made speaker cables.
For example, initially the lower-bass (not the deep bass) was a bit thin and
the mid-bass a bit thick. Instruments that should have a full-bodied sound were
less full than my reference speaker cables.
This minor deficiency drew attention to the middle-to-upper bass region and
created a heightened sense of midrange presence. Also during this break-in
period, the front-to-back depth, while considerably better than most speaker cables,
was not as good as my reference cables. However the sound stage was still deep,
tall, and wide with adequate time they finally removed this shortcoming.
At one point during this break-in period, there was a sharp
lower treble peak so irritating and unwieldy that it made me suspect there was
something wrong with my gear. After checking things out, nothing was awry and
back into the mode of patience and perseverance I lapsed. As time progressed,
all of these shortcomings fell by the wayside one by one and the true sound of
these cables began to shine through. After 200 hours there is still a residual
minor emphasis in high sibilance region where the harmonics of “S” sounds are
slightly exaggerated.
The attack and decay of these cables are very good to
excellent above the midrange but a little slower than my reference cables in
the bottom octaves. For example, the 1996 Cirque du Soliel performance of Taiko by Asano (Mistere – Live at Las
Vegas, track 12, Catalog #20009), there is a punch in these drums that should
reveal the timbre of the drum sticks striking the skins. With the Clarus, the
drums sound small and sterile and with my reference cables they sound fuller
and hollow with a sharp rap appearing just prior to the full note. The skin
resonances are also slightly muted with the Clarus and not with my reference
cables.
Another COMP is that these are some really big hunks of
wire. Ribbon-like in appearance, they do lay flat on the floor and do not
attract too much attention. But for those dealing with the Wife-Approval-Factor
(or Spouse-Approval-Factor as the case may be), these cables may be a hard sell
despite their audio appeal. Hopefully acceptance by both parties will overlook
this minor inconvenience. The photograph below shows how large these cables are
along with the home-made cable elevators fashioned from foam rubber pipe elevators.
Clarus Crimson Speaker Cables with DIY Elevators
The last COMP I can make is not really a compromise about
this cable but rather a comment on the effects of climbing higher on the
high-end audio ladder. As you climb higher up this ladder, you get achieve a
playback system that is very revealing and brutally divulges which recordings
are good and which are – well let’s say that with less-refined equipment your
critical-listening music collection is larger. With these cables, your critical-listening
music collection will probably shrink and while a PRO to some, it is a COMP to
others. For example, poor studio recordings will sound worse than ever while a
well-known quality recording will sound better than ever before. Since there
are so many bad recordings out there, you will most likely be less tolerant of
them since any graininess or edginess will come through loud and clear, and
then quickly demoted to the so-so recording category.
PROs
Deep bass is very strong and very clear making explosions in
movies, large organs, and bass drums sound much cleaner than with my reference
speaker wires. This give the overall effect of the wires being “louder” and I
presume that this effect is contributed not only by strand design but also by a
larger effective wire size than my reference wires (12AWG for the Clarus vs. 14AWG
for my reference wires). The 4-ohm woofers in my system benefited greatly from
the lower insertion losses encountered with my old reference speaker wires and
the sound was far crisper with the Crimson cables. Whatever the reason, this
effect will literally hit you over the head and is the biggest change you
should initially notice when swapping to these wires. But there is more, much
more.
The midrange attack and decay of these cables is excellent
and this is what these cables do best.
Rise and fall times of plucked-stringed instruments is uncanny revealing
inner details to the point where you can almost see the guitar player’s thumb
sliding on the spiral wrap an instant before the note sounds. This is the first time I have ever heard such
midrange clarity and another significant asset for these cables. Vocals are also silky and very tube-like in
content convincingly conveying whispers and subtle hushes in breathing in
between measures.
Background and low-level details are also convincingly above
the noise floor so well-recorded 44KHz/16-bit digital recordings sound fuller
than you probably have ever heard. Images are rock solid in three-dimensional
space and the character of the performance is greatly revealed. For example,
the brush-whisks in the Crimson in Turtle Records’ SACD recording of the band Jungle Boldie. Track 1 “Dancing the
Waves” is reproduced with excellent inner detailing and physical character of
the brass cymbal. While yielding a superb luster and sheen, they fall just a
bit short in that subtle top-octave sparkle to adequately reveal the inner
detailing of the metal-on-metal swishing brushes. This may be a flaw in my
speakers rather than a COMP in the cables; of this characteristic I am
uncertain.
The energetic Jungle Boldie performance of the bass
clarinet, double bass, and drums are all nicely balanced in this
recording providing enough quiet time between bars to appreciate the resonances
of these masterfully played instruments. The Clarus cables reveal these nuances
in the echoes as the sounds decay magnifying what many other cables overlook. Putting
it another way, reverberations are longer and subtleties in echoes are just
silkily revealed.
In the 44/16 Buedi Siebert recording of “Pyramid Call” (Real
Music Catalog #4060), in track 3 Feather
of Truth about a minute into the performance Beudi sharply breathes into
the flute creating an eerie echo that reverberates for several seconds. With
the Clarus cables, you are able to hear the throaty lower-frequency sound of
the flute die off along with the higher frequency content without getting lost
or masked by these other sounds. During this echo, you should be able to hear
the full size of your system’s sound stage; the Clarus cables delineate this
characteristic very well on my system.
Nuances in other background details were also effortlessly
extracted. For example, in the Analog Productions SACD recording of “Wish You
Were Here” by Pink Floyd (CAPP 33453
SA), Track 4 Wish you Were Here
starts with an intentional cough in the background. With the Clarus cables, I
found myself hoping that this mildly raspy cough effectively cleared the phlegm
(I hallucinated from its sound that it could be that yellowish hacked glob as
opposed to that nasty thick green junk), an unanticipated emotion after hearing
this cough many, many times before. This reaction gave me pause: what does it
take to reveal enough information about a simple cough to stir that emotion?
The answer I speculated would be a convincing enough acoustic recreation to
align my personal experiences with that one. Although a gross explanation, it
is one to which we can all relate: we all have done this. The question remains:
how well does your system stir your emotions into empathy for this cough?
Enough said.
Low midrange and upper bass colorations are also minimal
with these speaker cables and bass percussion is a good test of how to hear if
speaker cables color or alter these sounds. For example, higher-resistance
speaker cables (typically thin and tiny in physical size) will usually cause
the bass to sound flabby and muddy while those with lower resistance (i.e.,
thicker and larger) will sound tighter and cleaner. If you start with #18 zip
cord on your speakers and then move to #14 zip cord, you may notice that the
bass becomes tighter and better defined. This is because the resistance of the
wire goes down and the amount of power “stolen” by the speaker wires also goes
down (meaning that less power is consumed by the wires and more goes to the
speakers where it should). With the Clarus Crimson cables, more amplifier power
is going to your speakers and resulting lower coloration reveals the quality of
the Clarus design considerations.
For example, the deep round hollow resonant sounds created
by large Tibetan Bells or large Crystal Bowls are a very nice test of this
particular frequency range. In his album “Healing Bowls” (44/16 Xonic Music
catalog number 51), artist Xumantra
on track 3 Three Wise Women uses slow
deliberate techniques to create low midrange and upper bass resonances between
bells. Listening carefully to these resonances you can hear the character of
the bell change as the notes wax and wane. The first bell has a fundamental
frequency of 113Hz by softly rapping it with a padded stick. Rapping it with
the bare stick creates a 657Hz note. Other fundamental notes played are 220Hz
and 253Hz and harmonic content becomes multiples of these values (2x, 4x,
etc.). A really good speaker cable should resolve the fundamental frequency and
all of its harmonic content without smear or overemphasis. The Clarus easily
reveals these details.
Measurements
This is the part of my reviews I enjoy and one that I hope
you do too. After listening to the virtues of the Clarus Crimson speaker
cables, I was very interested in finding out what my RTA meter told me and – as
usual – the differences were measureable but not as evident as what I heard. Below
are the two measurements showing the Clarus Crimson cables in RED and my
reference speaker cables in GREEN. Measurement points that are identical are
shown in YELLOW.
Again to explain the apparent bass loss measured in my
system, my RTA has absolute inaccuracies in the frequencies below 125Hz,
however, the relative differences are measurable and on these relative differences
is what one should focus. One day this problem will be a distant memory.
There are about 17 places where the two measured absolutely
identical and the big differences between these two cables begin to show up at
frequencies above 150Hz and below 40Hz. The Clarus cables measure more deep
bass energy under 40Hz and this effect was also observed as cleaner deep bass. Overall
the Clarus cables also measured a little louder through the entire band, also
noted in the subjective observations. And the top octave above 8KHz was a
smidge softer again reported above as a de-emphasis in the metal-to-metal brush
whisks. The Clarus cables measured more uniform than my old reference speaker
wires in that high/low deviations were not as great also noted in the ambiance
and inner detailing capabilities.
The only place the Clarus cables measured lower than my old
reference wires was in the 250-350Hz band and may be what I heard as a minor loss
of detailing in this region.
Summary
Swapping speaker cables is a simple way to improve the audio
quality of your entire system. While some skeptics persist in believing that
wire is wire, let those folks be happy with what they believe. For those of you
who want more, definitely try changing your speaker cables. Moving up the audiophile
ladder to the right cable for your system can yield countless hours of
enjoyment for a reasonable investment.
The Clarus Crimson bi-wire speaker cables are real charmers
and after adequate break-in will set you back on your heels. What low-level
information they are capable of revealing is staggering and switching back to
your old speaker wires after a month of listening to the Clarus will tell you
more about how good these cables really are. It’s not that you old cables were
probably THAT bad to begin with, it’s just that the Clarus cables are that much
better.
After another month of listening to my old reference speaker
wires, I find myself still comparing what I now hear to what I heard with the
Clarus cables. This is a good indication to me that there is something missing
with my old reference speaker wires that I found more pleasing with the Clarus
Crimson cables. Your experiences may be much the same as mine. I admit that
getting over the sticker shock and settling into their sound took quite a while
and I was glad that I had these cables on loan for those wonderful 6 weeks.
Without that amount of time to appreciate their strengths I could have
dismissed them as another over-priced toy for those wishing to toss their money
needlessly into the wind. But the Clarus Crimson cables are indeed worth the
money.
Like anything you enjoy, what you spend on your audiophile
hobby it is relative to what you earn. I would not expect these speaker cables
to improve the sound of a low-budget or mediocre system. If your system is up
there with the best of the thoroughbreds, give these cables a serious audition.
What they do well is just about everything and what they compromise is easily
overshadowed by their extreme virtues. You will probably hear things from your
system that you never heard before, something that is rarely achieved in this
industry prone to so much snake oil.
Philip Rastocny
I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.
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