On August 15, my wife and I toured the Clarus Sound factory
in Orlando, FL. There we met the owner, Mr. Joe Perfito, who told and showed us
why he believes that his cables are the right ones for you. In this factory sat several technicians
busily terminating custom cable lengths and creating audiophile masterpieces. During the tour, we grew to appreciate many
things about the care and concern about quality placed at each step of the
production process assuring that no detail is overlooked, something in which
few companies today invest and fewer at the level this one does.
After understanding the methods behind the manufacturing
process, Joe entertained us with his tale of how he began his career in cable
production. The world of the high-end is
one of many unique and varied specialists who in themselves are experts,
dilettantes, and authorities in one field.
Joe, whose background was in electrical engineering and sales, had an insight
to two-fields and combining that with a passion for listening found it natural
to pursue the sonic truth and purity of the simple interconnect cable. Listening to the differences in cables and
wires while observing the need for electrical connectivity and end-user
frustrations, he developed cables to not only make things sound better but also
make the overall experience of audio cabling simpler.
For example, in one of his many field trips to dealers, he
developed an S-video cable that was quite the cat’s meow. But when approaching his dealers about adding
these cables to their inventory, he learned that the complicated switching
between signal inputs and receiver settings made it difficult. Late-day calls from frustrated customers not
being able to figure out how to properly select the correct sound and the
picture from the various audio and video formats proved to be a challenge for
the non-technical crowd. So his solution
was a converter cable to unify all video signals to one format (a composite
video to S-video converter) thereby eliminating this multiple-switching
issue. With this simple device, his
journey into the mystical world of cable design began.
Joe heard differences in cables and as an engineer he could
not really explain them. But he also did
not let that stop him from trying to better what the industry had
available. Starting with modest
single-ended RCA cables, his engineering mind understood that once a cable is
bent (something all audiophiles do when they connect one piece of equipment to
another), the insulator inside of the cable distorts and the center conductor
no longer stays exactly at the center of the cable. An astute observation and one that changed
the design of his simple RCA interconnects.
Developing a three-layered insulator that withstood twists, turns, and
kinks, his cable’s center conductors remained centered as they should and his
early cables indeed were superior to others.
With this success in the mid-fi field, he set his sights on the high
end.
Now those configurations and considerations for making
exotic cables were beyond his knowledge and fortuitously he encountered an
individual who approached him at an expo.
Basically, this person said, “So what are you going to do next?” After a brief interaction, Joe realized that
to get better, he needed to surround himself with expertise, the sign of a true
leader. Long story short, this person
who approached Joe (Jay Victor) had connections to not only lower his
development costs but also employ a staff of existing wire-production
experts. Combine this with this person’s
engineering prowess who already understood what it took to make a better
sounding cable and it was a partnership made in audio nirvana. The stage is set.
Designing a good sounding cable is an expensive
proposition. To test a design concept
meant dedicating huge front-end funds into the minimal run needed to evaluate
the theory. Of course wire manufacturers
charge their customers for the setup, tooling, and materials required for
“sample” runs and this is where the majority of people stop: it just takes a
huge capital commitment to realize what your design ideas are. A mistake in just one small area makes the
difference between a piece of mediocre wire and a superb sounding design. Much thought must be given before taking the
five-digit plunge in just the test cable much less the six-digit order for the
first production run. But partnering
with Jay’s contacts these seemingly insurmountable financial limitations were
one-by-one overcome and as a result, Joe has created his current cable
offerings.
His line consists of three: mid-fi cables under the
Tributaries brand name, the next step into the high-end realm called the Clarus
Aqua line, and the no-holds-barred top-of-the-line models called the Clarus
Crimson line. In themselves, these
cables are worthy of the finest praises for the highest-quality assembly and
quality assurance techniques. But the bottom line is “how do they sound?” So leaving with a box of their products, my
wife and I drove back to our abode in central Florida weary from a long day’s
journey but smiling from the friendship we just established.
I believe that there is no such thing as a coincidence. In our chat with Joe, we discovered many,
many parallels in our ideas and desires, but also the same friends, acquaintances,
and professionals were also members of our elite audio circle. We both began our life journeys in the United
States Air Force, we both embraced a love for audio in our teen years, we both
met the same people from prestigious audio manufacturers, we both…you get the
idea. It was as if we were looking in
the mirror at our life’s dreams and goals and saw each other.
At the end of this tour, I was handed enough cables and
speaker wires to completely change all of the interconnect cables, speaker
wires, and HDMI cables in my entire system.
With an armful of new toys, I eagerly drove the two-hour trip back home postulating
how these may transform the sound. Joe
advised a burn-in time of at least 120 hours and so this is where Part 1 must
end since any reactions to cables, positive or negative, will change as these
cables “burn in.”
But a bigger question came to my mind: how can I test them
with not only accurate subjective reports but also precise objective
measurements and do so in a meaningful collaborative way? This is a great challenge.
The objection statistic-based objective listeners have to
subjective reviews is that they are etheric, meaningless words not repeatable between
reviewers; the objection that content-based subjective listeners have to
objective tests is that there is no correlation to what one hears and what the
data reveals. I have an opportunity to hopefully change this, at least in some
small way. What I desire to achieve is a better understanding of how
measurements can glean some insight as to what something sounds like rather
than a nebulous number implying that something is better than something
else. What I desire to gain is a
correlation between this data and what one can hopefully expect to hear as a
result of its review, a noble cause and one worth at least trying to unravel.
For decades, baseball ran on statistics evaluating batting
averages, stolen bases, and other hard-core statistics that devised some
measure of a player’s contribution to the team. These early statistics stayed
with this sport from its conception until the creation of a new field of data
called Sabermetrics. One day, someone decided that the data collected – while
helpful – did not tell the whole story about a player’s abilities to be “good.”
To do this, a new set of data needed to be studied with the primary objective
of how to describe any person’s ability to “get on base.” After all, it was
obvious that regardless of ERAs, batting averages, and the like, if you are not
on base, you cannot score – and after all how you win is to score more runs
than the opposing team. What I hope to do is to figure out how to measure what
it takes to “score more runs” in a subjective audio evaluation, and maybe even
what it takes to hit a “home run.”
If you have been reading my blog, you know that I have mood
swings from serious data studying to blissful off-the-cuff reactions to haywire
experiments as well as applied engineering designs. With a background in the
technology behind electrical engineering, I understand, at a different level
than most audiophiles, what it takes to make something sound better than
something else. And contributing to this edge is my unbiased opinion – I have
no vested interest in anything since I am paid nothing. For example, there are
certain things one can do to coax better sound out of almost any audio design,
just like the DIY hacker who swaps out capacitors for esoteric types. Certain
things bring additional revelation to the table that cost considerably more
than other remedies and it is for the cost-vs.-return ration that only the best
features appear in high-end designs.
But cable design is very different than equipment design and
there are many other forces at play in getting an unaltered signal from point A
to point B inside of a tight bundle of flexible wires as opposed to moving it
from the output of one gain stage to the input of another. Connector oxidation,
pin/jack materials, solder composition, shielding styles, internal ground
loops, conductor elements, wiring configurations, and insulation are all
important players in the search for the home-run king of an audio cable. But
much like ripples from a stone cast into a pond, electricity does not just go
from point A and stop at point B. Some of it bounces back toward point A
“reverberating” if you will just like echoes in a concert hall. And if all of
these other issues are not properly addressed, even the best selection of
components and materials will not get on base.
So to start this series of Clarus cable reviews, I will
investigate more than just what cable “A” sounds like compared to cable “B,” I
will also describe how the construction techniques varied between the two and
which technique improved their chances at hitting a sonic home run. I will also
measure what the insertion of a cable does to certain electrical measurements
taken before and after the change. From this approach, I hope to change a
little of how the data taken to determine what ball players are good and what
are passed over in training camp. It should be interesting if nothing else.
So stay tuned to this series and be ready to learn more
about the inner workings of how things sound than you had before. In this grand
experiment, we will most likely both learn a few things and together we may
come out with a better understanding of what to expect when evaluating a change
in audio cables. Let’s see if we can learn what it takes to “hit a home run”
and what else it takes to understand what is “good” and what is not.
My eBook Extreme
Audio 5: Speaker Wires discusses this issue and others that help you make
informed decisions about which speaker wires to try and what you can possibly
expect. Knowing the “sonic signature” of a type of wire connected to a type of
amplifier can help you narrow-down your search but the final choice should be
made with your ears. What sounds right to you is what you should get.
Philip Rastocny
I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remeber 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.
Copyright © 2015 by Philip Rastocny. All rights reserved.
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