Clarus 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 this first of a series of evaluations,
I will review the 1-meter Clarus Crimson RCA interconnect cable, Part
Number CCA-010 (MSRP of about $1,000) and the 1-meter Clarus Aqua RCA interconnect cable, Part Number CAA-010
(MSRP of about $500). These cables were allowed to “burn in” to the
manufacturer’s suggested play time of at least 120 hours before final
evaluation.
The Clarus cables come in a highly attractive box with
handsome gold-plated connectors with a unique tooling on the outer ground
contact. While the inner contact is a traditional single slotted tip, the outer
contact sports six slots that are then drilled at the base making each slot
appear in the shape of a tiny old-style mercury-bulb thermometer. According to
the manufacturer, this hole permits the edges of the contact to compress
independently thereby more uniformly contacting the surface of the mating RCA
plug. Both the Crimson (red jacket coloration) and the Aqua (blue jacket
coloration) cables feature this same connector.
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 a 1-meter cable. Both electronic 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 3.5-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.”
History:
I had a home in Confer, CO, located about 7 miles from the main
highway and built on the side of a 10,000 foot mountaintop. The design of this
home began around a listening chair and then the listening room was designed
around that chair. The house was then
designed around that listening room and I incorporated many additional features
into the house design that complimented a solidly constructed room. Few if any compromises
were made in its wiring, foundation, wall coverings, insulation, door layout,
and dimensions so that optimum listening would be provided. The room sounded
pretty darned good.
In the pursuit of the ultimate high-end grail, it became
clear that the signal source was the limiting factor in the playback
chain. The “delayed-reality” I sought
(the feeling of “being there” at the actual recorded performance) just was not
possible to achieve from even the best vinyl and analog playback systems, so I
started to do my own live recordings.
Dragging my modest gear to concert halls, churches, and auditoriums, I
captured some outstanding performances and used these master tapes as my
“reference” signal sources.
During this series of incremental improvements to the
playback system using these live recordings to help it climb up the next rung
on the audio-quality ladder, it was clear that commercial cables in this era fell
abysmally short. Many, many were tried, none of which could reveal the total dimensionality
the obtained from these live recordings. Most cables sounded narrow, flat, and
short creating a severely squashed sound stage. Others were compressed or
favored one particular instrument or frequency band. Still others were noisy or
grainy or somehow time-smeared destroying coherency or image stability in the
3-D soundstage space. Nothing commercially available revealed the depth and
clarity the reference tapes preserved and what I believed the playback system
was indeed capable of reproducing. So I
applied what I knew about cable design and built my own interconnects with the
best available commercial components.
After attempting many of my own interconnect cable designs,
the one that revealed the ambience and energy of the live recordings was a
hand-made polarized Litz RCA cable using OFHC #26 conductors in an a star-quad
configuration shielded with a heavy OFHC copper braid. Connectors on the ends
of these cables are recycled from an old pairs of Monster Cables. A picture of one
of these cables is shown below.
My Own Design RCA Interconnect Cable
These cables have held up sonically over the years and
provide a uniform, smooth, time-coherent, and faithful reproduction of all
signal sources I have ever connected to my system. But as it is with all
technologies, evolution is inevitable and even the best designs change. For
example, the OFHC copper wire used in these cables was the best option
available for their time but today the OPOCC technology has trumped this somewhat
dated OFHC technology.
Evaluation:
I am a person who is interested in results rather than sales
or marketing hype. Statistics, while useful in eliminating some mediocre gear,
do not tell the entire story and I rely a lot on my own subjective evaluations
accompanied whenever possible with my own measurements. There is nothing that
compares to hearing or seeing something change and being able to substantiate
it with real data. However, such subjective observations cannot always be
objectively confirmed and reviewers rely on etheric words with inconsistent
meanings. I attempt to capture details about the performance of a particular
piece of gear by using as much objective data as I can provide.
In other words, while I prefer
measuring how something changes I do not always have the resources to measure
what I hear. In this case, I defer to my subjective opinion and try to
reference my subjective wording with specific examples so you can relate to
what my terminology means. Hopefully from this approach you can judge for
yourself if you wish to consider this reviewed piece of gear as a viable option
to your own system.
I also prefer not to read
what other reviewers say about something prior to my own evaluation. I believe this biases my opinion and I try to
remain as neutral about something as I can. Even comments from friends about
things can influence how I (or you) react to something. For example, when I
record a football game and someone tells me what the final score is before I
watch the game, it takes the wonder and joy out of viewing just like it does
when you know the ending to a book or movie. It changes my (your) personal
opinion and this effect is what I try to eliminate in my reviews.
Unlike most reviews, I will tell you about the COMPromises I hear first to get them
out of the way. Nothing is perfect and knowing this everything falls short of
that. So knowing how something misses the target (one possible definition for
the word “sin”), you can interpret from my subjective words how this compromise
may impact your system. I call these compromises “COMPs” where in fact they can
also be viewed as ways to tame other aspects of your playback chain. For
example, if I say that a component sounds “lively” as a COMP and your system
sounds dull, using this characteristic may restore balance to an otherwise
lifeless performance on your system. And if I say that a component sounds
“thin” as a COMP and your system sounds bloated, again using this thin
component may restore an otherwise edgy balance to your system. I believe you
will get the hang of this as time goes on and I will attempt to be consistent
in my use of terms and words.
Aqua COMPs:
The Clarus Aqua cables take about 20 hours to burn in.
Recommended burn in by the manufacturer is 120 hours and I believe that to be an
overly conservative figure. These cables initially sound spectacular with a huge
left-to-right sound stage and a lot of high-frequency inner detailing. But deep front-to-back sound stage - while
very good - was not as deep as my reference cables nor as deep as the Clarus
Crimson cables.
After more critical listening, the lower midrange and upper
bass regions were a bit muted leaving one hoping to hear more. For example,
instruments that should have a beautifully resonant hollow sound were less full
than my reference cables and although sounding very good they were just not
spectacular. This minor deficiency drew attention to everything above the bass
region and created a mild sense of elevated overall presence with a persistent
feeling that something was missing.
Deep bass was very good also but still a bit thin. The solid
feel one anticipates in a tympani crescendo is there but the punch one expects
to hear is muted and the overall effect is one of lower dynamics. The resulting
excitement one anticipates in the performance is lost and the magic of the
high-end is compromised. For example, the Turtle Records’ SACD recording of the
band Jungle Boldie (Track 1 “Dancing the Waves”) has a wonderful performance of
a bass clarinet. Low notes linger in the air revealing the mellow character of
this large and unique instrument. While yielding superb midrange and
higher-frequency clarity, these cables to not convey that lush woodwind or
“round” sound associated with deep body resonances.
A Bass Clarinet
Lastly, the high sibilance region is slightly exaggerated with
these cables. With the bass region being soft, focus is lifted to the upper
frequencies and unfortunately this characteristic becomes obvious. For this
reason, vocals are clear but a little unnatural sounding. The difference is a
little like how an improperly equalized horn-based sound reinforcement system makes
vocals sound rather than a properly positioned high quality planar speaker.
Crimson COMPs:
Recommended burn in by the manufacturer is 120 hours and I
believe that to be a high estimate. The sound settled down after about 40 hours
of listening. During this break-in period, the front-to-back depth, while
considerably better than most cables, was neither as good as my reference cables
nor as good as the Clarus Aqua cables. Initially the sound stage was deep,
tall, and wide with adequate time they finally removed this shortcoming.
The only COMP worth remembering for the Crimson cables is a slight
feeling of slowness or compression in the top octave. This impacts inner
detailing of percussion instruments and fingering on guitars and other strings.
Drum cymbals are lush and mellow but there is a sharpness missing in the inner tap
that translates to a soft knock rather than a sharp tink. A great track to hear
this effect is Turtle Records’ SACD recording of the band Jungle Boldie. Track
1 “Dancing the Waves” is an energetic performance of a bass clarinet, double
bass, and drums where all instruments are very nicely balanced providing enough
quiet time between bars to appreciate the resonances of these well played
instruments. The cymbals, while yielding a superb luster and sheen, do not have
that subtle top-octave sparkle that whisking brushes should reveal.
Aqua PROs
These are some pretty sweet cables. With a slight lean to
the bass-deficient side, these cables really bring out the left-right size of
your sound stage possibly making it larger than you thought it could ever be. They
have a WOW factor that few cables provide. Listening to dynamic music, these
cables do not collapse under intense and complicated pieces not breaking down
in their imaging stability. For example, the 1996 Cirque du Soliel performance
of Taiko by Asano (Mistere – Live at
Las Vegas, track 12, Catalog #20009), there are over a dozen drums of various
sizes arched around the stage and on various vertical platforms. The position
of these drums remains solid regardless of how many of them are played. Good
cables retain this ability to maintain image focus under changing volume levels
and the varying numbers of instruments. And when the echoes fade off into the
distance, these cables capture these subtleties and their acoustic stability
remains in a psychoacoustic illusion down to the level of the noise floor.
Crimson PROs
These are some pretty dad-gummed amazing cables. With a
slight lean to the soft side in the lower midrange, these cables really bring
out the character in the upper midrange. Vocals are an absolute delight. For
example, one of my favorites to test the capabilities of accurately reproducing
vocals and midrange details is track 8 Lonestar
on the Norah Jones’ album “Come Away With Me.” Most interconnects slur these
words making it difficult to discern the nuances in Norah’s quiet and
angelically soft voice but these cables do none of that. Words with the Clarus cables are succinct with
a total lack of ringing, glare, or edginess.
As mentioned in the COMPs, the attack and decay of these
cables is very good to excellent above the bass region. Rise and fall times of percussion instruments
are smooth and lifelike revealing low-level resonances normally lost in the
noise floor. They have a very neutral sound with only a slight deviation in
balance from top-to-bottom in the lower bass region. For example, as a
bass-guitar lick slides down the scales (e.g., Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms,
track 9 Brothers in Arms) you notice
a slightly non-uniform output in this region but deep bass is not an issue.
Here thunderous explosions are handled with ease and delicacy adding no
coloration to the sound whatsoever.
There is a minor de-emphasis in the lower midrange that
brings attention to regions just above and below it. For example, the Marieanne
Thorsen’s performance of Mozart’s Violin
Concerto #4 in D Major (2L SACD #2L038SACD) brings your acoustic attention
to the bridge of the 1856 G.F. Pressenda violin used in this performance and
its influence on the body rather than basking in its beautiful timber and
resonance. Although the engineering techniques used this recording integrated
her into the orchestra as opposed to a distinctive front-center stage soloist
position, the presence and emption of her delivery is easily understood.
The ability of these cables to extract extreme width from
the sound stage is where these cables really shine. In the Alex Degrassi DSD performance
of The Water Garden (Blue Coast
records “Special Event 19”), the sound stage is very wide and deep
bringing life to the performance unachievable with my old reference hand-made
cables but the midrange is again – while very detailed – a bit more laid back.
Where my old reference cables could resolve a width to about a foot to the left
and right of the speaker centers, the Clarus trounced this by expanding the
width of the sound stage to well beyond three feet in either direction.
Measurements
After initial listening, it was time to see if what I heard
could be correlated to real time analysis measurements. I like using RTA
measurements to confirm my impressions because they reveal the effects of all
impacts on the total transfer function of the whole system. In other words,
accurate RTA measurements in real-life situations reveal those added or
subtracted sonic subtleties resulting from changing out a single component.
Saying it another way, seeing what components measure should show evidence
about a perceived change. Let’s see what happened.
Below are the superimposed RTA measurements of two cables
taken from my usual sweet spot. In the first graph, the GREEN dots are my old hand-made
reference cables, the lighter BLUE dots are the Clarus Aqua cables, and the
darker AQUA
dots are where the two cables measured identical. Both blue and green
measurements were made within 1 minute of each other with the RTA mounted on a
stationary tripod using exactly the same output level of the OPPO (+60). Adjacent
dots (one dot above or below another) are about 1dB different in relative sound
pressure level.
From this chart, the relative
differences between cables can be observed. The differences between these
two colors are hard to see and I apologize for that, but I wanted to color code
the name of the cable to the color used in the graph so you could tell by its
color which was which. Notice in the region under 400Hz where the Aqua cables are
a little softer than the reference cables as noted in my subjective evaluation.
In the second graph, the GREEN dots are my old hand-made
reference cables, the RED dots are the Clarus Crimson cables, and the YELLOW
dots are where the two cables measured identical. Both red and green
measurements were made within 1 minute of each other with the RTA mounted on a
stationary tripod using exactly the same output level of the OPPO (+60).
Adjacent dots (one dot above or below another) are about 1dB different in
relative sound pressure level.
If these two cables were identical, then almost all of the
dots should be yellow; but as you can see, they are not. In fact there are only
about 21 places where these two cables measure identical. Note that color
enhancement was used to make it easier to see the color differences on a
computer screen and the red had to be enhanced more than the green (this is why
the red dots appear slightly blurred and the green dots more distinct).
The region under about 40Hz is essentially identical as it
is in the 3KHz-5KHz region. However, elsewhere there are measured differences,
most of which are 1-2dB meaning it would be hard for most people to hear these
minute differences. But some of which are 6dB meaning they may be audible to
some – if not many. The region between 1kHz-3KHz is the place where most differences
are probably audible as at points about 5KHz and 14KHz. This means that the
vocal region should sound different where fundamental frequencies in voices in
the Clarus Crimson cables should sound more muted and the reference cables
should sound a bit louder. Conversely, the harmonics of the voice region should
sound louder in the Clarus Crimson and muted in the reference. And the Clarus Crimson
cables should have better ambience (the 14KHz extension) and should more
greatly emphasize sibilance at 5KHz.
Below is a graph of the difference between the Clarus Aqua
and the Clarus Crimson.
Here you can see the differences measured between the two
Clarus cables alone. Notice that they appear very similar in the region below
about 100Hz and above 6KHz (especially consistent above 6KHz) but in between
that things really begin to change.
And one last graph that came out dim because of three
overlays was how all three cables compared in one graph.
From the last chart, the relative differences between all three cables can be observed. While
the deviations are small, the audible effect is quite large. At a recent
meeting of the Suncoast Audiophile Society, 20 members listened to these cables
and the subjective results of their reactions were quite similar to mine.
Although the accuracy of these measurements may not be
absolute, the relative differences are. That is, the sound pressure measured at
16KHz is shown as 35dB and may in fact be higher than that. However, the -1dB
or -2dB differences will remain the same. And although measurements will change
with time (called the Standard Deviation), these measurements attempt to show
you how measurements coincide with subjective conclusions. Note that all three
cables measured very similar implying a reasonable amount of consistency
between all three measurements.
Summary
While some persist in believing that wire is wire, let those
folks be happy with what they believe. For those of you who want more, try
changing your interconnect cables. If you have spent thousands on your
amplifier, preamplifier, and CD player it only makes sense to match quality
components with quality interconnects. Moving up the interconnect ladder to the
right cable for your system can yield countless hours of enjoyment for a
relatively small investment and keep you from tearing your hair out when trying
to tame that last little anomaly in your system.
Swapping interconnect cables is a quick and easy way to
improve the audio quality of your system. With the right combination, you can
tame or enhance the balance of your system with their inherent characteristics.
For example, if your system is overbearingly bass heavy, you may want to give
the Clarus Aqua a try since they will help settle down these unnatural low-frequency
characteristics. If you need a quieter cable,
either of these cables will do a great job. If you are using budget
interconnects in your high-end system, the Clarus Crimson cables will really
surprise you and show you what you have been missing.
I was thrilled to hear the size of the psycho-acoustic
illusion (i.e., the sound stage) enhanced with either of the Clarus Crimson cables
since my preference in distinguishing between really good and mediocre cables
is in their ability to do just this. I can tolerate a lot of minor issues in
high-end gear but when something shrinks the size of my sound stage I
immediately react negatively toward that component. Both Clarus cables do not
do this and is therefore they both are top-shelf cables. Their ability to bring
not only excellent sonic accuracy but also a larger listening environment into your
listening room makes them score exceptionally high points in my book.
Ranking which cable of the three I prefer listening to in my
system tells a lot about how I viewed each of their overall performance. The
cable I listened to most is the Clarus Crimson since it revealed more
information than either of the other two cables. The Crimson is very easy to
get used to and gave me hours of immensely pleasurable, unstrained,
natural-sounding entertainment. Next I would listen to my hand-made reference
cables since they reproduced much of the same clarity as the Crimsons but with the
compromise of a smaller sound stage. Last, I would listen to the Aqua cables to
recreate hall ambience and deep-corner sound stage character. Despite their
thin bass this is a stellar feature.
Both Clarus RCA cables deserve serious consideration in your
system. Will either of the Clarus cables yield the same results in your system
as they did in mine? That is the million dollar question since there are many
factors in amplifier and preamplifier design that impact this answer. One thing
is certain: you can use cables to tweak nuances and make your system sound the
way you prefer thereby adjusting its sonic signature. Using the right cable to
boost this or cut that can help you create a sonically accurate and superior
sound stage. While changing speakers makes the biggest difference in the sound
of your system, changing cables can help you fine tune the entire system and
tame it to your liking.
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.
Copyright © 2015 by Philip Rastocny. All rights reserved.
