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REVIEW: Audio Note AN-Vz, AN-SPx Cable Review by Lukasz Fikus at Audio Asylum

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This is an attempt to describre my first month with Audio-Note cables.
I am an EE with 15 or so years experience as a DIY audiofetishist, audiophile, you name it.
I am into ethno music, jazz, fusion, Zappa (as a category in itself), sometimes singing girls.
Equipment - wise I am into tubes.

During last few years I was building my Hi-end rig, but the most difficult item was for me cabling. I listened to every wire I could borrow, but I was never satisfied.

So I ended up having cheap cables, waiting for the right one to come my way.
For all those years I used to think that Audio Note ANV-X was the best IC cable, but I could not afford it.
I also thought, that it is fantastic in every respest but lacking seriously the TEMPO (PACE?) and deep bass. That is the sacrifice
you can tolerate, if you have some kind of simple tubed setup with natural limitations in bass department.
Entry level and mid level AudioNote gear is just like that - fantastic musicality, sweet mids and highs, but no real bass.
My latest system is very (I mean VERY) good in the bass, so A-N VX would compromise the very important aspect of the whole in a degree too large to accept (for me).

Recently, following the fascinating and superbly written rewiew by Hyperion at Tech Talk I became aware of a new, top of the line range of cables - the "Z generation".
Knowing well the earlier AN-Vs, and AN-Vx cables I understood that this is the cable for me.
I bought them without prior experience, save a short demo at the show.

So one happy afternoon, in my system landed two ANVZ IC's and AN-SPZ speaker wires.
Even without any break-in, the result was exactly as expected (thank God).

Now, please forgive me the language and vocabulary limitations - English is my third language.
I will not try to evaluate these cables separately - the IC and speaker ones. The whole setup is absolutely a dream come true.
It is impossible to characterize these cables - they are so clean, transparent, open, fast, musical - everythinh one might ask.
One thing I can say, is that many audiophiles often discuss DEPTH OF SOUNDSTAGE as a very important aspect.
I consider it to be mostly bullshit. At a live event there is no such thing. At a multimiked recording there may be no such thing by definition.
The depth is an artificial thing, and not musical at all.
Recently I try to attend many live jazz events in small clubs, and I can talk for hours about the great experience I have, but DEPTH would be the last thing on my mind.
So there are (especially American) components and cables that emphasize depth. A-N does not do that. They do not sound flat or 2-d at all.
They just sound normal, just right. But the diamond clear picture is so addictive, involving, immediate, etc, that you really feel something nasty (like a dirty glass or dull plexiglass) has been removed from the system.
Something you never realized was there, or you never thought is possible to remove.
The experience can be compared to a breath of mountain air after an hour at the gym.
Or like replacing the 1 dollar sunglasses with RayBans.
Simply the way they clean the picture is uncomparable with any other cable I ever heard.

You notice it in first 5 seconds of any music you play.
I swear I thought to have noticed it during the initial seconds of silence, before the musicians even started.
There was the air and ambience of the recording hall audible as a real transportation of my good self to that room.
The silence of my room was replaced with the other place.
I will not even go into details of reality of voices, truth of timbre, etc. Goosebumps - I had those in spades.
Those chicks - they were not only in my room - this happens with any good cables - but they were performing FOR ME.
They were sexy and sweet FOR ME. Like in the club, you have many tables with people listening, but this girl just seems to have picked an individual, for whom she is performing. (lucky you if you are the one!)
All in all, I can not imagine, within the well known limitation of playback equipment, what I could ask more from a cable.
They are here to stay and at last I do not have to worry if the spagetti I use is the bottleneck of the system.
It is definitely the opposite.

The most surprising thing for me was the speaker cable. It looks so simple, thin, delicate in hi-end standards. mtry would laugh at its "inadequate gauge"!
But the bass I get from my full range three way speakers is just amazing. It is deep deep, colorful, unlike the one-note boom boom you may sometimes mistake for BASS.
I was tempted to biwire, but I found that it is not good. One run of AN-SPz is just enough, and coherent like hell.

I fell obliged to comment also on the organoleptic experience - these cables are simple looking, flexible, they to not pretend to impress with fancy anything, especially with diameter of jackets etc.
The plugs must be the best I ever touched - solid silver and stuff like that. The feel is luxury, un-obtrusive, positive.
All money seems to be well spent on the conductor itself and ... musicality research.

My system:
Wadia 16 CDP in unbalanced mode
All tubed ARG Audio Labs preamp from Ukraina
All tubed ARG Audio Labs 100 W monoblock triode balanced SE amps in unbalanced input mode (think of it like a better VK-60 in a mono config)
see their site at: http://www.lviv.net/bus/arg/arg_aud.htm

Home made loudspeakers with Scanspeak Revelators, Hovland caps, AlphaCore coils, Siltech wiring aln shit like that
Jon Risch mains filters to the source and pre
500 sq feet untreated room

cables for comparison (not counting tens of others I remember compared to the mentioned ones):
VdH the first
Alpha Core silver SAPPHIRE IC
Siltech FTM12 speaker ribbons
Cable Talk Studio Pro IC
many various home made silver cables

Lukasz f.


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Topic - REVIEW: Audio Note AN-Vz, AN-SPx Cable Review by Lukasz Fikus at Audio Asylum - Lukasz Fikus 13:23:01 04/17/99 ( 3)