Cable Asylum: REVIEW: Aural Thrills Active Interconnect Cable by Bazza Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

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Model:	Active Interconnect
Category:	Cable
Suggested Retail Price:	$1850.00
Description:	battery powered interconnect
Manufacturer URL:	Not Available
Manufacturer URL:	Not Available

Review by Bazza ( A ) on December 28, 2005 at 23:08:58 IP Address: 154.20.45.98

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This is a review of both the Aural Thrills Active interconnect cable sound and their customer service. I’ll begin with the cable and finish with the customer service.

I learned of Aural Thrills through Audiogon and purchased the Active Palladium 1m RCA and Active Silver 1m XLR in battery-powered configuration directly because they did not have a current auction for the products that I wanted. For this reason I am not able to leave feedback at Audiogon. The palladium rca connected my phono stage to my preamp and I tried the silver xlr between cdp and preamp as well as connecting preamp to power amp. Except for my phono, everything in my system will accept balanced connectors and this has become my preferred (lower noise) method of hook-up. Before I described the sound I should state my biases towards cables; I judge on 4 factors:

1. Neutrality

2. Detail retrieval

3. Low noise

4. Musicality

The Aural Thrills Active was very good at retrieving detail with a very low noise floor. Balance was tipped ever so slightly to the upper frequencies when compared to my Cardas Golden Reference but I could live with this. What I could not come to grips with was the lack of musicality. This is a subjective factor that can’t be scientifically measured (like the solid state vs. tube sound difference). The rich harmonic overtones that I love were not there. There was plenty of detail like early cd players (“perfect sound forever”) but without the emotional impact that I need from music.

Customer Service: I wondered if adding the Aural Thrills gold-wired cable in my chain could bring back the harmonic richness so I contacted Tom Kenny and asked him for a price on the gold active cable. He gave me one. After consideration I e-mailed him back with an order request. At this point he increased the price. I replied letting him know that I was disappointed that he would increase his already quoted price especially to a repeat customer and that I would be returning his cables to him for a refund.

His exact reply to me was “I think you are pretty stupid to not realize that Gold cost 10 times the price of silver. I would have sold you all of the silver cables that you wanted at the original price. I do not appreciate non thinking, paranoid jerks like you making ridiculous accusations.”

This was a very surprising response to me. I expected that he would simply admit that he had made a mistake and would offer to honor the originally quoted price. I replied to him stating that I found his response to be extremely unprofessional and that my business ethics are to keep my word on agreements and that I will only do business with people who share these same ethics.

Tom Kenny’s exact reply was “Do you think your generic white businessman talk is impressive? I find it silly.”

Wow! This from a man who has advertised in Stereophile magazine, I suppose with hopes of joining the cable manufacturers’ mainstream. Could you imagine George Cardas acting this way and saying these things?

Mr. Kenny’s printed refund policy is to mail a cheque 8-10 days after receiving the returned product. 18 days after he signed for my returned cables I e-mailed him asking where my money was. His exact reply was, “Your check in is the mail.” At that point he put it in the mail. I know this because he put a printed copy of my e-mail in the box.

Conclusion: We live in a democracy that allows us to speak our mind as long as those words do not violate Human Rights legislation and to make whatever purchasing decision that we wish. We simply need to ask ourselves, what kind of person do I want to conduct business with and how satisfied will I be with a product in my audio system that is sold by someone who says the things that Tom Kenny says and does what he does. Good luck with your cable purchasing decisions.

Just before posting this I conducted a search of Aural Thrills and came up with a number of interesting posts. I should have done this before conducting business with Mr. Kenny. I would then have known the amount of respect that he shows his customers. Two of the posts are:

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=cables&n=80946&highlight=Aural+Thrills&r=&session=

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=cables&n=90148&highlight=Aural+Thrills&r=&session=

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Product Weakness:	Customer Service
Product Strengths:	Detail, low noise

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Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier:	Rogue M-150 monoblocks
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Sonic Frontiers Line 3SE+ with Valvo tubes
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Consonance Droplet/VPI Scout
Speakers:	Quad 988
Cables/Interconnects:	Cardas Golden Reference, Z Squared
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	All
Other (Power Conditioner etc.):	P300 power plant
Type of Audition/Review:	Home Audition

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Analog Engineering Associates

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