Cable Asylum: REVIEW: Cardas Audio Clear Beyond Cable by Luminator

Model:	Clear Beyond
Category:	Cable
Suggested Retail Price:	$2588 termination + $1216 per half-meter
Description:	speaker cable
Manufacturer URL:	Cardas Audio
Model Picture:	View

Review by Luminator on November 21, 2011 at 14:44:57
IP Address: 38.122.6.26 Add Your Review
for the Clear Beyond

To read about the Cardas Clear Beyond itself, please click on the following links. No, you don't have to read them in order. Yes, you can leave comments on each post. Yes, like most audiophiles, you can e-mail me directly.

Naughty By Nature - box
2 Live Crew Is What We Are - Cooking
True Stories - connectors
Count Three And Pray - initial use
Reign In Blood - further use
Sports Weekend - on the floor
Use Your Illusion I - versus Golden Reference
Use Your Illusion II - termination
Electronic - discrete bi-wiring
Street Songs - discrete bi-wiring

If you have read the posts, you will have learned that my friends and I had more than one sample. In total, we had four pairs of Clear Beyond. Two were terminated with spades at both ends. The other two pairs were terminated with bananas at both ends.

In addition to my own gear, we used the Clear Beyond in these systems:

System 1
dCS Puccini
Jeff Rowland Criterion
Jeff Rowland 312
Joseph Audio Pulsar

n.b.: this system only accepts spades

System 2

Rega P25
Sumiko BPS
CAL Delta & Alpha
Conrad-Johnson PF-R
Conrad-Johnson EV-1
Conrad-Johnson ET-250S
Joseph Audio Pulsar
Totem Hawk

n.b.: the Pulsar cannot be used with bananas

System 3
Simaudio Andromeda
Simaudio P-8
Simaudio W-7
Sonus Faber Guarneri Memento

We used tens of cables. Any wire can pass a signal. But how did the Clear Beyond stack up against other heavy-hitters?

vs. Nordost Odin

The Odin has speed, transparency, AND control. Regardless of what you use Odin with, the Odin’s speed, transparency, and control are obvious. This especially stands out, when we replace the reference gear with lesser-quality gear.

For example, when I take out the dCS Puccini, and insert the Primare CD31, the Cardas Clear Beyond is honest enough, to reveal losses in fine detail, soundstage depth, and scale. But I feel the Odin goes a step further, letting me know precisely where the CD31 falls short of the Puccini.

Yet, there is small band in the lower midrange, perhaps where the throat of male voices comes in, where the Clear Beyond becomes a little more fluid, a little more lyrical, and little more continuous. Subjectively, the Odin can appear to bring out the electron microscope, when it dissects Lillian Axe's "Under The Same Moon." Every stop, turn, and move is captured with precision. If you like following each and every note, you should be thrilled with the Odin.

By being a little more "continuous," the Clear Beyond reproduces "Under The Same Moon" with a touch more grace. Instead of following each note with bated breath, you might find yourself re-focusing on the music's mood. As you follow the lead singer, you might feel the cool autumn night. The song is about the angst a vampire feels, as he wants to maintain relations with humans, but can't, since he needs to feed off of them.

You may have to go back and forth between cables a few turns, but eventually, you may discover that, in raw terms, the Odin captures more of the recorded space's volume. This is true, when we use the dCS Puccini to play the acoustic version of Lillian Axe's "Nobody Knows." Not only are the images supremely focused, they are set nicely in a large, well-defined (multi-tracked) space.

With the Clear Beyond, some of that spatial precision and volume is lost. The result is that you may be swept more in the emotion or mood of the music. You can be forgiven, if you start singing along, "Nobody knows when you're down and out..."

Sticking with Lillian Axe, I used to think that their debut eponymous album, produced by Ratt's Robbin Crosby, was just another late-80s, thin-sounding recording. Well, now the CD is available on a limited run of 2000 remastered copies. Yeah, yeah, they probably never sold 2000 of the original. But we are audiophiles. We are used to that. And we are also used to digging deeper into artists' repertoires. Do that, and you will find that the remastered Lillian Axe is still kind of 2-dimensional, but it does have better (a) soundstage width and height, (b) tone, and (c) freedom from grain and hash.

When the album originally came out in 1988, I was in high school. While killing time in study hall, I would listen to Lillian Axe's "Dream Of A Lifetime" via Sony Discman, and watch the girls go by. Strangely enough, on the remastered CD, "Dream Of A Lifetime" summed up the differences in the bass, between the Odin and Clear Beyond.

Via the Odin, bass is simply state-of-the-art. But the Clear Beyond (especially when the Simaudio Andromeda is at the top of the chain) adds a few percentage points is bass reproduction. Bass via the Clear Beyond has more front-to-back depth. Tone is slightly browner, which is as it should be. And bass simply fills the room with more physical presence [no, this is NOT the same as inserting an equalizer, and pumping up the bass]. For an all too brief moment, I got hung up on the music, and forgot about what I was doing in study hall, all those years ago.

Overall, the Odin sets cable standards in speed, resolution, transparency, accuracy, and sheer lack of negatives. No, the Clear Beyond is not quite up to these levels. Yet, in some areas (e.g., lyricism, scale, image shape, bass), the Clear Beyond creeps ahead of even the Odin. And in the subjective area of getting lost in the music, the Clear Beyond does a mighty fine job. Nor am I lost on the fact that audiophiles have observed that the Odin costs about 3x that of the Clear Beyond.

vs. Tara Labs ISM The One

Like most Tara Labs speaker cables, the ISM The One comes with the so-called BSM (Banana-Spade Module) termination, where you screw in either a banana or spade. I personally am okay with the BSM, but I know of many audiophiles who complain that, eventually, the plugs (especially spades) work themselves loose.

With the Cardas Clear Beyond, you specify/order your termination, and that's that.

The ISM The One costs half as much as the Clear Beyond. Still, the comparison proves interesting. When you switch between the two, The One can come across as slick and airbrushed. The Clear Beyond does a much better job at preserving instrumental textures. And this even extends and applies to music which is completely synthesized, such as the Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring." With more colors and textures to choose from, listening via the Clear Beyond is a deeper, more meaningful listening experience. As Neil Tennant goes through the 20s, 70s, and 90s, you really feel it.

Sticking with the Pet Shop Boys, pull out their 1993 gem, "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing." Via the ISM The One, it's certainly "fast."

But when you bust out the Clear Beyond, you see that The One lacks grip. The images aren't as firmly anchored within the soundstage. On "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing," the song simply lacks some bounce and color. However, a listener could argue that The One's clean and transparent presentation yields a more "see-through" view, enough to make it obvious that "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing [which comes from the album Very ]" is even more transparent than the slightly more lush-sounding "Psychological [from the album Fundamental ]."

vs. Wireworld Platinum Eclipse

I communicate daily with several audiophiles. We're always looking for alternatives to the MIT Oracle v1.3, Nordost Odin, and Tara Labs Omega Gold. I usually say, "Well, for half those prices, we can get the Wireworld Platinum Eclipse." In turn, the Platinum Eclipse is not quite twice as expensive as the Clear Beyond.

This is where sonic comparisons start to get hairy, and very difficult to write about.

So let me use Kingdom Come's In Your Face as a reference. In late 1989, I entered UC Santa Cruz. The '89 Loma Prieta quake struck, leaving Santa Cruz in ruins. Thus, on weekends, I preferred to go home to San Francisco. I would return to Santa Cruz on Sunday nights. As I rode down Highway 1, I commonly listened to In Your Face .

Most audiophile cables, in order to appeal to stereotypical audiophiles, roll off the upper octaves. They may not be as gross as, say, Dolby B, but you get the idea. Not so with the Platinum Eclipse and Clear Beyond. They are ruler flat up top, neither rolled-off nor boosted. In some spots, In Your Face lacks upper end air and breath. Both cables will tell you exactly where, when, and by how much.

Via the Platinum Eclipse, music has slightly more focus and sparkle, against a "blacker" background. Via Clear Beyond, the images are larger, with slightly more substance and mass to them. If these speaker cables are my car rides down to Santa Cruz, then the Platinum Eclipse is like staring up at the sky, and seeing more stars ('cuz the San Mateo coast is free from the city lights of San Francisco). The Clear Beyond would be more like looking at the horizon, just above the Pacific Ocean, with the moonlight being the main light source.

Knowing that it's a toss-up, my audiophile friends just shrug. Using the Simaudio system, one of those audiophiles gave up, "We'd have an easier time, choosing which bottled water tastes best."

vs. XLO Limited Edition

If you were to say that it is a case of "equal, but different" or a toss-up between the XLO LE-5 and Cardas Clear Beyond, you won't get any argument from me. Yet, I think that listeners should have a relatively easy time telling the two apart.

The LE-5 reproduces firm, solid, blockish, unambiguous images. Those rock-solid images are combined with power. Put on The Gap Band's "Burn Rubber." Via the LE-5, my awestruck audiophile friend gasped, "Whoa, it's like I got kicked in the chest by a horse!"

But when that car screeches off, the Clear Beyond displays greater transparency. Thus, you are able to "see" into the mix more clearly and easily.

Now play The Gap Band's "Early In The Morning." Again, via the LE-5, the drums have both punch and power. But the Clear Beyond seems to capture more of the drums' wood. I don't know how other listeners interpret this, but I marvel at the way the Clear Beyond makes the drums more naturally weighty, slightly more believable .

Overall, because I find the LE-5 to be a little less resolving in the areas of see-through transparency, image finesse, and instrumental texture, music thus becomes slightly sweet. Interestingly, the Simaudio P-8 has a subtle but pervasive warmth. You don't really notice it, until you have pitted the P-8 against other top-notch preamps, or perhaps really good headphone amps. When the LE-5 is used in systems with the Simaudio P-8, the balance may be tipped too far in the sweet direction. But if you have a more bloodless-sounding preamp, you might find the LE- to be the better match.

When switching between LE-5 and Clear Beyond, one of my audiophile friends said, "If the Clear Beyond is like sparkling mineral water, then the LE-5 is like Sprite."

And of course, another one of our audiophile buddies yawned, "Forget sodas; I want a beer!"

If you read my posts, you will have learned that my audio buddies did have some samples of the regular Cardas Clear speaker cable. They returned the regular Clears, before I had a chance to audition them. Thus, if you are looking for a comparison between the regular Clear and the Clear Beyond, I can't help you.

Even if you do not currently have an exalted system, you should still audition the Cardas Clear Beyond, if only to see what a top-notch speaker cable can and cannot do. Even if you can't afford or accommodate a Clear Beyond now, auditioning one can tell you if it is something you can strive for.

I can tell you that, for me, going back to the Golden Reference is a major letdown. Even if I change nothing else in the system, the music collapses, becomes like a crinkled ball of paper. I guess it's like being a skier in the Spring, when the snow has melted, and the Lake Tahoe ski resorts have shut down for the season.

-Lummy The Loch Monster

Product Weakness:	some people don't like the old school looks; longer lengths and double bi-wire can become weighty; outer jacket smudges and gets dirty easily; print can rub off easily; like all cables, needs a burn-in device, to unlock potential
Product Strengths:	blue, not black; no fancy but wasteful packaging; made here in the U.S.

Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier: Classe' CA-2100; Conrad-Johnson ET-250S; Jeff Rowland 312; Simaudio W-7
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): Classe' CP-500; Conrad-Johnson PF-R; Jeff Rowland Criterion; Simaudio P-8
Sources (CDP/Turntable): numerous
Speakers: numerous
Cables/Interconnects: numerous
Music Used (Genre/Selections): rock, pop, oldies, R&B
Type of Audition/Review: Home Audition

Amplifier:	Classe' CA-2100; Conrad-Johnson ET-250S; Jeff Rowland 312; Simaudio W-7
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Classe' CP-500; Conrad-Johnson PF-R; Jeff Rowland Criterion; Simaudio P-8
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	numerous
Speakers:	numerous
Cables/Interconnects:	numerous
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	rock, pop, oldies, R&B
Type of Audition/Review:	Home Audition