[prepress]

Work and other demands have kept me from getting more time in with the Premiums, but I had a 2:11 session last Sunday, though that was primarily background music as I did other things. Sunday was various CDs, including For God and Country: Forty Hymns of Joy (organ, percussion, and brass, another reference) and a CD of Bach cello suites. Monday, I squeezed in a 41-minute session and watched video clips from Yes Live at Montreaux and Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood Live from Madison Square Garden; these are reference discs on the video side.

The two main tracks off For God and Country are "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and "The Strife is O'er" (one of the few post-Reformation Catholic hymns to make it into the Protestant hymnbook). "Fortress" sounded even more powerful than I remember it, especially the climax. Glorious! And "Strife" has a low organ note in the second stanza that was more hit-or-miss with other power cords; here it's more consistently present than before, "steadier" comes to mind. Then with the Bach disc, the cello sounded like a cello to me, with just that little bit more of the bow-on-string resonance. Fairly subtle, but that's how it sounded.

With the Yes DVD, there was a greater sense of clarity to the sound than with the HPPC (which wasn't bad at all). That's not to say anything sounded obscure before; perhaps "cleaner," "sharper," or "open" are better words. And the lower end filled in a bit more, enough to be noticeable, especially in the low synth note underneath the organ run just before the final verses of "Awaken." It had an increased presence. I'll probably play this again with the volume up a bit more; my standard volume is 42 on my C2300, but I was playing this at 36. Comments on the other tracks I listened to would echo the improved presence of the low notes. On "Them Changes" from the Clapton/Winwood DVD, "solid" is the word I'd use. The kickdrum had more punch, and maybe a bit more of Steve Winwood's rhythm guitar came out under Clapton's lead. This one is recorded so well that my normal volume is almost too much, so I turned this one down to 36 as well. The word "cleaner" comes to mind again, though not as much as the Yes disc.

I think that all this is due to improvement in the bottom frequencies. Evan at Transparent said that when you get to the 10–12 AWG range, geometry has bigger impact than mere gauge. The Premiums have a filter network on them; the HPPCs don't. I wouldn't be surprised if that's not the main reason for much of what I hear so far. Then, I've always believed that heavier gauge meant better signal transfer and won't discount that as a factor, recalling the improvement I heard going from Kimber 8TC to 12TC speaker cable (9 AWG to 8 AWG). With the 12TC there was more atmosphere, more air around the music, as opposed to any noticeable changes in the music itself; the music breathed a bit more.

When I get to around 20 hours I'll consider the Premiums broken in and think about whether I want to play with tubes at all. I have Gold Lion, Mullard, JJ High-Performance, regular JJ, and NOS Amperex tubes I could try.