Equinox 6 IC's in the house

[Masterlu]

Originally Posted by chessman

Mike, I bet an audition could be arranged to let you A/B them.

Indeed!

[mgard]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

Not for nothing; but looking at your gear list Mike the SE 6.0's will bring out the best, plus if you do get the Silver Eclipse 6.0 they will be the last IC's & speaker cables you ever buy.

Thanks Ivan,

The Silver Eclipse 6.0 is what I will shoot for. This is kinda my final fling putting together my audio system as retirement is getting closer.

[jimtranr]

Originally Posted by mgard

Thanks Ivan,

The Silver Eclipse 6.0 is what I will shoot for. This is kinda my final fling putting together my audio system as retirement is getting closer.

Mike, much as I'm enamored (my wife, too) of the Equinoxes, I think yours is a good decision. Should really make your 1.7's sing.

Jim

[jimtranr]

Originally Posted by jdandy

Jim.......That's very creative, and funny.

Thanks, Dan. You just put a smile on my face, too.

Jim

[audiot servant]

+1 on the Silver Eclipse 6 IC's... Mike, probably a bit over the 100 hrs mark now with my SE6 IC's... I coincidentally have now heard some of the other WW interconnects and while they were good the silver eclipse 6 IMHO are special and also amazing value... you'll never regret going the extra... one day you'll be playing the bryston and realise you never heard that piece of music or instrument sound quite as beautiful.. they pay back musically in a big way.
PS You'd hear the difference through the Maggies... all the detail of silver without any grain or edge.

cheers
Graham

Main Music:Pure Music>Wireworld silver starlight USB>Mac Air with 256GB SSD>Wireworld silver eclipse 6 ICs >Calyx DAC>Shindo Aurieges L>Sanders Magtech>Wireworld Silver Eclipse 6 SC>Magnepan 3.7
Head Music: Audeze LCD2 and AKG 702>Violectric V200 headphone amp
Also: Meridian>Straightwire and Kimber ICs>Peachtree Nova>Quicksilver GE 8417 monos>biwired Kimber 8tc>Proac Response 2

[mgard]

Graham,

Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughts. I am really looking forward to dumping my Nakamichi CDP for the new Bryston set up. The Silver Eclipse 6 IC's will connect it all together. It is very nice to have the WireWorld Silver Eclipse 6 IC's performance confirmed by you and others. I can't wait till this upgrade is complete. Nothing like having new gear on the shelf that one can't play because some of the pieces are missing. Like the old Heinz catsup commercial, "Anticipation is keeping me waiting"!

~Mike

[jimtranr]

As noted earlier, my listening sessions with the Equinox 6 IC's linking my Oppo digital source to the C-J line stage and the line stage to the C-J amp prompted me to pop for two more pairs so I could "Wireworld" the Graham Slee Era Gold V MM phono stage and McIntosh MR77 FM tuner to the line stage. When those cables arrived, I subjected them to FM interstation noise and sweep tones with some occasional real FM and CD listening during about 100 hours of primarily bedroom-system burn-in.

All critical listening was done with them wired up in the main system as shown below. In the foreground at photo center are the line stage phono, tuner, and CD input WW cables. The green interloper is the Comcast Motorola cable box Tara IC feed. (Note that the tonearm-to-phono stage link is the original Mogami IC supplied with the Profile/Jelco arm.) Speaker cable (the white and black wires emerging from a gray jacket below the input IC's) is Blue Jeans-sourced Belden 5T00UP 10-gauge with ultrasonic-welded banana plug terminations.



In one respect it was easy to hear (and, yes, see) a difference between the Kimber Silver Streak silver-copper hybrid originally feeding the MR77's output and the Equinox 6 that replaced it. The Kimber was at least 3db more efficient--the digital-readout C-J Premier 17LS's fixed-resistor ladder volume control increments and decrements in approximately 0.7db steps, so by viewing the readout I could see the approximate difference in line stage output to achieve an equivalent listening level with the two cables. I attribute the perceived efficiency difference to the silver in the Kimber hybrid.

Determining the sonic quality difference with FM is trickier because the source material is not a repeatable datum like home-based CD/SACD or vinyl playback. But leave it to my wife: "It's clearer, more distinct, and I can hear more of what they're playing in the background." She was referring to the MR77's output with the Equinoxes connected. And what she picked up on was...the quiet, a lower noise floor akin to what I'd heard during earlier outings with the Oppo through MF2500 WW linkage. (I should note that she doesn't say things like that to please me. When I DIY'd some speakers in the early '80's, she'd let me know with unalloyed directness when she thought I'd gotten the crossover wrong--and she was invariably right. Nothing's changed in the 30 years since.)

Moral: When someone insists that conductivity is the sole determinant of sonic quality when it comes to cables, do your best to be polite.

With vinyl playback the sonic difference was apparent right off the bat. Prior to the WW's, I'd used, in succession, Kimber Silver Streak, Tara, and Vampire-terminated JSC IC's from the Graham Slee to the 17LS. I'll keep it simple: None of those has made me appreciate anywhere near as much the musical sensibilities of the producers and engineers of the French and British EMI's, British Deccas, RCA Living Stereos, Mercuries, Vanguards, Lyritas, early Everests, certain Reprises, and, yes, even some Columbias as the Equinox 6's do. These cables allow more of what was captured by the mikes and emerged from the mixing consoles to flow to my Paradigms. All of the detailed comments I made in my earlier review about tonal, rhythmic, and dynamics characteristics discernible in the digital-source-to-amp stream with the WW's in place apply here as well. (Of course now I have to wonder about what adding an Equinox 6 tonearm cable to the mix would achieve.)

Formidable. And I'm not even taking price into consideration.

[jimtranr]

And I'm not sure they're even done yet at well over 100 hours (I don't know how much over, since I quit keeping count not long after my initial review) on the digital source-to-line stage Equinox 6 link.

Nothing in the system has changed--no equipment additions or swapouts, no moves that would involve cable settling time, no speaker or tube trap repositioning--since I installed the burned-in vinyl and FM IC's late on the 21st. So how come I'm hearing more of what I'd term "stage presence" that wasn't asserting itself with the same SACD's and CD's just a few days ago?

That breakout occurred late this afternoon as I listened to an oft-played CD of Gershwin Broadway overtures performed by Michael Tilson Thomas and the Buffalo Philharmonic (CBS MK42240, an AAD from masters originally engineered in 1976 by Columbia's Bud Graham and company). More plangent brass, reedier woodwinds, a tad more "sock" in the bass drum, and a somewhat greater sense of venue space.

To make sure my ears (or my head) weren't playing psychosensory games, I put on the SACD reissue of the RCA Living Stereo Fiedler/Wild Gershwin collaboration (two different producer/engineering teams: Richard Mohr/Lewis Layton and Peter Delheim/Anthony Salvatore). Same result. The attack of Wild's key strikes was sharper, the reverb of his piano's sounding board more prominent, the bass drum (particularly in the Delheim/Salvatore effort) a hair more gut-thumping, the brass a bit more sonorous, and the venue again more spacious.

In this context, "stage presence" doesn't connote a more forward presentation, but rather a sense of greater instrumental, spatial, and dynamics naturalness that draws you into the soundstage more than it leaps out at you.

Since time of day may constitute a listening variable due to power grid utilization, I'd note that my air conditioning was on (as I suspect it probably was in other places in the vicinity on this 90-plus-degree day here), so if anything I heard these improvements under less-than-best-case conditions.

Jim

[chessman]

Jim,

I had a similar experience. I thought at about 100 hours I had hit most of the changes, but at about 200 hours I had a sudden, noticeable improvement along the lines you describe. Now I am anxious to see what 300 hours will bring.

[audiot servant]

It has been invaluable reading what Randy and Jim have been experiencing with their cables and also hope Mike is enjoying his cables since going the SE 6. I'm really keen to hear what Dan is coming out with (very likely a much more in depth review) from his time with both the IC's and now the speaker cables given his experience, ear and gear.

It is hard for me to exactly attribute the specific changes in the Wireworld ICs because all of my gear is relatively new and settling in (varying from about 150 hours up to 300hrs+)...

Perhaps the only nervous time I have had so far with the Wireworlds SE 6 was a concern from 100 hrs till about 200hrs over a sense of a slight congestion or lower mid range grain. This was noticable since the extension and quality of the treble (this is liquid silver, not hard or cold) and the balance and authority of bass of these cables is so good right from early on.

That inconsistency dissipates with every listening over 200hrs and the cable is now much more uniform in terms of it's relative transparency/speed/detail/timbre from bottom to top. Good to hear both Jim and Randy say the WW cables do keep changing in no small measure for quite some time. Was starting to think I was hearing things. Strangely for me the most noticable realisation of how much better these cables are than anything else I have had came when I was listening to some clarinet and oboe and for the first time listening to 'not live' music found the reediness sounded just right, so seductive.

From about 200 hours on I am not hearing the cable much any more... not thinking about any part of the range any more... just kind of hearing more of the musical phrasing/delicacy in the performance, enjoying the brilliance of the playing, the expression and emotion of the song... just listening to the music and thinking less I spose.

This cable is becoming more and more of a fluid ghost in the system and I'm very happy about that... might just be that is the highest compliment I could pay it... it is dissappearing...

cheers
Graham