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Published January 15, 2000

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DiMarzio M-Path Interconnects, M-Path Speaker Cables and Super M-Path Speaker Cables

I was speaking to Headroom's Tyll Hertsens one day last summer when I mentioned that I wasn't aware that any high-quality headphone extension cables were being currently marketed. Several days later, I received a box containing not one, but five of the critters. One example came clad in bright scarlet nylon sheathing and sported the biggest, most serious-looking phono plugs I'd ever seen. Attached to it was a label proclaiming it to be a DiMarzio product. It was different from the other cables: It was flexible enough to snake easily through the maze of boxes that still filled my living room. And it sounded unbelievably clean and clear when I had to don my Sennheiser HD-600s to keep from driving my wife crazy with my addiction to The West Wing.

So I called Tyll and asked him about DiMarzio -- gosh, that name sounded familiar. D'oh! Turns out DiMarzio is Larry DiMarzio, the guy who turned the musical instrument business upside down by creating new, improved, high-output versions of the venerable Stratocaster single-coil guitar pickup, thereby creating a whole new world of tonal possibilities for the discerning guitarist -- and, in the process, creating an entire industry.

"Give him a call," Tyll urged. "He makes interconnect and speaker cables, too."

So I did. And a week later, I had several pairs of M-Path interconnects and an eight-foot run of M-Path speaker cable. M-Path, heh heh, get it? As in empathy, or the "identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives." Funny guy, that Larry.

Actually, he is -- he's a hoot to talk to. I asked him how he came to design audio cables. "I've always been a big audio buff," Larry said. "I go way back -- I have a pair of Marantz Model Nines and a Model Seven preamp, and I even have a pair of Mark Levinson ML-2s, as well as a bunch of more modern high-end gear, including the Mark Levinson No. 39 CD player.

"Well, a long time ago, I read somewhere that Mark Levinson used silver in his interconnects. I was using silver-plated copper in my pickups, so I decided it would be a great idea to wind some pickups with solid silver wire. It was pretty interesting, actually. DC resistance was down and everything measured different -- they should have sounded great. But they sounded horrible, just awful. I shouldn't have been surprised, it wasn't the first time the math didn't jibe with what the ear said. So I thought about it for a few years and decided to try it the other way around: Rather than try to make audiophile pickups, I decided to take what I had learned from pickups and make audiophile cables."

G'wan, pull my wire

The M-Path interconnects are covered in the same braided-nylon sheath as the headphone cable -- each pair consists of one sheathed in black and one in red. They are terminated to what appear to be WBT locking-RCA connectors but aren't. "I buy those in China," DiMarzio said. "I didn't realize they resembled WBTs, I just bought them because they were the best-sounding RCAs I tested."

Did he test the WBTs? "No, but I wouldn't be able to sell these cables for $150 per pair if I had four WBTs on 'em. I'm sure they sound great, but I'm more interested in building a good-sounding cable that's affordable than I am in a no-holds-barred product."

The interconnects are constructed from 240 strands of Teflon^®-coated OFC wire. The individual strands are 40–49AWG; the entire bundle works out to about 16AWG, with a 16-gauge drain. The wire is terminated to the connector via ultrasonic welding, a process that DiMarzio considers integral to the sound quality of the cable.

"We did a series of tests with different types of termination and, much to my surprise, we discovered that it creates remarkably audible differences. We found we needed to create a solid portion at the end of the cable that incorporates all of the strands -- break off just a few strands and a great wire can become unlistenable. We settled on ultrasonic welding for this, and that should create a difference in the resistance. However, I don't think that's what changes the sound. Getting the signal precisely aligned at the beginning and the end of a cable seems to increase microdynamic transmission, while reducing some other audible effects that occur within the wire  -- although I realize that sounds awfully science-fiction-y. I don't know why this should be true, but we've observed it consistently."

The speaker cables are similarly straightforward. The M-Path utilizes two individual runs of 12-gauge stranded cable -- seven bundles of strands per cable -- while the Super M-Path is, essentially, twice the wire with the same construction: the seven bundles now giving a total gauge of 9. The cables are terminated to solid, but not macho, spade lugs.

"Another strange thing we discovered," DiMarzio said, "is that different bundles had different sounds. We'd divide 240 strands by five or by six bundles, using the same wire pulled from the same spool, and darned if it didn't sound different! I don't see cable sound as being as simple as an RLC network; I think that it's something different, something to do with bundling and termination. It might even have to do with the amount of tension that various coatings such as Teflon or PVC put on to the wire -- I don't even pretend to know."

That's pure Larry. It doesn't matter that he has pulled about as much wire in his life as anyone, he doesn't pretend to know it all -- he's basically still the down-to-earth guitar tech who hand-wound guitar pickups in his spare time. "My work with pickups has made a 'real-world application' fanatic out of me. I can design a pickup that ought to sound pretty good, but the only way to find out is to take it out and play a gig with it. If it works and it sounds good, fine; if it doesn't sound good, it doesn't matter how much better it should be theoretically. So I don't get too upset if I can't explain everything I experience -- the experience is more useful to me than the explanation."

Chattering voltage like a broken wire

What I experienced when I connected the M-Path interconnect was delight. I'd been auditioning Polk's RT 300P active subwoofer/speaker system and was concerned about what appeared to be an over-abundance of sibilance through the passive midrange/tweeter section. When I played Classic Records' two-CD set of Sarah McLaughlin's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy & The Freedom Sessions [RTHCD-200], she was spittin' out "p"s and "t"s and "ess"es all over the place with my reference AudioTruth Midnights, and also with Musical Fidelity's Nu-Vista Silver Interconnect (which, at $199/.7m, are a lot closer in price to the DiMarzios than the AudioTruths).

The M-Path almost completely cured that problem. The sound was calmer, better focused and warmer. The new wires did not appear to be truncating detail -- I was still getting that in spades -- but they sounded quite different from what I had experienced with the other two interconnects.

Ditto for the speaker cables. While I had severe reservations about the way the Nu-Vista and the Polk interacted, I loved the sound with the DiMarzios. Not a hint of tizz or peakiness -- but no sign of tonal darkening either.

And when I tried the Super M-Path on the Thiel 7.2s, I was astounded by the amount of deep bass information they were able to extract out of the system. I listened to Jon Iverson's Alternesia (MA Recordings Momentum M3) and nearly shook the books off their shelves with the deep bass synthesizer tones. I loved it.

If I had to describe the DiMarzio "sound" -- and let's face it, everything has a sound -- I would have to call it sweet and warm with phenomenal bottom-end extension.

Does that mean I think it's "colored?" That's hard to answer -- in fact, it took a lot of wire changing back and forth to get a handle on it. I think the Nu-Vista and AudioTruth cables were telling the truth about the synergy between the Polk tweeters and my Nu-Vista 300 power amplifier. The sound was spitchy -- the Polks did much better with lower-powered, sweeter amplifiers, such as the Monarchy SM-70 and my VTL Tiny Triodes.

Yet, the DiMarzio cables didn't seem to be obscuring any details when they sweetened the sound. But on a very subtle level, perhaps they were. With the M-Paths, the Polks hung a stable, solid image between the speakers -- listening to AudioQuest's newest DSD-recorded CDs, I was incredibly conscious of the physical presence of the band members on Doug McLeod's Whose Truth, Whose Lies? [AudioQuest AQ-CD1054]. They were there -- but I wasn't. I never got the front wall to completely disappear into the soundstage the way it had with the Nu-Vista 300/AudioQuest Dragon/Thiel 7.2 combination.

Well, the Polks go for under $4k and the Thiels sell for about four times that much -- you can buy a lot of resolution with that difference in price. The point is that the DiMarzios were a synergistic match with the Polks in a way that the far more expensive AudioTruths were not.

Simply substituting the Super M-Path for the Dragon in the Nu-Vista/Thiel system didn't reveal the amount of low-level detail that the Dragons did -- while I seemed to gain in mid-to-low bass extension/emphasis, it led to a tradeoff in holographic imaging. The furthest away details just weren't as sharp with the M-Paths.

So the DiMarzio cables lack that last bit of resolution, big deal -- on the other hand, they never sounded bad. I used them with some bright mass market gear I keep around the house -- an early Eighties Pioneer receiver and CD player I keep as a "real world" system (a reviewer's version of the NS-10 monitors studios used to have around) -- and they sounded great, better than I'd ever heard them, actually. Or, at least, more enjoyably listenable than I can recall.

But don't think of the DiMarzios as crude tone controls destined to be used in sub-standard systems, either. I tried the M-Path speaker cables with my much beloved Linn Classik/Tukan office system and it was sweeet. Also detailed. And, need I mention, listenable for hour after hour.

The DiMarzios were essentially what Larry D told me they were -- good-sounding affordable cables. That they are in spades. And their flexibility is a definite plus -- I'm tired of stiff cables that won't bend around corners. All three DiMarzio cables drape around objects like fine-spun silk.

Wind me up

The DiMarzio cables were easy to use and easy to like. They certainly are priced competitively. These days, it costs $150 just to package and promote a product, even if it doesn't cost anything to construct -- so DiMarzio seems to be pricing his cables extremely fairly, in my opinion. In addition, the cables are very well constructed, with substantial connectors and solid terminations.

Although I feel they lack that last niggling little scoonch of resolution, I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing -- their sweetness and extension make them ideal for that vast majority of systems that don't offer the last word in resolution. Besides, their accommodating nature just might compensate for flaws elsewhere in your system.

The DiMarzio M-Path cables and interconnects are honest products at honest prices and I can honestly recommend them for audition.

...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com

DiMarzio M-Path Interconnects, M-Path Speaker Cables, & Super M-Path Speaker Cables
Prices: M-Path Interconnects, $150/three-foot pair; M-Path Speaker Cable, $250/eight-foot pair; Super M-Path Speaker Cable, $500/eight-foot pair
Warranty: Lifetime

DiMarzio West, Inc
P.O. Box 3228
Bozeman, MT 59772
Tel: (406) 582-8618

E-mail: larryd@imt.net
Website: www.dimarzio.com

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