Aries interconnects...
...Lyra speaker cables
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Shunyata Research Constellation Series
Aries Interconnects and Lyra Speaker Cables
To a lot of people, the whole audio cable industry
represents everything that is wrong with the high-end audio industry. They see the
products as overpriced, trading on pseudoscience, and redolent of a particular type of
rapacious P. T. Barnum commercial sensibility.
There's a kernel of truth to this. There certainly are some
outrageous claims made for some cables and no one can deny that even
"affordable" cables seem to have gasp-inducing price tags, but I reckon the
cable industry as a whole is no more populated with rogues and scoundrels than, say, the
ranks of car mechanics, chiropractors, or lawyers.
As in those fields, my guess is that most cable
manufacturers are honest, sincere folks who are trying to offer a decent product and
make a buck or two. But the rotten apples certainly do muddy the waters they all swim in,
so to speak.
I think the real problem confronting the cable industry as
a whole, is the number of sincere, honest manufacturers in it who think they've found the
one real truth and that everyone else out there is deceived or deceptive. I believe it was
Art Dudley who first observed that listening to the claims of competing cable
manufacturers was the closest audio equivalent to being fought over by opposing bands of
missionaries all touting the sole true religion.
And brother, let me tell you from experience, an audio
reviewer simply can't win when he reviews a cable -- especially one that costs more than a
few hundred bucks. If he praises it, he's inundated with mail from people convinced he's
been "bought" or is hopelessly stupid; if he pans it, everybody yawns and
shouts, "Next!"
All of which explains why I don't, as a rule, even go there
any more -- reviewing cables is hard, thankless work. When I was an editor at a stereo
magazine, we'd assign cable reviews to the young reviewers who hadn't learned to say no
yet (it usually took about one cable review for them to learn). So, if I'm reviewing an
audio cable, it must be special.
The Shunyata Research Constellation Series cables are very
special. They perform extremely well, they are based upon real scientific concepts, and
they are even (by audiophile standards, anyway) reasonably priced ($650 USD for a meter
pair of Aries; $1250 for an eight-foot pair of Lyra).
What a concept.
Nature always desires what is better
Shunyata Research takes its name from the Sanskrit term for
the "silence from which all creation emanates." Its cables are the brainchild of
designer Caelin Gabriel, who has licensed exclusive patent rights to a matrix geometry
developed by physicist and speaker designer (Wilson Audio, Talon, Chesky) Tierry Budge.
Gabriel, himself a former NSA scientist, approaches the
design of his AC accessories (such as the superb PowerSnakes AC cables and Hydra
Power-Distribution Center) and audio cables with a purist material-science sensibility.
The Constellation Series cables started with Gabriel's
vision of a superior loudspeaker cable. The Lyra cable employs a complex matrix design
that minimizes the effects of electromagnetic interference (EMI) and self-induced
inductance. This geometry consists of a dual-helix, counter-rotating braid designed to
cross each of its individual conductors to the others at 90-degree angles,
"eliminating the resistance that occurs when electromagnetic fields propagate along
the lateral length of heavy gauge, bulk wire," according to the designer.
If you're getting dizzy trying to imagine how that works,
that's understandable. The Lyra speaker cable looks like no other wire I've ever seen. Its
outer casing is a braided sheath made out of what resembles monofilament fishing line. It
seems almost hollow, but within it one can perceive individual strands of rather stiff
wire coiling around two central "rods." While the individual strands are quite
stiff, the braided cable itself is relatively flexible and easy to route among components
and around corners. The Lyra is not one of those speaker cables that require you to
position your speakers within "line of sight" of your amp's terminals.
According to Gabriel, the main distinguishing
characteristic of the Lyra is its unique geometry. It's constructed of a high-purity
copper. While he is adamant that no one metal is "better" than another, they're
just different, he is not a fan of silver cables, claiming he has never cared for the
sound the metal imparts to transient attacks. According to him, "Copper's only
weakness is that it can sound fuzzy or grainy if the purity isn't high, and it tends to
lack a certain amount of speed and impact compared to silver, but if you have an
exceptional geometry, as we do, you can compensate for that. I find that it's difficult to
compensate for the sound of silver -- you can never really completely get away from
it."
As to the cable's geometry: "The counter-rotating
dual-helix is probably the first genuinely original cable geometry developed in years.
A conventional braid is wound around a central core, and that's good because it moves the
electromagnetic lines of flux outside the cable conductor itself. If it's wound
around a central core, the very strong electromagnetic lines of force are in the center of
the cable where there's no wire. That's good because it reduces inductance.
However, if the signal and the return wires are both wound around the same core, then
their electromagnetic lines of flux meet at the same point -- and that means that
effectively those lines interact very strongly with one another."
On the Lyra, the centers for the signal and return are
offset from one another. Gabriel again: "If you look inside the cables you see the
loops of the wire are quite large and the centers of the signal and return are physically
separated. This gives the Lyra superior ability to move information, because the
inductance of the cable is extremely low -- and also because the cable winding keeps the
wires quite far apart, but where they do cross, they do so at almost perfect 90-degree
angles, which keeps the capacitance low."
The braided Lyra is complex to make. "A
three-conductor braid is relatively simple," Gabriel says. "A four-conductor
cable is lot more difficult to do, and, for most people, a five-strand braid is impossible
to keep straight. The Lyra is a four by four braid -- eight conductors and two
center strands -- so you have 10 different wires, and you can't cross wires over,
you have to pull them through the loop the other wires form, which means the cable has to
be braided by hand. We employ women who work out of their homes braiding these cables to
length -- it is quite labor intensive and we can't make it in bulk and then trim it as
needed. Each length must be painstakingly hand-made according to our computer-modeled
design."
All his faults are such that one loves him still the
better for them
The Aries interconnect was the result of several years'
effort on Gabriel's part to come up with an interconnect he "considered unique enough
to justify bringing a new product to market." Its conductors are Litz types (a true
Litz configuration is composed of individually insulated, micro-fine wires woven together
in a pattern that ensures each is identical in length) made to Shunyata's specification.
The Litz conductors used in the Aries are configured in an
exclusive spiral-helix geometry that utilizes unique, non-signal-carrying isolation
strands to minimize cross talk and self-induced EMF distortions. Gabriel discovered that
typically used insulation materials, dyes, and pigments subtly degraded the performance of
signal-carrying cables, so the conductors and isolation strands on the Aries are jacketed
in a protective medical-grade, transparent outer sleeve.
Gabriel explains, "We use a microscopically thin
insulation, 600 individually insulated conductors or ultra-pure copper, and a similar
geometry to our power cables -- which is to say we pay a lot of attention to the return
leg of the cable. Our research indicates that a lot of the distortions that exist in cable
designs are self-induced from the field of the signal traveling the wire going to and
coming back from the component. In the Aries, we addressed that by using a spiral geometry
with no center wire and we use separation rods to keep the wires physically away from one
another, which reduces their field interactions."
The Aries uses exceptionally well-made RCA locking-style
connectors and balanced XLR connectors sourced from Neutrik. Both connectors were chosen
for their superior contact and performance after extensive listening tests.
Oh yeah, one more thing distinguishes the Shunyata cables:
The company manufactures its own wire; it doesn't purchase bulk cable from outside
vendors. "We don't purchase wire," Gabriel emphasizes. "We don't buy
somebody else's off-the-shelf wire, we make it. We select the ingots, we make the
wire, we use our own stranding process, and then we select the dielectric we'll house it
in."
It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home
to live with you for the rest of your life
One last word from Caelin Gabriel -- I asked him what he
thought of all the folks who insist that the realm of audio cables is filled with
snake-oil salesman who peddle technically dubious products to the gullible.
He responded, "That's not entirely without merit.
There are some claims that simply are offensive. However, things are not as simple as some
people would argue. The problem with the hard-line approach to cables is that people like
to cite Ohm's Law and Kirkhoff's Current Law without examining where these engineering
rules came from. These rules are generalizations that make it easy to comprehend the
concepts they codify.
"But some of these assumptions simply aren't true. For
example, the one that states a wire has zero resistance -- we know that's untrue. The
received knowledge also makes assumptions about capacitors and resistors that aren't true,
either, such as that capacitors rotate phase 90 degrees. That’s almost true, but 90
degrees isn't the precise number for most caps, as nearly any crossover designer will
testify -- it's just a rule of thumb that works pretty well most of the time."
He builded better than he knew
I used the Constellation cables in a wide variety of
systems over an extended period of time. Source components included the Audio Research
CD3, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 3D CD player, and MF Tri-Vista SACD player. Preamps
included the Ayre K-1x, Conrad-Johnson Premier 17LS, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista, and Krell
KAV-280P. Power amps included the Ayre V-5x, MF Nu-Vista 300, Linn Klimax Twin, Krell
KAV-2250, and VTL TT-25. Speakers that marched through the listening room included the
Dynaudio Evidence Temptation, Vince Christian e9/c12 speaker system, Roman Audio
Centurions, and ProAc Studio One Ses. I also used the balanced Aries between the ARC CD3
and the capable-of-revealing-a-gnat's-fart-in-a-cathedral HeadRoom BlockHead balanced
monoblock headphone amplifier/Cardas-cabled balanced Sennheiser HD 600
headphone system. And, of course, I use many other cable combinations in the different
combinations that resulted from all those choices.
And, whether from tubes or solid state, reference monitor
or stand-mounted two-way, balanced or single-ended system, behemoth amp or tiny triode, I
never, ever felt as though I was missing information or obscuring any with cable-source
colorations.
Do you realize how rare that is for an obsessive/compulsive
audiophile personality?
I have been told that Wagner’s music is better than
it sounds
Now I'm not going to claim the Aries and Lyra are perfect
-- or even the best cables out there. The most basic truth about cables is that they are
networks and most of them seem to have component/speaker combinations they mesh extremely
well with and vice versa. A speaker cable that works extremely well with a complex load
like the Thiel CS7.2 -- such as the networked MIT cables -- might not be the best choice
for, say, a high-efficiency design such as the Soliloquy 5.0. Life is short and even I
have a limit to the combinations I can try, but I must say that I never heard a system in
six months of auditioning that made me question the transparency or honesty of the
Shunyatas.
The most obvious characteristic of both cables is their
neutrality. Each component sounded distinct and like itself, and the minute differences
between similar-sounding instruments or venues that are typically buried within recorded
ambiance were starkly revealed. No, "starkly" is too hard a word -- it makes it
sound as though these differences were glaring or spotlit, which they were not. Through
the Aries/Lyra cables, differences were simply different -- things were more like
themselves and less like one another.
Guitars, for instance, or, in the case of the David
Grisman, Bob Brozman, and Mike Auldridge Tone Poems 3: The Sounds of the Great Slide
& Resophonic Instruments [Acoustic Disc 0042 CD], a phenomenal collection of
hollow-neck koa Hawaiian guitars; German-silver National single-coned and tri-coned
resonator guitars; wood-bodied dobros from Gibson, R. Q. Jones, Guernsey, and Bear Creek;
as well as various ukuleles, mandolins, and tenor guitars. The range of tonal color of
this record is astonishing and the Constellation cables let it come through with a
harmonic vividness that was startlingly natural.
By the way, all three Tone Poems recordings feature
beautiful 40-plus-page booklets with essays and photographs of the rare instruments used
on the recordings, but the reason to buy 'em is they're fun to listen to. It's good
music and awfully well recorded, if somewhat closely so.
Another noteworthy property of the Aries/Lyra combo was its
apparent speed and timbral accuracy. No, I'm not claiming to hear the difference between
the speed of sound and the speed of sound minus a few milliseconds. When I say the
Constellation cables sound fast, I mean that they do not skew the arrival of either
the high frequencies or the lows (both time distortions are frequent and are among the
chief causes of cable colorations).
This lack of smear and hash was preternaturally apparent on
Hot Jazz by Mark O'Connor, Jon Burr, and Frank Vignola. The disc features
blisteringly hot trio performances of, well, hot jazz and the interplay between the three
musicians is fast and furious. Any lag, any blurring of detail would be nakedly revealed
by this disc as there's nowhere to hide for either the musicians or the musical
reproduction. The Shunyata cables delivered sound that was full-bodied, with lots of
Burr's deep, propulsive bass and O'Connor's mercurial fiddle, driven along by Vignola's
fluidly percussive pick-work. As the music clatters along at its breakneck pace, one
simply has to marvel at how clean, how complex, and how completely and naturally
interconnected it all is. There's lots of space and air in the sound and almost none at
all between the individual components. What a marvelous paradox!
What supremely natural presentation.
The notes I handle no better than many pianists.
But the pauses between the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides!
I could go on in the same vein for days -- after all, I
spent a lot of time auditioning the Shunyata cables but my experiences all boiled
down to this: I can't find any shortcomings in a product that barely has any apparent
sound at all.
Are the Shunyata cables perfect? My mind tells me they
can't be because no physical product can approach a theoretical ideal, but I could never
find any apparent flaw with the cables in any system combination I auditioned them in.
Admittedly, I did not have a speaker with a complex
crossover, such as the Thiel CS7.2s, or a reactive load, such as an electrostat, on hand
during the audition, so I cannot assure you the Shunyatas work as well with those
components as they did with the ones I did manage to audition. Nor did I have a microwatt
tube amp or flat-to-the-speed-of-light ultra-wide-bandwidth amplifier that pre-supposes a
control network embedded in its cables, so again, I cannot speak of those either. However,
I was extremely impressed and satisfied with all the combinations I did try and have no
reservations recommending the Shunyata Aries and Lyra.
The cables are well made and perform well. I'm no
physicist, but their technology makes sense and does not ask me to abandon the physics I
do grasp. And, while they aren't inexpensive, considering the cost of hand labor and
ultra-high-performance parts (not to mention economy of scale), they seem fairly priced.
Add exemplary performance to that equation and you have
cables that are bound to please.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
Shunyata Research
Constellation Series Aries Interconnects and Lyra Speaker Cables
Prices: Aries interconnects, $650 USD per meter pair;
Lyra speaker cables, $1250 per eight-foot pair.
Warranty: Five years parts and labor.
Shunyata Research Inc.
5594 N.E. Minder Rd.
Poulsbo, WA 98370
Phone: (608) 850-6752
E-mail: info@powersnakes.com
Website: www.powersnakes.com
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