Audio Magic Excalibur mkII interconect XLR or RCA pairs 1 meter, like new sold each pair:

Audio Magic Excalibur MK-II interconnects in either a XLR or RCA pairs in 1 meter, like new sold each pair:

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March 2000 Audio Magic Excalibur II Interconnects and Speaker Cables by Paul Schumann   Review Summary Sound "A good deal of the conventional review jargon failed [Paul] in describing the sound of these wires"; "every note rings true with clarity" and "seem[s] to pop out in stark relief against a dead-quiet background"; but Paul keeps "coming back to how natural everything sounds." Features Silver ribbon conductors and air dielectric; Cardas rhodium spades and locking RCA connectors; speaker cables use sand to control resonances. Use Require 100 hours of break-in before their "true sound" emerges; RCAs are robust, so the female RCAs on your equipment must allow ample clearance for them -- and most will. Value Very high, bettering other cables their own price and giving a hint at what more money might buy. When I accepted the assignment to review Audio Magic’s newly revamped line of Excalibur cabling, I had an inkling of the experience that waited before me. SoundStage! had already favorably reviewed some of Audio Magic’s top-of-the-line cabling, so I was anxious to hear for myself the magic that the new Excalibur cabling could bring to my system. As with all of Audio Magic’s better cables, silver is the heart of the Excalibur II speaker cables and interconnects. Silver cabling has had a controversial history in the audiophile world, with accusations of brightness and exaggerated detail. It seems that while silver is a superior conductor to copper in many respects, it must be used judiciously to achieve its true benefits. With an increase in the surface area of the conductor, there is a reduction in the amount smearing of the audio signal as it passes through the conductor. The simplest way to achieve this is to form the conductor in the shape of ribbon. If this sounds familiar, all you have to do is read Doug Blackburn’s reviews of Nordost SPM Reference and Magnan Signature interconnects and speaker cables to refresh your memory. Therefore, it is with little surprise that I discovered Audio Magic uses pure-silver ribbon conductors in both their interconnects and speaker cables. These silver ribbons are polished by hand and chemically treated to prevent oxidation and increase conductivity. The other key construction detail of these interconnects and speaker cables is the use of air as dielectric. Air is an excellent dielectric because it is a superior insulator and does little to reflect the absorbed electromagnetic energy generated by the conductor. (Can you tell I was once a physics major in college?) The obvious problem with air is that it can’t hold the conductors in place to prevent shorts. Audio Magic’s resourceful solution to this problem is to use PVC tubing in the space between the conductor and the outer jacket. In addition to the PVC tubing, sand is also used to control resonances in the Excalibur II speaker cables. Despite the girth of these cables and interconnects, they are surprisingly light and flexible. A final comment must be made on the termination and craftsmanship of these wires. The Excalibur II interconnects are terminated with locking RCA connectors and incorporate silver-braided shielding. The speaker cables use Cardas rhodium spades and are configured so that there is only one conductor for each connection. This means that you actually use two cables for each speaker, thereby totally eliminating any sort of interference between the two conductors. This sort of no-compromise construction gives these products a true high-end look and feel. The termination of both the interconnects and speaker cables requires that associated components are up to the task. The connectors are the burliest I have come across. If the RCA connectors are too closely spaced on a component in your system, the Excalibur II's RCAs simply won’t fit. My Jolida SJ202A proved challenging during the hook-up session, making me wish for skinnier fingers, but the Excalibur II interconnects did barely fit. As challenging as the interconnects were to incorporate into my system, the speaker cables posed even more of an undertaking. Since the spades are terminated directly into the cables sans more flexible leads, you need to exercise some care when connecting them to the speaker terminals. My Thiel CS1.5s, like all Thiels, have their terminals located on the bottom of each speaker. This means that to ensure proper connection, the cables had to be horizontal at the point of connection. This termination scheme also meant that I needed to connect the cables from above to reduce torsional stress on the connection to the integrated amps used in my review. The critical factor for all the speaker-cable connections was the tightness I could manage with the cable terminals. It was not with a little foreboding that I, for the first time, used a hex wrench on the plastic nuts to ensure a tight fit. I am happy to say that with a judicious amount of torque, I was able to attain satisfactory tightness. The recommended break-in period for these cables is 100 hours. I wholeheartedly agree with this number, for it is at this mark that the Excalibur II speaker cables and interconnects arrive at their true sound. When the cables were first inserted into my system, there was no bass to speak of and the treble had a brittle quality bordering on edginess. These characteristics were eliminated after about 50 hours of use, but the cables take another 50 hours to achieve their full dynamic bloom. Even after 100 hours, I still noticed subtle improvements in the areas of transparency and microdynamics. In a nutshell, you must be patient with these speaker cables and interconnects to hear what they can do. Sound To be totally honest, I was not fully prepared for all the changes that Excalibur II speaker cables and interconnects brought to my system. A good deal of the conventional review jargon failed me in describing the sound of these wires. Instead of breaking down the changes in nice, neat categories, I was forced to take holistic approach in my review. Even as I was listening to these wires break in, I curiously found myself more emotionally involved with the music than I had been previously. When I had my system running to play background music while I read or performed chores around the house, I found myself frequently stopping to listen. As I type these words, Emil Gilel’s superb recording of Edvard Greig’s Lyric Pieces [Deutsche Grammophon 449 791-2] is playing, and not without causing me some distraction. I’ve always considered this a great disc based on Gilel’s thoughtful and penetrating performance of these deceptively simple piano works. From the time that I first listened to this CD, I’d considered its sound slightly muffled and lacking the incisiveness of a real grand piano. That opinion was dispelled once I heard this album played on my system through the Excalibur II interconnects and speaker cables. Now as I listen, every note rings true with clarity heretofore never accomplished at La Casa Schumann. This sort of transformation has left me thumbing through my thesaurus to find the words that describe this change. While I may not have completely solved this conundrum, I think I have hit upon some of the factors that make these cables and interconnects so special. Associated EquipmentSpeakers – Thiel CS1.5. Integrated Amplifiers – Jolida SJ202A, Magnum Audio IA170. Analog – Yamaha P-350 modified with AudioQuest Turquoise interconnects, Oracle Sorbothane mat, and Music Direct tonearm wrap; Grado 8MZ Cartridge; Creek OBH-8 phono preamp. Digital – Onkyo DX-C730 CD player. Interconnects – Kimber Kable Silver Streaks; Nordost Red Dawn. Speaker Cable – AudioQuest Indigo. Accessories – LAST record-care products; Disc Doctor Miracle Record Cleaner; Caig Deoxit and Pro Gold. One aspect that has changed with the insertion in my system of the Excalibur IIs is how much quieter everything sounds. I’m not talking about something obvious like less hiss or hum. This is something more subliminal. The silence between the notes is better defined. As a result, notes seem to pop out in stark relief against a dead-quiet background. This is not to say that these cables squelch all the air and ambiance on a recording to makes things sound quieter (like early digital did). All the air and ambiance are still there; they’re just better delineated from the music itself. A good example of this is Bruno Walter’s last recording of Brahm’s Fourth Symphony [Columbia MS 6113]. One of the treasures of this album is the shimmer of the massed strings as they climb into the upper registers. Through the Excalibur IIs, this shimmer was still there, but lacking a slight "scrim" that I hadn’t noticed until it was removed. Fascinated by this characteristic, I decided to explore further with some of the hot-sounding recordings in my collection to see how the Excalibur IIs would handle them. One of the recordings on my list was Paul Paray’s and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Schumann’s (no relation that I know of) Symphony No. 3 [Mercury SR90133]. Like many Mercury albums, it is as unforgiving as any classical album gets. In fact, even with my forgiving Jolida integrated, this album could be a chore to sit through. So when I dropped the needle, I discovered I was in for a treat. The strings and brass, which had always come across as strident, now possessed a warmth and sweetness that took me by surprise. As I noticed with the Walter Brahms Fourth, none of this was accomplished by dulling the highs, fattening the midrange, or changing the up-front character of this album. Instead, what struck me was how much better integrated the highs were with the rest of the music. This integration allowed more of the natural tonality of the instruments to shine through. Closely related to the quietness and truthful tonality of these cables is their transparency. I’m not usually a fan of products that are touted for their transparency. Instead of true transparency, many of these products sound etched, with exaggerated information in the upper midrange and lower treble. However, the transparency that the Excalibur IIs exhibit is something quite different. Sure I can hear more of the little things going on in a recording, like creaking chairs and keys clicking on the clarinets. However, these little details stay in the background, as they should, never competing with the music. A good example of this is the timpani on the Brahm’s Fourth Symphony. I was astonished with the clarity of the sound of the mallet hitting skin. Yet despite this clarity, the sound of the timpani is still appropriately distant, never forcing its way to the front. A great visual analogy to this is the difference between NTSC-standard television and HDTV. With a standard television, you can turn the sharpness up all the way, but all it does is exaggerate the boundaries of the images. With HDTV, you actually come closer to real thing in terms of image definition, color complexity, and depth of field. So it is with the Excalibur II interconnects and speaker cables. By presenting the music in a truthful and accurate way, there is no need to boost the "sharpness" to get the most out of the music. The last thing I'll mention about these cables is the way they seem to reduce the overall distortion of my system. This occurred to me when I noticed that I was consistently setting the volume higher than normal every time I started playing a new piece of music. It just goes to show how our ears become subconsciously attuned to distortion levels to discern how loudly the music is playing. I admit that I am particularly sensitive to distortion in the treble range. Whenever I’m at an audio salon auditioning a piece of equipment, I’m usually quick to turn the volume down from where the salesperson set it to save my ears from discomfort. As a result, I’m usually quite judicious about how loudly I play music at home. I know that this is an effect that playback systems have on the music, since I’ve never experienced this while listening to live, unamplified music, even at close range. So when I discovered that was I listening to music louder that normal, I decided to see how far I could push things. I put Pomp and Pipes [Reference Recordings RR-58CD] in the CD player and started to crank it up. I was shocked to discover that even at extremely elevated levels, I never felt the need to turn it down to save my sanity. In fact, I realized that while my little Jolida had run out of gas, I had never heard a hardening of the sound that precedes the onset of clipping. Sure it was loud, but loud the way music should be: thrilling, enveloping, and never uncomfortable. As you may have noticed, all of the things that I have been describing are interrelated, with quite a bit of overlap. No matter what angle I take in describing these interconnects and speaker cables, I keep coming back to how natural everything sounds when played through them. As I was looking over my notes from listening sessions, I had the strange feeling that I had read these comments before. On a hunch, I pulled up Doug Blackburn’s previously mentioned reviews of the Magnan Signature and Nordost SPM interconnects and speaker cables. I was struck at much our observations coincided and came to the realization that the Excalibur IIs are kindred spirits to the Signatures and SPMs. I’m not saying the Excalibur IIs are in the same class as these heavyweights; I don’t have any frame of reference to claim this. But I can state that the Excalibur IIs do have the same positive effect on the sound as the Magnans and Nordosts. Where dB really hits the nail on the head in his reviews is how all of these finer speaker cables and interconnects eliminate the blurring of the music. The removal of this blurring (or smearing) of the music in space and time explains all of the observations I made concerning these interconnects and speaker cables. It’s as if an ever-present side note has now been removed, removing one more layer of electronic hash that comes between the listener and the music. Separately and in comparison I have reviewed the Audio Magic Excalibur II interconnects and speaker cables as a team, not separately. I did this because most cable manufacturers design their interconnects and speaker cables to work in conjunction with each other to produce the best sound. I did listen to the Audio Magic cables separately so that I could compare them to other wiring components in my system. First let’s look at the speaker cables. For the past six years, I have been using AudioQuest Indigo exclusively in my system. As an entry-level high-end speaker cable, they do quite a few things right without any glaring flaws. When I last looked, a ten-foot pair of the Indigo cables goes for $215 USD. So when I replaced the Indigos with Excalibur II speaker cables, which retail for $825, I was making a significant increase in price to my system. Consequently, most of the comments I have made on the improvements in sound can be attributed to the addition of the speaker cables. I have had the opportunity to listen to systems using the Nordost SPM and Magnan Signature speaker cables. Since they were components in systems of which I have no familiarity, I can’t make any direct comparisons. I am however able to make comparisons that are more meaningful between the Excalibur II interconnects and ones that I have had in my system for quite some time. For the better part of two years, I have been using Kimber Kable Silver Streak interconnects for my CD player and Nordost Red Dawn for my phono preamp. A meter pair of Silver Streaks go for $190, while the same length of Red Dawn retails at $399. A one-meter pair of Excalibur II interconnects is priced at $225, which is in the same ballpark. I used two pairs of the Excalibur II interconnects in this review to simplify the comparison process. The differences between these cables are subtle. I found the Silver Streaks to be a little less refined in the treble and a little punchier in the bass, with a little more veiling in the midrange. The Red Dawns tended to be slightly brighter than the Excalibur IIs, but also more resolving of inner detail from the bass to treble. Maybe with a more refined system I would be able to better clarify the differences between these interconnects. In my system, I found the differences to be small and more a matter of personal taste than anything else. Conclusion So what is my final take on the Audio Magic Excalibur II interconnects and speaker cables? I have one moment that summarizes what these components did for my system. Just before Christmas (shortly after the cables had fully broken in), I was reading while Celtic Christmas II [Windham Hill 01934 11192-2] was playing in the background. I had been only half listening until Luka Bloom started singing "Listen to the River." I turned up the volume, plopped in the sweet spot on my couch, and was immediately sucked in as I listened to Bloom’s acoustic guitar and baritone voice, shorn of all electronic haze. For the first time, I had the illusion of being in the presence of a live performer. I just sat there with my mouth open for the rest of CD, feeling immersed in the music. The Excalibur IIs strip away many of the layers separating the listener from the music. This makes for more involving experience than I thought possible with my humble system. I have been greatly impressed by the Excalibur II interconnects and speaker cables, and I recommend them to anyone looking to take a music system to the next level. ...Paul Schumann [email protected] Audio Magic Excalibur II Interconnects and Speaker Cables Prices: Interconnects, $225 per meter pair; speaker cables, $649 per eight-foot pair.Audio Magic, Inc. 18063 E. Gunnison Place Aurora, Colorado 80017 Phone: (303) 369-1814 Fax: (303) 873-7277 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.audio-magic.com

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