Like most audiophiles, I’ve tried my fair share of cables over the years. A few years ago I was in the process of working my way up the audiophile wire upgrade chain until I began to reassess the sound I wanted from my system. That’s when I realized that the sound I was getting from the mid-priced, but still rather expensive interconnects and speaker wire I was using at the time, was not the sound I really wanted. Those cables, I learned, stood in the way of realizing the full potential of analog audio.
On a whim I pulled out all of the old interconnects I had accumulated over more than 30 years in this hobby and started trying each of them out in my system, curious to see if I liked any of them better than the Audience Au 24 SX RCA interconnects I was using at the time. The Audience had hands down beat a pair of Transparent Gen. 4 Ultra’s I had been using, and I was pretty sure they would destroy any and all of my older, much cheaper cables.
Much to my surprise, the very first pair I tried, an old pair of MIT PC Squared that I hadn’t used in decades, sounded better to me than the Audience, which retailed for more than 20 times what I’d paid for the MIT’s. I A/B’d them multiple times, going back and forth and back and forth, playing record after record to make sure I wasn’t fooling myself. But try as I might, I simply could not reach any other conclusion. The MIT PC Squared, which were the very first pair of “audiophile” cables I’d ever bought back in the late 1980’s were better than my Audience IC’s.
I tried the other cables I had and none of them were any good, with the primary issues being a woeful lack of transparency and/or an overabundance of wooly bass. But with the MIT’s showing themselves to be superior, even up against the Audience cables with decades of build and design technology to their advantage, clearly the notion that a more sophisticated, higher priced cable necessarily equaled better sound was up for debate.
Case in point: the World’s Best Cables Mogami interconnects, which turned out to be far superior to my MIT’s. I liked them so much in fact that I wrote a glowing review here, and they’ve been in my system ever since. The WBC Mogami have consistently allowed the sound of my system to improve as I’ve implemented other changes, such as adding the fantastic Ventus Grab grounding box, and moving into a better sounding dedicated room.
Yet despite my fondness for the WBC Mogami, when a friend of mine told me about a small audio company trying to make inroads into the cable biz, I was intrigued. He put me in touch with his contact there after he’d demoed a pair of their interconnects, peaking my curiosity when he described them as “letting everything through, like water through clean pipes.” I arranged to purchase a pair and try them out, hoping they would improve on my WBC’s.
Unfortunately, the cables I received did not impress me. They were very transparent and fairly uncolored, two qualities I feel are essential in a cable, but they lacked impact across the entire frequency spectrum, robbing the music of rhythmic energy and making even the most exciting music sound lifeless and dull.
I sent those cables back and my contact at the company offered to send me another pair that he said would improve on the first. The second pair were also very transparent and even more uncolored, and they were much more articulate than the first pair. Initially, I was very impressed with them. I was hearing better separation of instruments and vocals and found their ability to resolve in the midrange and top end compelling. Instruments were sounding sweeter and even more natural than with my WBC’s.
However these improvements came at a steep cost. These cables seemed to leave out much of the lower frequencies, robbing the music of size, weight and space. It was rather uncanny to hear this, and I expect on many if not most audiophile systems, namely those without full range speakers or with full range speakers lacking large bass drivers or a subwoofer, these cables might be something of a revelation.
But on my system, particularly with the recent addition of my Legacy Signature iii speakers, each with three 10 inch woofers, the absence of bottom end, bottom end that I had plenty of with my WBC cables, represented a fatal flaw. Therefore, even with the advantages these new cables offered me, what I would lose using them, I had to conclude, was much too important.
Despite this outcome, I felt I’d heard enough with this second pair of IC to conclude that finding a better cable than the WBC was indeed possible. The trick would be finding something that would do everything the WBC do, but more of it and better, and I was willing to pay significantly more to get that than the paltry $30 the WBC cables had cost me.
Yes. You read that correctly! I’m using a pair of $30 IC’s as my reference cables. They link my $10k turntable and my $6k EAR 324 phono preamp to my vintage amp, and I’m not insane! As I said, the WBC beat some much more expensive cables, as well as this latest pair I’d tried, for which I paid $300 and would have happily kept if they could have bested the WBC.
Soon after, a friend of mine who’d just done some cable shopping of his own, mentioned to me that, supposedly, according to the research he did, cables made from silver wire had the potential to be the more resolving and transparent than those made with copper wire. Now, I generally take such anecdotes with a huge mono amp sized grain of salt, but I had a $250 gift certificate at Amazon and nothing really to lose so I bought a 1/2 meter pair of Better Cables Silver Serpent Air IC’s.
Now that I’m writing more product reviews, I’ve discovered what other product reviewers no doubt have already – writing positive reviews, particularly glowing ones, is way more fun than writing bad ones. The only exception perhaps being writing bad or not so good reviews of very expensive products that really ought to be a lot better than they are. In the case of interconnects, I’ve tried quite a few pairs at this point, but I’ve only written about the ones I’ve liked, which will now include the Silver Serpent Air.
I like these cables A LOT! They resolve extremely well, are very transparent and delightfully neutral and uncolored. Best of all, they offer these features throughout a wide and dare I say, full frequency spectrum. The Silver Serpent Air not only deliver the goods down low, but deliver them with more size, weight and articulation than my WBC’s. They are by far the most dynamic and articulate cables I’ve ever experienced.
As this 1/2 meter pair of Silver Serpent cables has been breaking in, I am finding that they meet what is the ultimate test for analog audio. They are putting even more distance between records with sound that’s merely good and those with sound that’s truly exceptional. What a joy it’s been to hear “into” more of my favorite music, and to get lost in performances that I’d heard many times before, but never in the way I’m hearing them now.
And of course, there’s likely still even more to be revealed on these records, as this experience obliges me to acknowledge that there very well may be an even better cable for my system out there. Nevertheless, as any audiophile knows, these little leaps forward are a real kick and represent one of the most fun aspects of this nutty hobby. So for right now, I’m thrilled with the opportunity these Silver Serpent Air IC’s have given me to rediscover the records in my collection, not to mention the many wonderful performances on them.
The Silver Serpent Air cost me the entire amount of my $250 Amazon gift card, plus tax, but they are worth every penny and more. Are they that much better than the WBC Mogami costing nearly 1/10th the price? My answer is an unqualified “yes!” And more! After all, they hands down beat the cables, that beat the cables, that beat the $2k Audience cables. I’ll let you do that math.
Even if your analog system has a ways to go, and even if you’ve yet to discover all the amazing things the right records can do, the Silver Serpent Air Interconnects will give you the headroom you will need to get there. The Silver Serpent Air interconnects are not just great cables for the money. In the right system, they are flat out fantastic for any price.