Friday, December 28, 2007

BlackSandCables Violet Z1 :D

I used to own the BlackSandCables Violet z1 Power Cords. They were introduced to me by SGH moderator Yotiao- poisonous person! :p

What happened then was that i have gotten a used amp- the Korsun v8i. I noticed that the power cord does make a HUGE difference in the sound for this amplifier. With the Belden 19634, the sound was quite alright- the mids were acceptable with decent amount of details but the bass was far too lacking in terms of impact and depth. Whereas using the Belden 82803, the sound was more powerful but there is this harshness that was disturbing particularly from the vocals upwards to the highs. The bass was OK.

So i searched around for cables that i could use to swap my Beldens. The Violet Z1s were much raved about then and still are. Just search Audiogon, AudioAsylum and Head-fi. In fact, the VIolet Z1 and the Grover 'S' Interconnect are supposed to a synergistic match- this combination is recommended in the BlackSandCables website. (Will share the Grover Interconnect story another time ;) )

To the best of my knowledge, Violet Z1 started off to retail at USD250 for a 1m pair terminated with Marinco US plugs. Over time, the price went up to USD299 for the same configuration. Lately, when BlackSandCables shifted their domain toCanadian, they changed the price to be in CAD denomination- CAD is much stronger than the USD lol!

So after a loan from the kind Yotiao for a home trial, i decided to get 2 pairs- one for my Korsun and another for my CEC. BlackSandCables promised me a price of USD269 for each 2m pair. The shipping was a costly affair- i was billed over USD80 for the shipping of the cables back to Singapore! The cables are at most half a kilogram each! :(

Anyway, they were at my place a week later. They were much better than the Beldens in ALL aspects except the price lol. They sounded a tad bright initially but i attribute this to the cables being new. What i did was to swap around the cables i.e. this week cable 1 will be conneted to the Korsun while cable 2 will be connected to the CEC. Next week, cable 2 to the Korsun and cable 1 to the CEC. I will alternate this every week. I do this because the Korsun consumes a maximum of 1200W while the CEC consumes a paltry 10W max. It is easy to figure out which device will allow a better run-in of the cable. Running-in of cables and the plugs is a controversial business to the uninitiated but the sonic attribute is rather obvious given a revealing enough speaker or headphone.

Once run-in, the the brightness is gone. The sound is 'creamy' but with loads of details. This would have been the end of my foray into power cords. Alas, i was not very happy with the bass of the Violet z1. Not enough bass quantity. The depth is there alright just needed some 'rumble'.

I chanced upon the Oyaide Tunami in the Echoloft...

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