Those of you who have followed my LESS IS MORE cable saga know from reading the articles on the Triode Guild web site (www.enjoythemusic.com) that two years ago when I persuaded Ulrich to manufacture the family of Triode Quartz cables that he assured me that there was no way to get any thinner than the TQ-1 which is equivalent to a single strand of number 22 wire..pretty thin...but I wanted an equivalent of 26 gauge...but according to Ulrich it would be too fragile...end of story.

The world wide success of the Triode Quartz cables speaks for itself, but I couldn’t stop, and my audio bro Mark Conese, who owns Ambient Recording Studio and I decided to experiment with silver foil microphone cables. It doesn’t require a Ph.D. from MIT to know that microphone cables were the pits, and one of the major villains responsible for the squashed aural matrix that are endemic to recording studios.

Using the reference system pictured in the TRIODZILLA article on the Triode Guild web site, and Mark’s very tweaked Ampex 350 TUBE tape recorder we first started to experiment with his inventory of very trick and expensive microphones...you name it, including those expensive German tube types, and he has it. Yet, we decided that an old vintage RCA vintage ribbon microphone was the clearest and least distorted using both our voices and a Steinway concert grand.

Ulrich made us microphone cables from the three available thickness of silver Triode Quartz cable...and you guessed right...the minute we substituted the silver foil cables for the standard Belden microphone cable the aural matrix expanded, natural tone emerged, and all of the magic that you would expect from a professional Ampex tube tape recorder was there again. We also noticed that the thinnest cable was the most lucid, less smeared and most three dimensional.

We invited Ulrich over for a look listen and he too could hear the obvious difference between the Belden and his silver foils. But I wanted confirmation of these eccentric cable’s use in the pro field so I sent them to my friend Russ Hamm who is the business of distributing pro gear to the top studios. He sent sets of cables out to different recording "masters". One recording engineer, after using the silver foils for a weekend, wouldn’t stop pestering me wanting to know about my theory about why the silver foils sounded so good...expect I don’t have one...... expect...complicated sounds complicated.

Ulrich got the message and the massage...there was a market for the ultra thin Triode Quartz in the pro market as a microphone cable...expect the packaging on the consumer cables would not cut the mustard in the pro market where microphone cables are trampled on..daily. New packaging was needed.......no problem...wrong......

Jump ahead nine months...Ulrich calls and tells me that he has figured out a new indestructible packaging concept for the foil that will make it acceptable for the pros but for it to work right he would have to reduce the size of the foils to 26 gauge. Who said Audio Angels don’t exist? Ulrich wanted to know what I thunk, so he made me some sample cables...LESSER IS MORE...

It now made sense to also make both a balanced and unbalanced version of the cable because the only difference would be in the consumer version the ground shield would not be connected. Ulrich also figured out that by twisting the wire its electrical characteristic would improve...it becomes quieter and is much less prone to any RFI....important considerations in recording studios and for musicmaniacs living in large cities.

Do you remember my comments about why I thought LESS IS MORE made so much sense with silver foils? Because less silver translates into less cost for us and the new Micro-Purls have about as less silver as possible and that means that pure silver now is lower in cost than those fancy and complicated multi-strand copper cables.

Before I describe my very biased impressions of these new 26 gauge cables let me clear up a technical concept that has had a never negative effect on the audio arts. I know when it started because I was one of the ones who started it, so I am guilty, but I repented. In 1982 leaders of the hi fi industry recognized that there was a significant marketing opportunity if we could convince men that the size of their audio cables was an indication of their penis size...men who used larger diameter cables, had large diameter penises...made sense being that the average American male, including Howard Stern has cable size anxiety. You know what happened over the next two decades...cables got as thick as salamis.

Unfortunately for all of those men who bought those big thick cables they bought into a lie, because the truth is that men with Mr. Bigs, are very ego secure so they enjoy cables that are very very thin, because they sound better....and...did you read the article in COSMO MAGAZINE with the title..."Men With Thin Audio Cables Make Better Lovers"? This explains why women snicker at men with big fat audio cables in their living room!

Fortunately, for me every audio reviewer has raved about the Alpha-Core foil cables...either speaker or interconnects, so I don’t have to spend too much time convincing you that it is time to experience the unique aural matrix of silver foil or copper foil cables... ultra simple foils are a completely unique experience. AlphaCore is now commander of the high ground....but let me assure you of this..everything I original claimed about the Triode Quartz cables is true only more so with the Micro-Foil...and I don’t know why...and I don’t think anyone really knows why cables sound so different...but LESS IS MORE, and this is about as LESS AS YOUR CAN MAKE LESS.

And this is one of those rare cases in the audio arts, where better is cheaper.

 

 

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