THE AROMA OF SILVER

QUESTION: HOW MUCH LESS IS MUCH MORE?

ALPAHCORE’S TRIODE QUARTZ TRIO SILVER FOIL CABLE SYSTEM

THE ARTIFICATION OF THE HARMONIC/SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM IN AN EXPANDED AURAL MATRIXŠ

Don’t get frightened by this loose lurid loquacious lingo. This gizmogram describes accurately what we audiomaniacs do for fun. Actually, this fancy-ass expression describes a very simple notion about what happens in our home. At the core of this notion is that we, our music space, and music are all intimately involved in a process of artification, which is a form of artistic merging.

Somewhere in our home we have designated a space for listening to music. This is our aural matrix which may be described as a five dimensional aural matrix. This music space, our aural matrix, obviously has height, width and depth, but it also contains rhythmic patterns of harmonics, which implies time. In our home we have the possibility of music occurring any place within this aural matrix. Multi-track recording has given music producers moderate creative control over this aural matrix, but there is much work to be done to expand the possibilities of creatively manipulating this matrix. Even though the audio arts are still at a primitive level of artistic development it is possible, because of the power of our imagination, to artify the harmonic/space/time continuum in such a way that it “triggers” our musical ecstasy trigger. And though this “trigger” is completely unique for each of us, it is amazing how many of us have a common “trigger”, i.e. a 300B, or a boom box.

This outer aural matrix then becomes a reflection of our inner aural matrix, and I believe it is this artistic coincidence which triggers musical ecstasy because here we have perfect union between the material and de-material, between our physical and spiritual form, between the outer and inner us. Here each of us becomes a Stradivarius-like violin maker endowing our instrument with our spirit.

The artification of the harmonic/space/time continuum in an expanded aural matrix means that you, the audio artisan work with your aural canvas which is your home aural matrix, and create within it exactly the type of musical magic that works for you.. This is a completely personal artistic expression. Each music system therefore becomes an analog for our DNA, which is always a completely unique harmonic. There is only one thing that is absolute here by definition: a state of the art music system expresses our completely unique point of view about musical ecstasy.

THE MASTERS

For me, listening to directly heated single ended triodes or OTLs triggers a very powerful emotional experience in which something very different is happening to the harmonic/space/time continuum within my aural matrix. I have been farting around with expanded aural matrixes now for forty years and know when my goose bumps are getting goose bumps. And let me assure you that a five foot six, 165 pound bald goose crying, laughing and dancing naked thermionic techno-shaman is quite a sight.

I must make this analogy to explain my aural matrix quest. My friend and famous rock and roll record producer, Rob Fraboni, recently took me to see his close friend perform. Les Paul is 81 years old and he still performs every week in New York City. His hands are gnarled and arthritic. He must put hot sand bags on them between performances to keep them limber. It is his gracious habit to invite guitarist from the audience to play with him. Obviously, it is a high moment of a guitarist’s life to say that he played with Les, so some very heavy duty professionals come to his show and they play with him. When Les plays his heart is plucking the strings, and when others play their fingers are doing the plucking. Les is pure flowing grace and spontaneity. The music emanating from him immediately takes a concrete, alive form and leaps out over the audience and hugs you and grabs you with a physical immediacy which is very erotic. There is a natural flowing, confident, relaxed aliveness to his playing that defines the meaning of The Master. Les’s lucky partners are doing their best, but compared to the Master, they are feeble.

Now, I know you have heard the same story told in Samurai movies and Westerns. The Masters, The Wise Ones, are considered the The Masters because, well, they just know how to do things right, and they do them effortlessly...and that is true in baseball and fly fishing too. And that is what pre WW-II directly heated triodes are all about in terms of our home aural matrix. They are Masters; The Wise Ones. With these thermionic masters the music is so graceful and effortless, so natural and spontaneous, so filled with a glowing musical incandescence, that other type of circuits seem like young boys, working hard, being responsible, flexing their hard musical bodies, but still artistically undeveloped. Here we often see brawn used because subtly has not yet evolved. Subtle ecstatic musical beauty is not about power, it is about vulnerability, and there is an ineffable quality to these ancient thermionic wise ones, that perhaps is best described by the term used by Nobu Shishido, the Japanese triode master, as a “magical musical aroma”.

If I could point just out one characteristic of triode mystery it is the unique harmonic authenticity of classic American pre-WW II directly heated triodes. If loving them is wrong who wants to be right. Argue as long as you want about circuits, but there is a harmonic scroopulosity to these tubes that makes all other tube sound artificial, and when you mess with these directly heated triode harmonics it is obvious. The emotional power of the directly heated harmonics is so powerful they are causing a revolution in all aspects of the audio industry, and it caused me to with a great fervor to re-examine my thinking about everything and especially cables.

The results of this extensive gizmological cable research was revealed to you in the December 1996 issue of Positive Feedback, and confirmed in a series of articles by Art Dudley, publisher of Listener Magazine. These were my findings: ultra thin single strands of pure silver wire made the best interconnects and speaker wire for triode amplifiers, i.e. single-ended triodes and OTLs. I concluded that solid 26 gauge silver wire used for the signal and ground, did the least tonal damage signal. I also found that solid 18 gauge silver sounds best as speaker cables. Complicated cables, the ones with twisted multi-strands sounded foggy and confused in my system. They screwed up the harmonics the same way digital chops up music. They added a push pull type sound discombobulation. All copper wire, including my own 26 gauge single strand solid copper adds a harsh and brittle harmonic compared to the relaxed natural harmonics possible with ultra thin solid silver.

I do not believe that you can hear the obvious damage that multi-filament cables do with many pentode amps because they mask these problems. Once again for the millionth time: the simplicity of circuit and lack of feedback creates such a clarity in the harmonic/space/time continuum that you can hear the differences in just two inches of wire. My experiments with a very tweaked Marantz 8b with a tube regulated power supply confirmed the benefits of this “less is more” cable concept for push/pull amplifiers, though the benefits were more obvious with SET.

In April 1997 I was a guest speaker at the Philadelphia Audio Society Single-Ended Symposium put together by Peter Breuninger, and my biggest thrill was all of the men who told me that they tried the ultra thin solid single strand cable experiment and were completely amazed at the results. One dude was ranting over the comparison to some megabuck cable. Less is More, they agreed.

The problem with my home made silver cables is that making these cables is a real pain in the butt, and you are limited to their length, but there is another consideration which makes this idea obsolete: the Alphacore Triode Quartz Trio of cables sound much better. Because only these ultra-thin foil (.005) cables sound better than my home made silver ones I am using them. These silver foil cables are the only cables that do a better job at artifying the harmonic/space/time continuum, because it takes the core notion of the single thin strand of silver wire and extends it to its ultimate execution: microscopically thin silver foil. Here again, and true to form, we have less is more. Isn’t it amazing how this golden folk rule of audio is still true?

For decades there has been an underground cult about ultra-thin wire for cabling, and recently Allen Wright published a book, The Preamp Cookbook, which not only completely supports what I am suggesting, he describes how to make your own ultra-thin silver foil cables. Alphacore has the patent on the design, but I encourage you to buy Allen’s book and try his experiments and report to us your results.

Why am I so enthusiastic about these cables? (1) They are the only cables that sound better than my pain in the butt single strand solid silver cables, and, (2) they exist because I persuaded Ulrich Poulson, who owns Alphacore, to make them for you, me and triode dudes world wide. CAVEAT EMPTOR: I am not exactly unbiased. Dudes, my job is to make shit happen. Remember my job, as PF’s Techno-Shaman of Coolosity, is not just to report the news, but to make the news!

In the summer of 1996 after Dick Sequerra raved about Alphacore’s flat cables and I called Ulrich Poulson, cablemeister of Alphacore, and asked to audition his foil silver interconnects and speaker cables. So what did I do? Because I liked them so much (his whole line of cables are getting rave reviews across the board) in one of my gizmologically playful adventures I converted his (then) thinnest silver foil interconnects into speaker cables ( who wrote the rules of love?) and found that they let through more triode magic than anything I was using, and my expanded aural matrix was even more relaxed, spontaneous and clearer. In other words, they got “more” out of the way of the inherent purity of the triode signal and the thinner foil cables let my aural matrix naturally expand.....no gimmicks. I knew Ulrich was into something artistically significant so I invited him and his sales manager, Chris Downey, over to listen to the hypertweaked Tannoy Westminster Royals horns and Triodzilla, and demonstrated for them what their interconnects sounded like as speaker cables. They immediately understood my quest. Ulrich said, “Jumping gee hosafat Gizmo, I can really grock the ontological imperative of expanding the aesthetic syntax of triodosity”...or something like that. With such an insane system it is very easy to detect the different ways cables artify the aural matrix.

Now, it just so happens that my twin brother in the parallel universe (who rides a Hawg and a BMW), Dan D’Agastino, leader of the Krell Clan, also considers these silver foil cables his rave fave, except he prefers the heavier gauge models. So there must be something to this weird silver foil if two completely different universes are raving about them!

So, true to my gizmological nature I asked Ulrich to shred the perimeter of ”much less is much more” by creating a special group interconnects/speaker cables just for refined tube gear and especially single ended triode and OTL amps. I also asked Ulrich to make pure silver spade lugs. I wanted to see just how much less, creates how much more.

Let us take a harmonic pause for a moment: Kondo San, Mike LeFevre, Ray Kimber, and everyone else that uses pure silver wire are right, and they are especially right when it comes to directly heated triodes. With ultra-refined circuitry you can hear the relative harmonic harshness of copper, and if you are artifying the harmonic (your harmonic) copper gets in the way. It’s brashness is unacceptable because, in reality, it is robbing triodes of their intrinsic beauty; their capacity to create sublime natural tone. That is why I am suggesting that you silverize your system both in terms of cables and internal wiring. I am also suggesting that digital equipment requires silver, not copper, plated printed circuit boards, and that all wiring in recording studios, especially microphone cables should be silver foil, and change all of your terminals, RCA, and speaker terminals to pure silver...and use silver speaker spade lugs.

Say this harmonic mantra over and over again: Triodes/Alnico/Silver. This mantra is the triology of harmonic ecstasy.

For those who are using speaker cables the width of a Genoa salami, and interconnects so complicated that it takes a chart to explain what all of the different elements do, these ultra thin cables will be intimidating because they are “teensy/beensy” . This is an ensemble of cables for the musically and sexually secure man. And yes, the rumors are true, men with eeny beeny weenies, compensate by using big fat cables.

The Triode Quartz system is based on .005 inch silver foil. The TQ 1, which is .125 inch wide is equivalent to 21 gauge wire. The TQ 2, which is .25 inch wide is equivalent to 18 gauge, and the TQ 3, which is .375 inch wide is equivalent to 16 gauge. Remember, we are talking about one single conductor for the hot and the ground.

With the Triode Quartz trio, any of the cables can be used as either interconnects or speaker cables. ...THOUGH ULRICH DISAGREES WITH ME. He doesn’t believe that the T-1 should be used for speaker cables, but I love them as speaker wire for tweeters in a bi-wired or tube crossover-ed system. For example: with Westminster Royals and the Alon Adriana’s, I use the thinnest cable, TQ-1, for the speaker cable going to the tweeter, and the wider TQ-2 for the woofer and or midrange. I am also using the TQ-1 for all of my interconnects including using it as my digital interconnects. Why does this silver foil sound better than my last $3000 digital interconnect? My system is as silverized as it can be because all interconnects are silver. I wish I had silver wire Magnequest transformers. Those who listen to the totally phallactic 845, 211 or 811 tube might prefer the TQ-3 as a speaker cable, which is one quarter inch wide.

Given the orthodoxy about cables it is going to be very confusing to use these cables because they are so “less” , you wonder how they can handle any signal at all, which is complete electrical nonsense. But who cares about orthodoxy anyway? In effect, Ulrich has taken silver foil technology to its limit of manufacturing. Yes, I would like to experiment with 28 gauge equivalent silver foils, but they would be so frail they would break with use.

You will notice a big difference between the sound of foil and regular stranded cables. I will not try to offer a technical explanation for this because I believe the whole model for how wire conducts a musical signal is about as accurate as “the check is in the mail”. As Herb Reichert of AudioNote rightly claims, music is a shock wave, and not a continuous signal. And until we can understand exactly what part of the signal is traveling in the insulation, the whole “signal transfer model” is corrupt. Of course you are aware of the Japanese audiomaniacs who only use wire with cotton insulation because they think that synthetic dielectrics sound synthetic.

Let me make this analogy for you: the difference between silver foil and conventional cables is the difference between a 6550 and a 300B. It is the difference between transistors and tubes, and it is the difference between push/pull and single ended. It is the difference in the taste of a fine hand made cigar and a cigarette. It is the difference between the taste of the trout you just caught and cooked by the stream and the taste of the frozen one you bought at the A&P. It is the difference between the taste of a watermelon eaten ripe in the field and the one you bought at your local fruit stand, and it is the difference between the fragrance of the wild rose and the ones that grow in hot houses. That is the sound difference between micro-silver foil and complex multi-stranded copper cables.

For those who are listening to push pull amplifiers, my suggestion is check out these unique cables. This is the first time that all an silver cable system is affordable, and you will immediately hear the loss of “copper glare” and have a much more natural, relaxed, elegant sound. A silverized system will have much less digital grunge.

I also recommend using the Alphacore silver foil speaker inductors and converting the wiring in your speaker to Triode Quartz cable. Hi, Ho, Silver, works in audio.

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e-mail Dr. Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg: drgizmo@meta-gizmo.com