Good morning sir. Thank you for the great comments and for being our long-time friend and customer! Many will attest that we are the best kept secret and value in audio. You would have to spend many multiples in cost to even come close to the performance of the 4x4 XLR cable. These assemblies get out of the way and the music come through!
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After spending a cold rainy weekend inside listening I have no need to look for any other changes to my system.
It is really nice just to turn it on and listen either close up or from the next room it sounds great.
I am looking for a set of amps that sound as good as my Pass XA160.8’s without being 1200 watt room heaters but that has proven to be difficult so far.
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Have you demoed the big AGD mono’s yet?
Not yet. Still pondering whether it is the right choice and in no hurry as long as my air conditioning continues to operate.
FWIW, if your reached out to Alberto I would wager he would agree to send you a pair to play with (might not be brand new, but who knows).
Cheers.
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Too quiet and too hot this summer. I have to bump the Iconoclast thread since it’s been a while since any of you have posted questions or comments here. Hope everyone had a great 4th!
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Hello Bob. Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed our telephone conversation on July 1st. You suggested I contact you about auditing your OCC interconnects to hear for myself what all the fuss was about. I was wondering if trying out one interconnect would be enough to give me a insight into what’s in store or would I need to get a full loom to get from source to all the way to power amp to get the effect?
Look at it this way, if you go from an intestate road to a state highway then interstate road, you’ll “hear” the state highway. All cables have different open-short impedances and Vp linnearity curves based on their design. You kind of want to “hear” just ONE version of all that to tell what a cable may or may not be doing. It isn’t impossible to hear a change with one cable in a series changed, but it is harder.
The worst cable in the chain is mostly what you will hear. I wish that wasn’t true and we could get an outsized benefit with one cable being improved. We get some, but not a lot. Cable’s only take stuff away, once done nothing is going to put it back again. The Vp alignment can be changed based on the cables loop DCR (size of the signal wire) and capacitance. A less linear cable will distort that Vp alignment property more than a different design, and how much we can hear is impacted. we’d like to have zero Vp across frequency changes, but that’s impossible. We improve it to a practicle (in ICONOCLAST’s case) level. If the sky is the limit you can keep tweak Vp alignment but again, it is a LOG feature that pretty much stops giving you anything back no matter what you throw at it. There are some pretty crazy German (if remember) cable design that do go to the Nth degree, and cost like it, too.
In a nut shell, to hear change we need to make sure a design even presents a true change and why. To hear that real improvement, we need to clear the way from source to the amplifier. Is our system turning the changes into a better sound? That depends on the system’s resolution and of course, our listening skills and hearing.
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Makes sense, and of course that only confirms what I’ve learned from my own experience. Nothing comes easy- or cheap.
Good morning, I too enjoyed our conversation the other day.
As Galen states, the network is only as good as the weakest link but I’ll also add that a single pair of Iconoclast UPOCC IC’s will absolutely open your eyes to what these cable are all about. The cable from whatever is being used as a preamp to the amplifier is a great place to start with the audition of a single pair. You might then change things around and go from the component source to the pre or perhaps the DAC to the pre to see what makes the largest improvement. No matter where you place the cables you are going to see a big improvement. And once you have a pair, you’ll definitely want another, and maybe another…
No risk in taking a listen.
I’m pretty sure this will happen. The question is when I will be ready to make the commitment. No risk audition or not once I try it out it’s going to be quite a physiological step into the world of high end cables and their prices. As Galen said, the cable deserves a full loom from source to amp to work as intended. In my case that will three interconnects adding up to just shy of four grand even going used and single ended. For me, that gives me pause even if I attack this in stages.
The trick with ICONOCLAST, is the TPC versions are fantastic. I use the TPC series II speaker cable on my CLX speakers for example. Good stuff and outsized performance from less expensive materials in a superior design. That was the intent, to make TPC better than more expensive designs by clever engineering of the DESIGN. The design moves the performance far more than the copper. Sure, the UP OCC does move the sound, but it is a luxury we must admit. Try the 4x4 TPC, you’ll be amazed. You can always move up. In the mean time, you get a big boost.
DO NOT use the 1x4 or 4x4 with DIGITAL signal streams, use the proper serial digital cable. We have a silver plated 75-ohm copper serial digital cable available for SDI or SPDIF signals. Digital is vastly different than analog.
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Galen, just a quick confirmation: Vp coherence can only get linearly worse (?) in the patch of cable from my terminals to the drivers - this is at most about 60cm, pretty basic woven silver-plated copper, nothing that would especially ruin Vp coherence but not optimized. My ICONOCLASTs are 3m. Am I expecting a loss of around 20% in coherence? Less?
Is it stupid to ask percentages here?
Always a joy to see Galen saying wise words regarding signal and how metal when thin enough loses importance to what’s spewing through at light-speed in medium. I get the impression that TPC could be made ever better by making it thinner?
Where’s the limit where we (disregarding cost) lose importance or have problems when making ever more and thinner individual strands into the signature braid? You often have talked of the “1-atom” thick conductor ideal.
Does there arise problems with keeping a proper braid with ever-increasing thin strands?
I get the problem with fragility, but, teflon would fix that anyway?
You’ll need to talk to Belden about having Galen design a machine that does the atom sized conductors:flushed:
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What say you? I’ve owned most of these at one time or another… I better time and a better world!
@rower30, let’s say there is an excessive length of speaker cable being used. I’m assuming it’s a bad idea to just coil it up to minimize the amount of floor space being taken up? Seems like that might just make a sort of giant inductor. 
Good morning Tony, lots of audiophiles find themselves with excess cable usually where one of the speakers is closer to the components than the other. My advise to those with excessive cable length is to not “coil” it into a round shape creating an electromagnetic coil but rather to create loops with dissimilar sides. So, if you had a comfortable round coil and placed a long nylon tie across the center and began to tighten the tie, the round shape would begin to resemble an oval and eventually if overtightened an hourglass shape. The oval is what I recommend, careful not to over stress the cable and exceed the recommended bend ratio.
Galen will explain why this might be the best option or perhaps offer a better option.
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Thanks Bob. I was thinking if the cable was flexible enough to create a sort of serpentine shape behind the speaker, assuming the back of the speaker wasn’t too close to the wall.
Several immediately come to mind, and of course we are talking about personal taste here, are we not?
Joy Division Unknown Pleasures
The Band Music from Big Pink
Frank Zappa Hot Rats
Captain Beefheart Trout Mask Replica
The Jimi Hendrix Experience Bold As Love
Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow
Ornette Coleman Free Jazz
Charles Mingus Ah Um
Bill Evans and Jim Hall Undercurrent
Moon Dog Moon Dog
John Coltrane Blue Train
Gabor Szabo Live with Charles Lloyd Spell Binder
Herbie Hancock Head Hunters
Dave Brubeck Quartet TIme Out
Kronos Quartet Black Angels
Karlheinz Stockhausen Sirius
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