Our friend, Galen Gareis from Belden, weighed in on Torreys in an email exchange. He references a comment from another Torreys thread but I thought it would be better here in the more current one.
"The comments that the TORREY’s firmware images off center and has “gaps” was puzzling to me. But, after hundreds of hours developing the ICONOCLAST™ cables, I may have something to interject. First, people are VERY used to their current system, as as much as I’d like to say we pick “better” sounding components, we often pick what we are used to hearing and that isn’t always the best.
The more an instrument’s timbre is correct, the better it’s sound stage placement and width will be. A Steinway piano and a piccolo should not cover the same stage width or height. But, we tend to want to force the image placement to what we like, and not what is right. Consider what’s being listened to, and ask your self, SHOULD it “fill the gaps” between center stage and left or right?
Example; Listen to Gordon Lightfoot, “If you Could Read My Mind” The Pony Man. Gordon’s voice is centered, and the LEFT speaker plays two distinct stringed lines. One is larger, wider and behind the higher pitched acoustics which are low and stay put in space much tighter than the wider placed rear lower timbres. The RIGHT channel is nearly “blank” except for the harmonica. Adding more and more (really removing upper harmonic information with cables) low frequency energy spreads out BOTH voicing too much. This destroys the true sound stage, and smears the definition around each instrument.
Now listen to, “Poor Allison”, where the natural timbre is deeper…and extends ACROSS the entire stage. But, done right, imaging is still excellent. YALE smears this away too much and it tends to go pastel and loses spatial definition. Not so TORREYS, where it remains more opaque and defined. This adds way more depth to the sound stage, too.
As much as YALE is good, it adds too much warmth and “blends” the sound stage far more than is right, like it or not, and sacrifices true image depth in the process. So over several songs and artists TORREYS has much better and properly “sized” instrumental placement front to back and left to right.
YES, this means there are “GAPS” between the sound stage on many recordings! But you never had an opportunity to hear it before so it is interpreted as “wrong”. I think far from it. Two piccolo’s will have significant stage gaps between them in a left to right placement, Not so two bass guitars. A proper mix should maintain that separation or lack thereof. We tends to want a “full” and overlapped sound where none is really more correct. The higher the timbre the more isolated it should become and the opposite.
My vote is to what’s got the more correct and natural image placement left to right and front to back. Extended listening confirms this. If a constant headphone enveloped sound stage is your thing, than YALE is leaning more that way. My experience over hundreds of hours with my cable and the phase correct CLX [Martin Logan CLX] says that’s less correct than TORREYS."