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Equipment Review

April 2005

VooDoo Cable Ultralinear Interconnects and Speaker Cables

by Tim Shea

 

VooDoo Cable Ultralinear interconnects...

 

Review Summary
Sound Interconnects: "smoothness and balance" -- "no overly hot highs, no overly boomy lows, and no apparent grunge coming from any part of the sonic spectrum." Speaker cables: "I really had a tough time identifying anything of note regarding their character, either added or deleted"; "the speaker cables seemed able to express everything from the slightest instrumental reverb trails and vocal nuances to the roundest of wooded tones."
Features "The Ultralinear interconnects incorporate six conductors of solid-core, five-nines silver and copper in three groups and use Cardas RCA connectors. Each conductor is insulated by an ISO-grade Teflon air-core dielectric." "The Ultralinear speaker cables make use of 13 conductors in three groups. The conductors are made of the same silver/copper material found in the interconnects and have the same Teflon dielectric." "One of the more striking features is that the conductors and connectors are cryogenically treated at -315 degrees Fahrenheit, which is said to lower both resistance and the noise floor of the conductors."
Use "I don’t know if it’s the cryogenic thing, voodoo or what, but I found both the Ultralinear interconnects and speaker cables to sound quite refined right out of the box, and I did not notice much change at all in their sonic signatures even after many hours of listening."
Value "They are products that deliver the sonic goods along with a good helping of pride of ownership, both at a very reasonable price, relatively speaking."

We recently moved from our one-bedroom, second-story apartment to a house with a semi-finished basement that is now my very own listening dungeon and almost completely obliterates the spousal-arousal factor. The reason I bring this up is that the move served as a big, fat reminder as to just how important a part the listening room plays in the audio chain. I don’t think there is a component I could buy that could reap the absolute magnitude of change and improvement in my system that this new room has. Granted, I relocated from a nearly square room with a trampoline-like wood floor to a more system-friendly rectangular configuration with a cement foundation, so this is an extreme example to be sure. But the sheer magnitude of this change had me a little depressed about returning to picking apart all the "big" differences between individual components.

So when the VooDoo Cable interconnects and speaker cables that are the subject of this review arrived at my new doorstep, I couldn’t help but realize the irony in that I would soon be arduously sifting through the teeniest nits of difference between wires. Ugh! My frame of mind was similar to that of Indiana Jones when he said, "Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?" But I realized pretty quickly that, after getting my system dialed in and my ears adjusted to the new listening environment, the small differences began to matter again. Helping me along were the VooDoo Ultralinear interconnects and speaker cables, which brought something worthwhile to the party.

Description and use

Although I had not heard of VooDoo Cable before the review samples arrived, after speaking with Bruce Richardson, head VooDoo wizard, I discovered that the company has apparently been at it for 13 years and began its product line with power cords. Currently, VooDoo Cable makes five different interconnects and four speaker cables, and Ultralinear represents VooDoo’s top line in both categories.

Despite being thicker (10mm) than most of the competition, the Ultralinear interconnects ($600 USD per meter pair with RCAs, $700 per meter pair with XLRs) are fairly flexible and thus relatively easy to work with. Overall, they bear quite a resemblance to the Acoustic Zen Silver Reference II interconnects I use as my reference. The Ultralinear interconnects incorporate six conductors of solid-core, five-nines silver and copper in three groups and use Cardas RCA connectors. Each conductor is insulated by an ISO-grade Teflon air-core dielectric. One of the more striking features is that the conductors and connectors are cryogenically treated at -315 degrees Fahrenheit, which is said to lower both resistance and the noise floor of the conductors. Capacitance is rated at 10.2pF per foot, and inductance is 0.17uH per foot. My only quibble with the interconnects is that the RCA connectors do not lock and did not have an overly tight fit with some of my equipment. This was not a problem, but those who worry about such things may feel a little uncomfortable that the fit might not be as tight as they’d like it to be.

...and Ultralinear speaker cables

 

The Ultralinear speaker cables ($1200 per eight-foot single-wire pair, $1400 per eight-foot biwire pair) look a heck of a lot like the interconnects, but they are much more difficult to work with. At 14mm in diameter, the cables are thicker than the interconnects and also incorporate active shielding. The Ultralinear speaker cables make use of 13 conductors in three groups. The conductors are made of the same silver/copper material found in the interconnects and have the same Teflon dielectric. The speaker cables incorporate Cardas spades made of copper with a silver plating and coated with rhodium for protection, but herein lies a problem. These spade lugs are among the smallest I have seen, so unless your speakers sport very narrow binding posts you may be forced to use the hole in the center of the post (or go with bananas). Combine this with the fairly stiff wires and you have a surefire recipe for frustration. I'm sure that VooDoo Cable offers other spades; they should consider making those standard equipment. The conductors, shielding, and connectors all get the same cryogenic treatment as the interconnects.

I don’t know if it’s the cryogenic thing, voodoo or what, but I found both the Ultralinear interconnects and speaker cables to sound quite refined right out of the box, and I did not notice much change at all in their sonic signatures even after many hours of listening. Now, if cryogenic treatment could only work such magic on speakers.

How does Voo do interconnects?

I started listening to the Ultralinear interconnects first, as I usually find it easier to hear differences between interconnects than speaker cables. The all-important first impression here was one of smoothness and balance. There were no overly hot highs, no overly boomy lows, and no apparent grunge coming from any part of the sonic spectrum. It’s a good sign when I can’t hear any identifiable character right off the bat, and in this case it took me a good long time before I could even begin to pick out those nits I was so concerned about when the Ultralinear cables first arrived at my door.

Associated Equipment

Loudspeakers –  Soliloquy 6.2.

Amplifiers –  McCormack DNA 0.5 Rev. A.

Preamplifier – Marsh Sound Design MSD-P2000b.

Digital – Pioneer DV-C302D DVD player (used as transport), Electronic Visionary Systems Millennium DAC 1.

Interconnects – Acoustic Zen Matrix Reference II and Silver Reference II.

Speaker cables – Acoustic Zen Satori shotgun biwire.

Digital cable – Apogee Wyde Eye coaxial.

Because there was some silver in the interconnects, I thought I’d pull out something to test the extremes first and then work to the middle from there. Donald Fagen’s Kamakiriad [Reprise 45230-2], while not an audiophile’s delight, at least sounds better than most Steely Dan recordings and certainly has the top and bottom ends covered. I’ve had some other silver and/or silver/copper cables run this gamut before, and more often than not they make the cymbals sound hot, with too much sizzle and not enough tone. The Ultralinear interconnects sounded very refined indeed without making me feel like anything was being rolled off or attenuated improperly. At the other end of the spectrum, on "Springtime," with its driving bass riff, the VooDoos hung on nicely while still sounding rich and full in this region. Fagen’s vocals can also get a little edgy on top if something in the audio chain is not up to snuff, and, again, the Ultralinear interconnects acquitted themselves as well as any that had gone before.

Moving on to something a little more telling in the tonal department, I called on Cyrus Chestnut and his self-titled album [Atlantic 83140], which has a pleasant mix of midrange flavors in a transparent wrapping. On "The Journey," I was particularly impressed with the way the Ultralinear interconnects portrayed the piano both in scale and character. There was a "spot-lit from within" nature often referred to by tube aficionados; I could picture the sound emanating outward from within the piano itself, picking up all the complex textures along the way. I found myself thinking "Yes, that’s the way a piano sounds in real life." It also occupied a large three-dimensional space, just like a real piano, without any regard for the walls in my listening space. The complete balance of information between hammer, string, and soundboard was notable and served to portray the instrument as a whole rather than a sum of its parts. On "Miss Thing" there is a little drum solo in the beginning, and again the balance between drum tone and the sound of the stick hitting the head seemed darn-near perfect. The hi-hat had in-the-room presence that indicated to me that not much was being held back.

Where I finally started to find some possible areas of identifiable character was with Patricia Barber’s Modern Cool [Premonition 741]. On "Touch of Trash," Ms. Barber’s vocals were again a nice balance of gutsy tone with perfectly matched sibilants, and the bass line was full and robust. However, at the beginning of the track there are some metallic percussion sounds coming from the right rear of the stage, and I noticed just a slight dulling of the sharp impact as the sounds are struck, making them sound a little less present and alive. The instruments also did not seem to be floating in clear space as much as I have experienced previously, and my take is that there may be some slight de-emphasis, or lack of emphasis, in the upper-treble region that gives the interconnects a little more relaxed feel. I also noticed the reverberations from the snare drum on "Company" were just ever so slightly truncated, but not so much that I would notice it except in direct comparison to a more detailed presentation.

Voo does speaker cables

Moving on to the Ultralinear speaker cables, I really had a tough time identifying anything of note regarding their character, either added or deleted. Each time I switched interconnects I seemed to get a full report on what the interconnect was doing without the Ultralinear speaker cables imprinting anything of their own onto the sound.

Going back to Modern Cool, bass was tight and quick, and vocals clean and clear. Unlike with the interconnects, there seemed to be more of a "nothing but air" essence in the background, and the speaker cables seemed able to express everything from the slightest instrumental reverb trails and vocal nuances to the roundest of wooded tones. As with the interconnects, there was a nice balance to everything, with vocal sibilants riding naturally along with the rest of the voice, and bass lines never overly intruding into the mix.

There was one area where I could find a nit to pick. I would say the Ultralinear speaker cables, while tonally complete, did not always provide as robust a presentation or thrust energy into the room as much as some others. The Ultralinear speaker cables did not sound anything close to wimpy, and it may just be that they are simply not augmenting certain frequencies.

The plus to all of this is that, as you might surmise, the Ultralinear speaker cables mate extremely well with the Ultralinear interconnects. Putting them together, you maintain the tonal richness, balance, and overall refinement of the interconnect, where a more robust-sounding speaker cable would be too much of a good thing. The cables do not seem to be able to impart extra air into the combo’s presentation, but neither do they wreck the exceptional balance in the rest of the spectrum.

Comparison

Because my in-house Acoustic Zen interconnects and speaker cables together cost about the same as the VooDoo equivalents, this made for an easy and logical comparison. I would slot the Ultralinear interconnects directly in between the Acoustic Zen Silver Reference II ($948 per single-ended meter pair, $998 balanced) and Matrix Reference II ($498 per single-ended meter pair, $548 balanced) in terms of sonic character. They capture most of the midrange magic of the latter while harnessing much of the speed offered up by the former. For this reason I tend to use a combination of both Acoustic Zen cables in my system to get what the VooDoo Ultralinear dishes out in one neat package. The Acoustic Zen duo holds an edge in terms of detail and air, but the Ultralinears counter strongly with a smooth, seamless presentation that makes them sound utterly effortless and natural. Maybe there really is something to this cryo thing after all.

The VooDoo speaker cables are even tougher to categorize as there really was nothing overt for me to identify confidently as a coloration or distortion of any kind. By comparison, my Acoustic Zen Satori speaker cables ($598 per eight-foot single-wire pair) sound a little less detailed and airy; in contrast to my experience with the Acoustic Zen interconnects, they also sound a little more robust but also less spry. I think the Ultralinear speaker cables ultimately remind me more of the excellent Audio Magic Sorcerer speaker cables ($1500 per eight-foot single-wire pair) I reviewed a while back, as I had an equally hard time identifying any sonic character with those as well. The small spades aside, the Ultralinear speaker cables are nearly impossible to characterize and thus hard to fault in any major way.

Conclusion

I am often asked for recommendations on interconnects and speaker cables, but such recommendations are hard to give because a cable can sound so different in various systems. Other than for an absolute detail fanatic, I would have to put the Ultralinear interconnects near or at the top of my recommendation pile at their price and performance points. Their ability to communicate music with a level of refinement that will likely not allow it to offend anyone makes it a very safe and confident bet for a wide range of tastes and systems. The Ultralinear cables are such a hands-off affair that a recommendation would need to carry the asterisk stating that you had better be willing to hear every last thing your system is doing, and some people will end up not wanting that even if they currently think they do.

The VooDoo Cable Ultralinear interconnects and speaker cables offer something truly different and special, given their cryogenic treatment, overall workmanship, attention to detail, and excellent all-around performance. They are products that deliver the sonic goods along with a good helping of pride of ownership, both at a very reasonable price, relatively speaking. Once you’ve got your listening room squared away, I recommend finding out if VooDoo Ultralinear cables can create some magic in your system.

...Tim Shea
tims@soundstage.com

VoodDoo Cable Ultralinear Interconnects and Speaker Cables
Prices:
interconnects, $600 USD per meter pair with RCAs and $700 per meter pair with XLRs; speaker cables, $1200 per eight-foot single-wire pair and $1400 per eight-foot biwire pair.
Warranty: Lifetime.

VooDoo Cable
10 Alta Vista Drive
Orinda, CA 94563-2002
Phone: (925) 253-7801

E-mail: info@voodoocable.net
Website: www.voodoocable.net

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