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Transparent Audio XL Generation 5 Interconnects and Cables

Transparent Audio XL Generation 5 Interconnects and Cables

This review focuses on the new generation of Transparent Audio interconnects and speaker cables. It also, however, almost has to begin with a description of the problems I’ve encountered over the years in dealing with “wires” as passive but important components. Thus it is as much description of a voyage of discovery in seeking out the best interconnects and speaker cables as a review of a given set of products.

The Sequel to Joyce’s Ulysses: An Audiophile’s Cable Odyssey
Several centuries ago, I wrote some of the first comparative cable and interconnect reviews published in TAS. In the process, I learned that interconnects and speaker cables can make a very real difference in sound. I also learned, however, that they can be remarkably difficult to review if they are well designed and demonstrate serious efforts to provide the most transparent sound possible, rather than to reshape it and act as the equivalent of tone controls.

Over the decades that have followed, I have found that selecting the right mix of interconnects and speaker cables presents exceptional problems for the audiophile. In most cases, you can easily get a real improvement by buying the lower to mid-priced lines of top manufacturers. A limited investment will provide some improvement in the bass, better dynamics, and an upper midrange that is more realistic and balanced in timbre. Established manufacturers have to deliver better sound quality to survive. Their products sell more on the basis of audiophile and dealer word-of-mouth than advertisements or reviews, and “fool me once” is usually enough to put a given audiophile off a given brand for life.

This does not, however, mean that you will get the best possible sound for money, any more than you will if you buy electronics or a speaker from well-established manufacturers. Buying solely on the basis of brand names excludes the new innovator by definition, and it presents five other problems that become steadily more important as you move towards an investment in really expensive interconnects and speaker cables:

First, given brands and models of speaker cables and interconnects can have very different effects on the sound when they are connected to different mixes of components. At first, I thought this was true largely of speaker cables, but I learned fairly quickly that balanced and unbalanced interconnects can also vary sharply in their sonic nuances when connected to different components in the front end of a system. This can happen even when the speaker cable and interconnects are clearly designed to be “universal” and suitable for any part of a system.

Second, standardizing on a given brand or model doesn’t work. Early on, I assumed that the best solution was to buy speaker cables and interconnects from the same manufacturer in the same price range. I’ve learned the hard way over the years that this simply doesn’t work. Speaker cables are more interactive and variable sounding than interconnects, and need to be chosen to sound best with a specifc combination of power amp and speaker. Really good interconnects for some components do not necessarily work as well for linking other components. You need to try different speaker cables to find the one that really suits your system, and experiment interconnect by interconnect to make sure that it is truly compatible with your system, and that you have the best mix.

Third, most serious cable and interconnect manufacturers try their best to deliver value for money, and to provide better sound with each increase in price. This, however, often leads the designers to “voice” their most expensive cables to suit their own ears or those of some listening panel, rather than to provide the best possible level of transparency. The resulting choice of trade-offs in sound quality may or may not help a given system and/or suit the buyer’s taste. In some cases, the resulting “improvement” is very expensive, but actually colors the sound more than cheaper cables and interconnects in a given line. In others, any improvements are of very marginal musical value.

Fourth, there are no meaningful specifications to warn you in advance of the level of compatibility or performance. Every interconnect and speaker cable has to make trade-offs in its electrical parameters, and every component has some variation in its input and output circuitry. There is no one right answer that you can read off a spec sheet, or find by researching construction and materials. You have to experiment, swap, and listen.

Fifth, it takes time to audition the subtleties in really good cables, and it is simply not possible to do this in a dealer’s showroom. You need a loaner that you can  bring into your system—and simply hearing a change that slightly highlights different aspects of the music is not a serious reason to buy. A superior cable has to actually sound better with a wide range of music, and this takes both time and judgment.

Sixth, the increasing use of digital interconnects has not made life easier. To be blunt, far too many really don’t make much of a difference even if they are much prettier than their cheaper generic competition. And when they do make a difference, their performance with a given component often is not maintained when you use that interconnect with other components. This loss of essence, to quote General Ripper, can reflect a design problem in an active component, or the simple fact that improved or different connectors are working better in this case. Many of my fellow reviewers obviously disagree with me, but I would generally put my money into analog cables unless I really hear an improvement with a digital one.

These are not easy problems for an audiophile to solve. Reading reviews may help, but evaluating a single set of wires out of context often seems to lead the reviewer into a sudden love affair with an inanimate object, one that may not return your affection in the same way it seems to have done with the reviewer. Manufacturer hype is also fun—not to mention part of the sport of high-end audio. But hype is hype, and describing cables as sonic miracles doesn’t help. You can’t psych your ears into believing what you don’t really hear for any length of time.

In practice, you need the help of other audiophiles, and dealers or manufacturers who will provide loaners or exchanges. You also need patience and common sense. Improving your passive components takes as much time as improving your active ones, and your efforts must meet the same acid test for any serious purchase or investment: You personally hear the improvement clearly and decisively, and it has lasting sonic value in reproducing a wide range of the music you love. Buying a cable is no reason to splurge over the audio equivalent of a drunken Vegas wedding—in both cases you will soon sober up and have to live with the consequences.

The Transparent Audio XL Generation 5: Tailoring the “Wires” to a Particular System
There is, however, an alternative, and one whose value became even more clear to me when I had the opportunity to try out Transparent Audio’s new generation of cables. I’ve been using Transparent Audio XL interconnects and speaker cables as one of my primary references ever since I started employing the Wilson Alexias as one of my two reference speakers.

The Alexia is a great speaker but a difficult load, and is more sensitive to speaker cables than most. A friend suggested that Transparent Audio could provide a speaker cable tuned to both the Alexias and the Pass 160.8 monoblocks I use as my reference. I had some doubts about whether such tuning would produce better sound or more coloration, but in the past I had used Transparent Audio cables that were not tuned to given components, and had always found them to be exceptionally neutral.

Accordingly, I ended up trying out a full set of Transparent Audio XLs tuned to all the components in my system. For proprietary reasons, Transparent Audio does not go into a great deal of detail about the adjustments it uses in its interconnects and speaker cables, but when I asked Josh Clark of Transparent Audio to describe how the process worked, he provided the following details: “Each XL cable is custom-built for a customer’s system components and his specific room layout. For example, the speaker cable terminations are built to perfectly match the binding posts and their polarity orientation on the amplifier and speaker. For your Pass Labs XA 160.8 amplifiers we specified a flat spade with the positive on the right, and for your Wilson Alexia loudspeakers a bent spade with the positive on the left to fit the binding posts on these components. We also ask where the amplifier is located relative to the speakers so we can arrange the nameplates on the network modules to read correctly from the listening position. Every detail is important to us.

“The networks in the XL cables are custom-calibrated to perform with the electrical characteristics of the connected components. Different audio components have different input and output impedances and at the XL level we calibrate the networks so that they will perform ideally with any combination of components.

“Since we calibrate the XL cables for specific components, you may wonder what happens if you decide to change one of these components. In this case you would contact your dealer and, if necessary, he will arrange for us to re-calibrate and re-terminate the cables for the new system components. We offer this service at no charge to the original owners of the cables.”

I was more than happy to take advantage of this, the latest version of the company’s tuning process when Josh called me and told me that Transparent Audio had made its first major upgrade to the XL Series in better than half a decade. I was particularly happy to take advantage of it when Josh offered to come down and demonstrate them in one-on-one comparisons with the previous-generation XLs. (Reviewers do have perks.) Josh has since provided me with summary of the changes involved, and it is a further illustration of the fact that passive components can be as difficult to engineer and improve as active ones (see sidebar).

The Voyage and the Sound Quality
The new models of the XL cables did make improvements in sound quality that immediately grabbed my attention. We swapped the Generation 5s in for the previous generation in reverse order—going from the speaker cable to the phono tonearm cable. We went through a separate comparative listening session with each individual swap, using the same mix of different acoustic music—most in the form of 24-bit/96kHz recordings, but also including analog recordings and finally a mix of older Haydn chamber music and symphony LPs when it came to the phono interconnects.

I have to admit that I was surprised by the extent to which each step in the upgrade process made a real difference in several critical areas. Quite frankly, when I first talked to Josh, I didn’t expect that I would hear any serious changes, and thought that any improvements would be limited to the speaker cable. I was wrong, and my aural voyage through the new Transparent Audio XL Generation 5s quickly made this clear.

The improvements in dynamics were immediately apparent with each swap; even including the shorter pairs of interconnects. Step by step, my system opened up, and not simply at the symphonic level. Solo piano, small string groups, and solo violin acquired more life as well. Later listening made it clear that solo voice also become more dynamic and lifelike, with no added strain or hardness. I have always found low-level dynamics to be more important in enjoying music than peak dynamics, and the sound opened up as much at low levels as at high ones.

Far more was also involved than dynamics. The bass was clearer, better defined, and more natural, particularly in the critical transition area between the upper bass and lower midrange. This range can make music dull when it is exaggerated or lacking in natural life and detail, or cold and hard, if it is weak, and it affects virtually all of the sound in every performance. The Generation 5s got this area more consistently right than the previous generation XLs, as it matched or surpassed every competitive cable I’ve tried in the past.

The only exception was the connection between my EMM (Meitner) Labs XDS1 and Pass Xs preamp. Here it became clear that the problem was that Josh did not have the right specs to tune the interconnect to the XDS1. A properly adjusted Generation 5 that he sent later did just fine. This instance provided yet another warning that each stage in upgrading cables can be critical and requires equally critical listening.

The upper octaves—particularly the upper midrange—became smoother and more musical. I suspect that this resulted as much from having better upper bass and lower midrange as having better highs, but I may be wrong. I heard the improvement in the upper register of soprano voice and violin, and while it was far subtler than the other improvements, it was definitely there.

The improvement in the soundstage was less subtle. I have found over the years that every improvement in detail and low-level dynamics is accompanied by an improvement in depth and imaging placement and size. I’m not sure that one causes the other, but as a chamber music buff and fan of small jazz groups, I really notice any enhancement in soundstaging and imaging realism, and each link of XL Generation 5s did make a clear improvement.

Soundstage width did not change particularly, but the aforementioned better and truer-to-life images and sizing  makes that width more realistic, particularly since it improves centerfill and better populates the full arc of the soundstage. Improvements in depth and in hall and venue ambience depended heavily on the recording, but were there when the recording actually had them.

Perhaps most importantly, these impressions that the new generation was dramatically better held up over time, even after I started making comparisons by swapping in some really good cables from other manufacturers. The best competitors sometimes rivaled the XLs, but the match in sound quality was far less consistent. Additionally, some cables that have proven to be excellent with other components did not work as well in given links within my system.

Summing Up
If you already have Transparent Audio cables and think as highly of them as I do, I’d strongly recommend upgrading them to the Generation 5, and updating them to your current components if you have not already done so. Transparent offers an upgrade program that lets a customer trade in a lower-level Transparent cable toward a higher-level one. (This upgrade program provides between a 50 percent and 70 percent value for the original cable in trade.)

If you do not own Transparent Audio cables, be aware that the Transparent Audio XL Generation 5 is not the most expensive set of cables that Transparent Audio sells—those would be the Magnum Opus models, and I did not audition any of those. One real problem with reviewing cables from even a single manufacturer is the sheer number of options, and about all I can say is that the various models I’ve tried over the years have been consistently good.

More broadly, I don’t see how you can go wrong with a properly matched set of Transparent Audio XLs, but note that the Generation 5s are hardly cheap. And yes, my praise inevitably does reflect my taste in nuances and may not reflect yours. Good as the new Transparent Audio interconnects and speaker cables are, there also are great competitors; they are just harder to match to a given set of components. As a reviewer, I’ve had good results with AudioQuest, Kimber, Cardas, Wireworld, and StraightWire products over the years, and I use a mix of more universal cables and interconnects from different manufacturers in all my reviews. In short, my voyage of discovery is scarcely over.

I do believe, however, that the Transparent Audio XL Generation 5 cables are a truly great offering, and that tailoring cables to a given mix of components really does work, and works far better than simply sorting through a wide range of different designs and hoping things will come out okay.

SPECS & PRICING

TRANSPARENT AUDIO, INC.
47 Industrial Park Road
Saco, ME 04072
(207) 284-1100
transparentcable.com

Price: XL phono interconnect starts at $6400 for a 1m pair; XL balanced interconnect starts at $11,000 for a 1m pair; XL speaker cable starts at $17,000 for an 8′ pair

Anthony Cordesman

By Anthony Cordesman

I've been reviewing audio components since some long talks with HP back in the early 1980s. My first experiences with the high end came in the 1950s at the University of Chicago, where I earned part of my tuition selling gear for Allied Radio and a local high-end audio dealer, and worked on sound systems for local night clubs, the Court Theater, and the university radio station. My professional life has been in national security, but I've never lost touch with the high end and have lived as a student and diplomat in Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, NATO, Asia, Iran and the Middle East and Asia. I've been lucky enough to live in places where opera, orchestras, and live chamber and jazz performances were common and cheap, and to encounter a wide range of different venues, approaches to performing, and national variations in high-end audio gear. I currently hold the Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and my open source analyses are available at that web site. What I look for in reviewing is the ability to provide a musically real experience at a given price point in a real-world listening room, and the ability to reveal the overall balance of musical sound qualities that I know are on a given recording. Where possible, I try to listen on a variety of systems as well as my own reference system.

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