Bare Naked Cables from Tara Labs
There is a bit of a myth that says that the Cable Wars didn't really start in earnest until Bob Fulton came along with his first custom numbers back in the late 70s. That's true in the sense that the price of wire went up like a Roman candle after FMI and Monster got going, but it's not as if we weren't sensible to the differences that wires made before making and marketing wires became an industry.
I can remember that even back in the early 70s my audiophile chums weren't using zip cord to hook their Hadley amps to their IMF Monitors. Oh, no. They had some "secret source" who supplied them with four-gauge high-quality-copper wire--stiff as rigor mortis--the bare ends of which they kind of hard-wired (if you can call applying massive swaths of electrical tape "hard-wiring") to the Hadley's outputs and the IMFs' inputs. They didn't believe in solder or connectors of any kind--just bare naked wire.
What brings this to mind is Tara Labs new Omega Gold speaker cable--which is the highest resolution, lowest-coloration wire of any kind that I've ever heard in almost forty years of listening. I thought the original Tara Labs Omega was the cat's pajamas, but this stuff...well, it's the cat's tuxedo. I'll be reviewing Tara's new Omega Gold (and its equally wonderful new interconnect, Zero Gold) in the not-too-distant future. Yes, the stuff costs a fortune. And if you have a fortune, yes, it's worth it, IMO. But that's not the point of this blog.
What ties the past to the present here is the fact that Tara's wire isn't terminated with a spade or a banana or any kind of lug or plug. It's as bare as the four-gauge wire my pals used back in the 70s! When's the last time, I ask you, you saw an ultra-expensive audiophile cable with tinned tags of bare wire at either end? I haven't seen them on a high-end cable in years. But Tara's unterminated cables do raise an interesting question that, frankly, I can't answer: Is the phenomenally transparent, high-resolution sound of Tara Labs Omega Gold due entirely to its internal architecture or is it also due, in significant part, to the fact that it doesn't have a connector of some sort on either end? In other words, are we all missing a (slow) boat that Tara has caught when we don't use unterminated speaker cable?
Like I said, I can't answer this question, save to speculate in a commonsensical way that not soldering a connector to a wire is probably "better" than soldering a connector to a wire, in that you don't have a plethora of different metals meeting up where the music meets the road (so to speak).
I'd certainly be interested to know if you guys have some thoughts on this subject. But, for God's sake, don't go tearing the terminations off your MIT or Transparent or Nordost because Tara Labs ain't using them. Everything in a quality cable is designed for a reason, even if that reason is convenience (and, trust me, a tinned length of bare wire is NOT as convenient as a spade).
Comments
I've read for years that fewer devices in the signal path, shorter signal paths, etc, etc are better. Could we be looking at an example of "simpler is better"?
Jack D II
The problem about 'less' in design from big name cable companies is they'll still charge more. The answer is already out there. Their called Anti-Cables from Paul Speltz. I was a sceptic, until I tried. Take all that smoke-and-mirrors money you send to support Kimber's summer home and Cardas yacht - those who want us to believe they can summon the supernatural from copper wire - and put it where it counts - upgraded components, additions to your music collection.
Hi Jon:
The way you feel abou the Tara cable is the way I feel about Transparent cables...anyway you can post a pic of the bare wire "terminatation". That would be WAY cool. And I agree, I cant name another high end cable that like that.
In essence your hunch that no termination is better than the "best" termination. I used bare wire for years, but I only stopped as it were bit untidy.
Then shouldn't all components be assembled without solder? Since the speaker cable is nearly the last connection the signal makes before it hits the voice coil, what sets it apart from the dozens or hundreds of electrical parts inside each amp, preamp, or source component, each of which is connected to the next by a soldered connection? Wouldn't it be better if the lead on each resistor/capacitor/diode/etc was clamped under high pressure to the next lead?
Of course, this ignores the effects on all wires and interconnects of 'burn-in'.
Something I would not have believed until I replaced - briefly - ten year old middle-of-the road interconnects with brand new high-end beauties only to be horrified that the sound actually was worse!
So, if you are talking about issues that matter - simplicity, less is more, etc. you have to look at the effects of burn-in(which I don't totally understand from a physics perspective but may relate to microfusing between wire strands or a change in the dialectic or...). Just as the room acoustics are major when takling about sound, truly being the first and last component, so does the age of the components factor in. To parpahrase an old chestnut, you can never listen to the exact same system twice. :)
So what? So judging new cables, connects, amps, etc. without auditioning them after burn-in is not a complete review - as they may improve (hopefully) or on rare occasions, degenerate in sound, IMHO.
Otherwise, great stuff, and please keep writing. I think you (and Tara) are on to something here.
ps please excuse typos above
A funny thing happened on the way to my speakers. Many moons (10 years) ago I bought a 15' pair of StraightWire cables for approx. $350. Nothing fancy, just heavy copper wire in a clear plastic casing with a quality connector attached. They were used to connect my Bryston 250 watt amp to my Aerial Acoustics 10-T's. Somehow the cables got detached from the speakers and my trusty Rottweiler Patton chomped the connectors to shreds. Soooooo, out came the pliers, off came the connectors. While waiting for new ones to arrive I decided to hook up the bare ends to the amp. I bent the ends into a "U" and floated silver solder onto the bare section.
Whoa Nellie!!! What's this??? The sound was better! Cleaner, a bit more depth, etc. I then cut of the remaining ends and wired it all naked (the cables, not me). To sum up, I listened to them for several more years before switching them for a pair of MIT bi-wired cables. Yes, the MIT's sounded better BUT only just a little. Of course I convinced my wife that the "new" sound was worth the $900 for the MIT's!
I gave the bare cables to my son who still uses them on his KEF 104's (which of course were my pre 10-T speakers) and yes the combo still sounds good.
If connectors are eliminated,what's next? Expensive jackets? Super secret black boxes? If we're left with just wire, the price will no doubt approach six figures!!!!
Jack D II
Below, as requested, is a picture of the unterminated end of a length of Tara Labs Omega Gold speaker cable. (The plastic sleeve can be pushed down to expose more of the tinned tag of wire when you fasten it to your speaker/amp binding posts.)
As noted, and for reasons I'm not entirely certain of, this is far and away the highest resolution, lowest coloration speaker cable I've heard. It simply doesn't sound like it's "there" in the way that (by comparison, mind you) the slightly darker, slightly less transparent, extremely high-resolution Omega now does, and it has none of the color casts or dynamic constraints of the other very high quality cables I've heard.
It's something. Of course, it's priced like it's something. But if your system is itself very high in transparency, very neutral, and capable of extremely fine resolution then the Tara Labs Omega Gold will elevate it to an even higher level of transparency, neutrality, resolution, and realism.
Thanks for the pic Jon, it much appreciated! I'm really glad I have a visual, as I wasnt sure how it would look. And, actually, different than I expected.
Discussing bare wire with a budy, he brought up the topics of oxidation, and the slight degradation or stripping of the wire each time it is removed from the speaker terminal. Any thoughts there?
THANKS AGAIN! Now you have got me thinking.....
Quick question, off topic..two buddies of mine, who I had thought of fairly conservative and not super tweakOphiles, told me they brought their systems to new levels of performance by inserting Furutech aftermarket fuses. They claim they better the stock by a huge margin, and HiFi Tuning fuses by smaller, but clear margin. Anyone here have any experience in this area?
Logic rules. To begin with, the conductivity - compared with pure Silver - of Aluminum and Gold is 67%; Copper is 95%. Lower the conductivity and less signal strength is coming through. Now if only the interconnect cables had their terminations of silver or copper...I've alway used bare wire speaker cables because of that: helps with power drain on my Maggies! Plus I always use silver-plated OFC Copper interconnect and speaker cables. but can I find copper/silver connectors anywhere...the search continues. Perhaps the Cable gurus should investigate cupro-nickel alloys.
Of course bare wire termination sounds better! It makes perfect sense.
Any cable, particularly a higher current cable like a speaker cable, is a rather complex electromagnetic system that tends to color signals sent through it. The more complex the architecture of the design the more delicate the balance becomes. That the resulting cable sounds like nothing (low coloration, sonically "transparent") is the best praise a designer could receive.
A really good way to alter that perfection is to hang a big hunk of impressive looking but disimilar metal on the end. Far better to strip a small amount of bare cable and clamp very tightly for a gas-tight connection that prevents oxidation at the interface, and does not alter the signal. (Ask a video engineer about crimped signal connectors vs solder.) The down side for those of us who like to change cables frequently is that the end would quickly look like an old broom, and sound worse, so you would be constantly redoing the ends of those expensive cables.
The problem about 'less' in design from big name cable companies is they'll still charge more. The answer is already out there. Their called Anti-Cables from Paul Speltz. I was a sceptic, until I tried. Take all that smoke-and-mirrors money you send to support Kimber's summer home and Cardas yacht - those who want us to believe they can summon the supernatural from copper wire - and put it where it counts - upgraded components, additions to your music collection
Any further impressions on this cable. Curious as I am a current Omega/Zero user.
Thanks,
BF,
I think I've given you my impressions: Like so many other items that I've had the good fortune to hear recently (Sooulution electronics, Da Vinci turntable/cartridge, MartinLogan CLXes, Magico M5s), the Tara Omega Gold cables raise the bar on what I call "transparency." People use this word in different ways (often as a synonym for high resolution or a neutral tonal balance), but I use it in a more specific way: Transparency to sources, transparency to the sound of what is upstream and downstream of the DUI. The more transparent an item is the more clearly you can hear what the other items around it are adding to the presentation (or, as in the case of the items I mentioned, aren't). In a completely transparent system, the only colorations you would hear would be those on the LP or CD or SACD or tape or hard drive that you were playing. In other words, you'd have a clear view back to the recorded event and would be able to hear that event (and all that was done in the mastering process) with new clarity and (in the case of a well-recorded disc) greatly increased realism. Abundant new details of score, performance, miking, and mastering would pop into focus (without any loss of details you were already aware of), as if you'd been looking at a scene through tinted eyeglasses with lenses ground to the wrong prescription and suddenly got clear eyeglasses of the right prescription. That is the way the aforementioned items--and the Tara Labs Omega Gold cable--sound.
Jon
i recently purchased the zero gold and the omrga gold. on the omega's i chose the option of spade or bananna plugs. the bare con was not a good fit to my amp and speakers(krell 600 evo, rockport altair). also you never know when you may change something, and i would hate to have to sell or trade cables as well. besides ic have con as well as the speakers them selves.
for what it's worth
To each his own. As I said spades or plugs are more convenient.
All the "Monster" type of hupla has given me many good laughs over the years. Did anyone ever open up their amps or speaker cabinets and see what really is used to connect the terminals to either the output transformers or to the speakers inside the cabinets? I HAVE! 'Cause I have done repairs over the years. Hey, it's really small wire, can you say 18-20 ga SOLID copper wire, even on high end equipment! Don't even get into distances. If your speakers are so far from your amp that you have to use, and waste your $$, on 20#/ft 4 ga cable, well then, you should be using a totally different setup altogether.
Get an electrical engineer involved like I did in the late '80s and have him design, and then test, electrically, the results. I won't go into all that electro/physics stuff 'cause I don't understand it anyway.
Here is my point; I use 6 separate 22 or 24 ga SOLID copper wires loosely braided and try to keep the runs 3M or less. 3M or less is a slam-dunk with the center and front speakers in most situations. For the rear surrounds, I use 20 ga instead of 22 or 24.
I use the exact same setup on my music only system. Both systems utilize high current output amps. The music only system is 6 ohms, the home theater uses 8 ohm speakers. (FWIW, high current vs high voltage; high voltage runs hotter and in a high powered system, your speaker voice coils will run hotter than in a high current system.)
So, electrically, what are the results? Lower resistance, nearly NO electro-magnetic field around the cable that would degrade the signal. And much lower inductance and impedance. This all adds up to two things; better sound quality that will stop audiophiles in their tracks AND they are not expensive to make yourself. Just learn how to do a 6 strand braid and buy enough SOLID copper wire to do the job.
Do not ever use stranded wire for speaker connects! Why? Like I said, open up your high end speakers and see if they used solid or stranded wire.
And yes, there is a proper use of solder and gold plated speaker terminals. As long as you use correct heat, the correct solder and don't have any aluminum involved, you are good to go! In this situation, ANY concern of putting two different types of metal together is a waste of time.
Happy listening.
PS, the thinner the insulation on the wire, the better!
Just got a set to replace my previous Omegas in an all Zero system. Not broken in yet, but pretty special so far. BFlowers
I certainly can't afford Omega Gold speaker cables, plus my overall system probably isn't of high enough quality (for lack of a better word) to be able to fully appreciate all that the Omegas have to offer. I use the Paul Speltz anti-cables and I feel they convey all the music my system has to offer. I say this after trying a few different brands of cables (Cardas, Kimber and a couple of custom designs).
I realize it isn't sexy or technically impressive to recommend what is basically a medium gage solid copper wire covered in a thin dielectric coating but the proof is in the sound. I have nothing against expensive cables, I would love to experiment with MIT cables, Synergistic Research and even Tara Labs but that's simply not in my budget. Then there is always the cost/benefit argument which is different for every person. Most of my friends in the music business think I'm crazy for having a main system consisting of a $6K integrated amp, $5K uni player and $5K speakers (all bought secondhand via Audiogon I might add).
My point being that, for most of us with modest to very good systems, the cables that Paul Speltz offers just may be all you need and like others have suggested, allow one to put the money saved into nicer components themselves. That said, I thoroughly enjoy reading about JV's adventures in sound so that I know what to audition when that rich uncle I never knew I had passes away and leaves me everything!
Keep up the great work Jon.
Chris Johnsen
Music Fan / Gear Fan
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