TESTED: Argentum Acoustics Aureus-2 Speaker Cable & Mythos Interconnect
There’s a New Mid-Priced Cable in Town
July 7th, 2009 -- by Neil GaderSource: The Absolute Sound
| Products in this article: | Aureus-2 speaker cable |
Few system upgrades are as popular and easy as a cable swap. And cables between $500 and $1500 are in the most hotly contested price range. Joining the ranks is Argentum Acoustics—a division of the Toronto-based cable giant Ultralink/XLO. The Argentum line comprises Aureus-2 speaker wire, Mythos interconnects, and Proteus power cords.
Aureus-2 is made of eight-conductor, 99.99998% pure, continuous-cast (Ohno) crystal copper in an ultra-low-capacitance DuPont Teflon dielectric.1 The Mythos interconnect is essentially a two-conductor version of Aureus with an additional shielding of copper foil plus a full-coverage copper braid and mil-spec contacts plated in 24-karat gold.
It only took a few minutes listening to familiar tracks from Dire Straits, Norah Jones, and Joan Baez’s latest Day After Tomorrow [Razor & Tie] to hear the “excitement factor” written all over the music. The Argentum was dynamic, alive with swift and spicy transients. It has a strong midrange flavor with the perspective just slightly back of the front couple of rows. In many ways the Argentum reminded me of the slightly darker, midrange-fueled nature of Tara Labs RSC Air Series 2 that I favorably reviewed a few years ago and still reference today. Vocals of all stripes were richly and continuously well defined. On the Baez, images of acoustic guitar, mandolin, and acoustic bass were focused and stable and there was a reasonable amount of air in the soundfield surrounding them. Orchestral works weren’t reproduced with quite the unbridled openness of some more expensive designs and the soundstage was flattened a bit, but performance was well within expectation in this price range. The real surprise was bass extension and resolution, which were flat-out state of the art—more than a match for comparably priced efforts like Crystal Cable Piccolo and Nordost Blue Heaven.
While the Argentum wires share more similarities than differences with competitors, there are two sonic criteria worth discussing—treble resolution and low-level transient/dynamic gradation. A good example is solo piano. I found that during Evgeny Kissen’s performance of “The Lark” the harmonic decay of rapid-fire upper-treble arpeggios was less articulate than it should have been. And during BS&T’s cover of “And When I Die” [Columbia, SACD] I lost the puff of air hitting the reeds of the solo harmonica during the intro. Also, electric bass, kick drum, and trombone weren’t as distinctly layered as they are with top o’ the heap wire. What this says to me is that the cable may be muting microdynamics. So, yes the Argentum leaves a shred of transparency on the table but, brother, not much.
At a couple grand, a basic configuration of Aureus-2 and Mythos isn’t chump change. But it says a lot about the sheer musicality and overall performance of the Argentum that it can proudly hold its head up against cables two or even three times as much. It also says something else. There’s a new midpriced cable in town.
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1 Ohno Continuous Casting (OCC) is a process of drawing copper ingots into wire in a way that minimizes the grain structure in the wire. Grain is tiny discontinuities in the copper that adversely affect the audio signal passing through it. OCC copper has about one grain in 700 feet, in contrast to about 1500 grains per foot in standard casting techniques. —Robert Harley
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SPECS & PRICING
Argentum Aureus-2 speaker cable
Price:Aureus-2 speaker, $1500 /3m pr.
Argentum Mythos interconnect cable
Price: Mythos RCA, $400/1m pr.
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OK- I'm not a cable hater by any stretch (I have some that cost around $450 and have heard some great ones at much more), but $1500 for speaker wire is not mid priced by ANY standard. That's not even mid priced for a CD player by most standards!
Speaker wire on average will run in $100-$300 range for starter upgrades, up to $600 for mid priced and anything over $900 sits in the higher planes where almost no mortals can tread. You can place a product in a price range based on the very highest price point (nor lowest). Taking away the extremes and you get about a $100-$900 range.
I've auditioned the Mythos interconnects extensively - heard them in several systems, and as part of a 'shoot out' in my own. While my ultiimate choice was the CRL Silvers @ $1,400/m. (WOW!), the Mythos beat out just about everything else, including cables costing up to $2K/m. An incredible bargain!
Regarding Doug Bowker's comments on the price of the Aureus speaker wires... it's all relative. Yes, Kimberr 12TC will cost you about half as much, and sounds very nice. But Kimber Monocle is only slightly less than Aureus, and the cheapest of the Kimber Select line runs about twice the cost of Aureus. Now, if you want to look at REALLY high-priced speaker cables, check out Nordost, Tara Labs, etc. etc.
If the Aureus perform anywhere near as well as the Mythos, they are a bargain too!
Let me guess? This review is directed at goldman sachs employees, ex citi group CEO's and Bernie Madoff? When will you bastards realize that speaker cables at $ 450-1500 are not in the purview of normal people? I presume you will apply soon for a federally subsidized loan assist program to save your sorry asses from bankruptcy?
Normal people, and engineers (I am one), do not see (or hear) any need to pay more than ten bucks for speaker cables. You have not scientifically tested these cables for anything; your "review" comprises technobabble and poetry, signifying nothing.
While I agree that $1500 for speaker wire is not something everyone can reasonably attain, especially myself, this does fairly represent a mid priced cable. When you look at the esoteric offerings from AudioQuest, Nordost, TARA Labs, etc, you'll find that all of them have a variety of cables that cost 5 figures and up. I have never done the numbers, but I'm sure that if you did a survey of all cable manufacturers' products, you may have a median price of between $1000 and $3000, I would assume. (again, I'm assuming, take that for what it's worth) Think of it this way, anyone buying a luxury car is spending about $1500 for a leather seat upgrade, or even higher sometimes. I could complain about people spending thousands of dollars on dead animal skin, but hey, I have leather in my truck, so whatever. So it's not like we're talking about unprecedented figures that no one has ever thought of charging someone. Given that the TARA Labs cables that are mentioned in this article are quite a bit more money, and they certainly aren't the highest-end cables out there, I think that the classification is warranted if they perform better than any lower end cable, but not as good as the best high-end cables.
FYI, I use Audioquest Mont Blanc bi-wire cables that retailed at about $1800 when I bought them, and I'm glad I spent that much on speaker wire. btw, I'm not rich, I make well under $100k a year, but I appreciate (as close to) perfectly reproduced music, so judge me however you want. My brother in law spent $6000 on his last ATV, and I bet most people don't think that is crazy. It's all relative, folks.
Anyone who believes that there is any detectable audible difference between the types of wires discussed in this review and the proper gauge of commercially available copper wire that can be purchased at most hardware stores and home centers is seriously deluded and on a fast on path to wasting serious money.
Any durably insulated commercially available copper conductor of proper gauge will be the complete audible performance equal of any of these high end exorbitantly priced speaker cables. There is only one key criteria in selecting speaker wire and that is that it's total end to end resistance for both conductors be appropriately low in consideration of the audio power level - so that no significant power (sound level) is lost in the speaker wiring. For some speaker designs - a low driving impedance (that includes the resistance of speaker wire) can help to insure that the movement of the speaker coil is controlled strictly by the amplifier output and not due to it's own mechanical response. This end can generally be easily achieved by avoiding excessive cable length and by picking large wire gauges. For those folks who have the output impedance specs for their amplifiers and DC resistance specs for their speakers, an examination of copper wire resistance tables will readily show the appropriate wire gauge in relation to the total wire length in their installation. The idea is to keep the speaker wire resistance low in relation to the rest of the resistance in the path.
All other considerations are meaningless for practical purposes - including the details of the oxygen content of the copper (what is readily commercially available for electrical purposes is just fine); the specific details of the insulation (vinyl is fine, more expensive insulations like Teflon buy absolutely nothing in the way of performance); the stranding (although more strands of finer wire make for ease of routing); or anything else you care to list.
That is not to say that the more expensive cables are not attractively made, that they don't have nice terminations, or quality insulation - it is just that none of this matters when the quality of sound from any given system is compared using "high end speaker cable" with what can be had using the proper gauge of commercially available copper wire. When you realize this, you will see how horribly overpriced even the lower cost high end speaker cables are.
There has been a rather annoying trend in audio magazine reviews - the absence of hard measurements (all of which can be readily made with the right test equipment) that would fully reveal the performance (or lack of performance) of various components in the audio system. In their place, one finds the sort of drivel - the terms that were used to review and compare the performance of the Argentum Acoustics Aureus-2 Speaker Cable & Mythos Interconnect. Considering the terms used - one might assume that the discussion was comparing amplifiers or Speakers. Surely, anyone with a shred of technical intelligence would understand that the most that could be said about comparing properly sized speaker wires would never have anything to do with audio quality.
It is hard to guess exactly what might behind all this - but one distinct possibility is that it has to do with money. In order to get unsuspecting people to pay the kind of price that premium speaker cables command, you really need to make the case for buying them. The technical facts would never support the expense - so manufacturers and reviewers resort to meaningless drivel in the hopes of sucking people in. It is hard to fathom that their motivation isn't monetary - but it could also be the phenemomenon of the Emperors New Clothes. Once people are sold on this myth - and especially if they have laid out the hard cash for a set of these cables - it can be very hard to admit that they have been duped.
The truth about speaker wire and how to make the right choices can be found here:
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
There is no reason for anyone to buy expensive premium speaker wire - the differences / advantages claimed are hogwash.
Dear Pete,
I wish your comments on the differences between speaker cables being meaningless and imaginary were true. Unfirtunately, I can hear HUGE differences and I do not believe that my hearing is somehow unusual. What is unusual is my system which is very revealing. I can easily tell the difference between speaker cables and interonnects and have tested them with a friend by means of a double blind test (he changed the interconnects/cables and my wife took me to the listening chair blindfolded).
I believe there are factors other than resistance and capcitance that influence the sound and I am working with a PhD student to try to measure these factors. I do not believe in anything that is not evidence based and this opinion is based on my own experiments. And yes - I can hear huge differences between power cords as well!
Best Regards
Will
Loved your comments Pete, and I could not agree more. I would have to say the motivation behind all of this, is a combination of what you stated above, monetary, and as you put it the Emperors New Clothes phenomenon. While many are motivated by money, I believe that many have just simply convinced themselves that their $1000.00/m cables with the beautifully made connectors etc. just have to sound better.
I had a conversation about this with someone else who felt the same about speakers cables, and he came up with a good analogy. If you think about a recording, and how many thousands of wires the bits and bites have passed through, not to mention all of the wires that the sounds passes through in your audio equipment, just one wire from amp to speaker is going to make a huge audible difference? It is hard to imagine when you think about it that way. The same individual invited a friend to show off his expensive interconnects one day. On the second listen of the song the expensive cables were thought to be connected by were not. This friend went on and on about how great the sound was, and how much better it was than before. Well.... after the friend was asked to swap the cables back, only to find out that the cables were never connected, and the original cables were left in place. Needless to say the dood was right pissed because he made an ass out of himself.
Pete,
When I replaced my Home Depot copper wire (a heavy gauge in-wall cable) - yes, I used to be a huge skeptic of this cable stuff, so I made my own bi-wire cables when I first put my system together - with Tara Labs speaker cables about a year ago, I noticed a huge increase in sound quality. The Home Depot wire was all mid-range, whereas the cables I bought extended the bass and treble, softened the mid-range, and moved the soundstage behind the speakers. I was shocked at the improvement, and now I consider the $300 or $400 I spent on those cables to be money well spent.
I've since replaced my Radio Shack/The Source interconnects with a $170 interconnect from Tara Labs, and noticed a somewhat less dramatic difference, but a very obvious improvement nonetheless. I think for me the key in being able to hear the difference lay in becoming so familiar with the way my system sounded with the Home Depot cables, and then switching. The differences were just so obvious. In fact, cable upgrades represented the most unequivocal improvements I've made to my system.
Not sure about power cords, but it took all of 5 seconds for me to move from skeptic to believer when I first hooked up my $300-$400 speaker cables. That's as much as I'm willing to spend, by the way.
At any rate, I can understand the argument you and Roger Russell make from a physics and electron flow perspective, but there must be something you're missing.
Tim
If you think effective speaker wire can be fashioned from stuff you could, for example, buy at Home Depot, you are dead wrong. Heavy gauge solid or stranded copper wire insulated with PVC will not transmit all audio signals down the wire at the same speed. The charging/discharging of the dielectic medium is the first problem. Energy is stored in the PVC and then released just after the signal has passed, adding its own artifact to the signal. This equals what is known as group delay time smear. Moreover, skin effect, however minimal, is present at audio frequencies, and the best measuring instrument known to man---the human ear---can discern the time delay between higher frequencies traveling on or near the skin of a wire, and the lower frequencies which travel on or near the center of the wire. Moreover, the rising/collapsing magnetic field around the conductor---inductive reactance---dramatically smears the audio signal by slowing down some frequencies more or less than other frequencies. Interelectode capacitance between the forward and return speaker wire conductors can and does act as a filter which can roll of high frequencies. Carefully designed speaker cables (and interconnects) address all these issues as best they can, and different designers take different approaches to a solution while keeping the laws of phsyics forefront in their minds. Some cables are therefore more successful than others in tackling these manifold problems. It is no surprise that some of these designs are rather complicated and result in a high manufacturing expense. It takes a deep familiarity of live music in an acoustic envrionment to truly appreciate the differences between "Home Depot" speaker cables and high end cables. Serious audiophiles familiar with the sound of live music know and hear the differences.