Master Built-What are Owners Hearing That They Didn't Hear With Other Cables

Steve Williams said:

I'm listening to Mahlers 2 now and have heard it a dozen times. Today I hear things I've just never heard. There is nothing that jumps out the bass was my first jaw drop reaction yet as Joe says it has a finesse tonit. I agree also about drum pieces where I can hear the strike on different parts of the skin

My wife gets back on Wed. I haven't shaved in 3 days because I'm in my room all day. There is no glare. There is no fatigue. I also said in my system blog that the subtle ambience with the timber attack and decay with full range dynamics that accentuates nothing is for my ears the first timer I have truly heard my Lamm gear and I can say that I am loving what I hear.

Click to expand...

It is a pleasure when we can enjoy listening to music on our systems. Learning and trying new things is part of the enjoyment. Thanks for sharing Steve.

NorthStar - Thank you for pulling over my impressions on the Masterbuilt Signature line from A'circle from 2013 - boy time flies!

Relating how I came to the decision to purchase the ULTRA line may be illuminating to some folks here.
My room is 38 feet by 22 feet by 10 feet. I was very happy with the sound that I was getting with the Signature line and yet was blessed with some year-end cash, so I called Albert Von Schweikert and had a long and highly informative talk with him (most conversations with him are long and informative).

My question was what next to improve my system further. We settled on two options which were similar in cost. The first was to add two VSA 15 inch XS subwoofers which were just as fast as the mains and would be placed in the rear of the room to increase pressurization, smooth out nodes and thereby also have potential to add clarity to the midrange. He asked me what I really liked and while I do love organ music and large orchestral, my main listening is to solo piano and my main pleasure is in hearing the most subtle of details and dynamics, but in a liquid natural way with absolutely no edge or harshness. And I was already quite happy with the bass performance of the VR55 Aktives. Given these preferences he suggested that both options would be very enhancing, but felt that adding the Ultra cables would be even better than the subs in my room. I am highly pleased with the result including a surprising amount of bass enhancement and pressurization on organ just changing to Ultra cables and I am now in natural detail heaven.

gammajo said:

NorthStar - Thank you for pulling over my impressions on the Materbuilt Signature line from A'circle from 2013 - boy time flies!

Click to expand...

Indeed Joe. That surely went by quick.

amirm said:

I hope Steve forgives me for posting this from two years ago about Shunyata cables:





Seriously, I am just surprised Steve has moved on from Shunyata after so much praise for it in the past.

Click to expand...

The thing is, Steve is visiting some very experienced audiophiles. Generally, when you do visits, unlike local audiophile friends, the long distance ones will be pre-filtered. They might have different approaches, but all will always have something or the other to learn from. It is easy to listen to one turntable and like the Ortofon Anna and to listen to another and like the Zyx Uni P. That is the whole point of travelling. You speed up the learning curve and see these differences quicker than you otherwise would, the flip side of that means if you had bought into anything previously, the new experience might cause you to change strategy. In fact, it should. The more frequent such experiences, the more frequent such changes. Like I used to tell Ron and Marc, change of taste due to a new experience is actually progress.

When he travelled to Philippines, he had done so to meet some quality audiophiles, and if he learned something there, it should be viewed as a good thing.

gammajo said:

NorthStar - Thank you for pulling over my impressions on the Masterbuilt Signature line from A'circle from 2013 - boy time flies!

Relating how I came to the decision to purchase the ULTRA line may be illuminating to some folks here.
My room is 38 feet by 22 feet by 10 feet. I was very happy with the sound that I was getting with the Signature line and yet was blessed with some year-end cash, so I called Albert Von Schweikert and had a long and highly informative talk with him (most conversations with him are long and informative).

My question was what next to improve my system further. We settled on two options which were similar in cost. The first was to add two VSA 15 inch XS subwoofers which were just as fast as the mains and would be placed in the rear of the room to increase pressurization, smooth out nodes and thereby also have potential to add clarity to the midrange. He asked me what I really liked and while I do love organ music and large orchestral, my main listening is to solo piano and my main pleasure is in hearing the most subtle of details and dynamics, but in a liquid natural way with absolutely no edge or harshness. And I was already quite happy with the bass performance of the VR55 Aktives. Given these preferences he suggested that both options would be very enhancing, but felt that adding the Ultra cables would be even better than the subs in my room. I am highly pleased with the result including a surprising amount of bass enhancement and pressurization on organ just changing to Ultra cables and I am now in natural detail heaven.

Click to expand...

I don't know sir; how did you find out?

You posted next after that I posted @ the exact same time as Leif Swanson himself. Was it something in the air that wasn't no accident? :b
______

AudioQuest, MIT, Transparent, Nordost, Shunyata, MasterBuilt, ...the cable race is on, with more fluidity, more liquidity, more conductivity, more neutrality.

Earlier on I was just looking... http://www.vonschweikert.com/ultra-11

Yesterday, I inserted the Master Built Ultra IC into my bedroom system. My bedroom system is currently made up of a 47 lab flatfish transport connected to a BADA Alpha dac by an old digital cable, then I used the Master Built Ultra IC from the BADA to a Spectral DMA100S power amp; and lastly, a pair of MIT speaker cables to a pair of Yamaha NS1 speakers.

I sat leaning on my bed's headboard as I always do when listening to this set up. My listening position was to the right of the right speaker.

On the first cut, it sounded ok, nothing stood out. Then on the second cut onwards, I noticed that the singers pronunciations of the lyrics became very clear. Without noticing any gradual change, the voices became very pure. It was as if I was viewing an aquarium with a very powerful filter that made the water so clear the fishes inside are so clearly viewed as there are absolutely no particles suspended in the water. It was like the singers' voices had the impurities filtered out and only their purified voices remained. Even when I visited the bathroom behind the bed, there was no deterioration of the voices, the voices sounded just as pure and just as clear. As I continued to listen, I felt myself drawn deeper and deeper into the music.

bonzo75 said:

The thing is, Steve is visiting some very experienced audiophiles. Generally, when you do visits, unlike local audiophile friends, the long distance ones will be pre-filtered. They might have different approaches, but all will always have something or the other to learn from. It is easy to listen to one turntable and like the Ortofon Anna and to listen to another and like the Zyx Uni P. That is the whole point of travelling. You speed up the learning curve and see these differences quicker than you otherwise would, the flip side of that means if you had bought into anything previously, the new experience might cause you to change strategy. In fact, it should. The more frequent such experiences, the more frequent such changes. Like I used to tell Ron and Marc, change of taste due to a new experience is actually progress.

When he travelled to Philippines, he had done so to meet some quality audiophiles, and if he learned something there, it should be viewed as a good thing.

Click to expand...

Excellent post.

Mullard88 - You got it! Really cool that you enjoyed the clarity way off axis. On a CD of Caverna Magica there are voices softly whispered deep in the background of a cave while foot steps and other things are happening in the foreground. As my system improved I could make them out, with further improvement I could tell it was in French, with Masterbuilt I could catch all the words enough to be able to translate into English. Also Bruce Springstien's mumblings all became easy to understand.

mountainjoe said:

Hi ack - thanks for the link - I hadn't seen this website nor this page.

The way I read it they put "super conductivity" in quotes, which to me says to take that term as more of a marketing claim than a technical one (or at least it should be taken with a grain of salt). They also mention "with close-to-zero resistance and/or signal loss" - this to me means not superconducting as that achieves non-measurable resistance (i.e. as close to zero resistance as we can determine). I think it's rather an attempt to reduce resistance as much as possible (at room temp) compared to standard wire technology.

That's of course my own interpretation of the wording - and colored by the direct discussions I've had with Albert and Leif - they never at any time suggested that these cables were superconducting and I would be as skeptical as you if they did.

Cheers,

Click to expand...

Yes, of course the intent is to point out extremely low resistance, but: a) the alloy that Amir found out from CERN's site isn't offering that at room temperatures; b) they really want to play the CERN/super-conductivity card; c) read below on the importance of 'R' vs 'LC'. Nonetheless, the link I included says a bit more, and here it is:

Ultra Extreme (TM) Bi-Wire Speaker Cable – using “super-conductivity” technology developed for the large Hadron Collider at the CERN Laboratory in Switzerland, a new alloy consisting of rare earth materials, precious metals and ceramic filler enables almost zero resistance to electrical signals down to the millionth of a volt range. For this reason, the Ultra Extreme Cables will let you hear details and sonic holography not heard in any other brand of wire on the market. At extremely low volume levels, you will hear a huge soundstage, bass power and depth that you have never had before experienced!

Click to expand...

I disagree that one will hear details and sonic holography because of lower in-series resistance; due to noise reduction and phase correction, perhaps... yes.

Under Steve's system thread, the cables were branded a "revolutionary product" - if that's referring to the super-low resistance, then I'd say FAR from a revolutionary achievement, though a good one, if true. To be more precise, it is inevitable to have resistors in series with the signal path all along the entire chain, including the amplification devices themselves (transistors, tubes). So the alleged fact that these cables offer extremely low resistance is of extremely low importance to me.

As I also mentioned in Steve's thread, the more important electrical properties here are always LC and inevitable phase characteristics, and there is no information about that. In a circuit design, we often talk about the collective capacitance of the circuit and/or the collective inductance of the circuit, of which the cables are a part (e.g. Spectral/MIT synergy), not so much about the in-series resistance, in order to then tune phase issues (among other things). Resistance does play a role - it is responsible for losses converted to heat - but is inherently far lower in importance, especially here with cables where the losses would be far lower than in any circuit employing resistors and amplification devices. This is in sharp contrast to the LHC which must achieve extremely low resistance for super-conductivity, in order to get the strongest magnetic fields; and toward that goal, there are additional, more sophisticated techniques to strengthen (even double) the magnetic field toward the direction you want, like Halbach arrays of magnets. So "super conductivity" in these cables, with or without quotes??? Far from it, and there are far more important problems to solve in signal transmission.

If one wants to read up on how cables can and are being _properly_ used in a circuit, read no further than Keith Johnson's DMA-300 amplifier http://www.spectralaudio.com/DMA300/DMA300.htm wherein he says:

New Solutions to Old Interface Problems
​

All connections to the DMA-300 have internal interfaces to assure ideal conditioning as well as optimum transmission of audio signals and power. These crossing points or matching networks also remove interferences that would otherwise enter sensitive circuitry and create unwanted signal propagation and noise. Traditional solid state amplifiers have always employed output terminating networks to provide an impedance or compliance to accommodate the load of the speaker cable and crossover in order to protect the amplifier. Unfortunately, the problems associated with using conventional output networks are severe, ranging from non-linear and unpredictable loading behavior to magnetic field propagation and noise. All these problems degrade amplifier performance and sonics. In Spectral amplifiers the sources of these distortions are eliminated. Stabilizing networks, resistors, chokes and inductors are replaced with tailored precision woven cables which eliminate non-linearities, noise propagation and magnetic fields. Now the signal from the output devices to the cable load is pristine, isolated and uncompromised by passive component problems.

Precision Output Interface Cables
​

In the DMA-300 dedicated output interface cables connect the high power output devices directly to external speaker cables. These are massive wires inside the amplifier that have large copper conductor crossections to handle high power. They are constructed from fine oxygen free wires in groups with a stranding configuration that cancels both magnetic and electrical fields. This configuration along with dedicated matching components at the opposite end of the speaker cable assures a seamless and precise transmission path between output devices, loudspeaker interfaces and crossover components in speakers [ack: that's the critical problem that synergy is attempting to solve]. Its carefully tailored impedances provide a high frequency compliance that smoothly transitions or steers electrical currents between the positive and negative CMOS output fets. Responses throughout the whole system are powerful, fast and extremely quick settling.
​

Click to expand...

To be honest, I am more interested in that patent-pending noise reduction technique than anything else. Still interested to audition them at home as well.

Hi ack,

I tried to put to rest the "superconductivity" issue in an earlier post, but I'll try again. The statement from MB regarding "superconductivity" is a figurative not literal description. We all know and MasterBuilt knows that their cables are not superconductive. To continue beating this horse is of no value. Again, no one I stating this as literal truth. It is unfortunate that the word was tossed out (in quotes) to try to emphasize that the cables design was to minimize any disturbance to the signal.

When I first saw that word used from MB, I cringed because I know this would generate endless back and forth discussion that is completely beside the point and is a diversion from useful dialog. Again, any mention of "superconductivity" was not intended as a claim that the cables have achieved the promised land of room temperature superconductivity. I don't know what else that can be said to try to clarify. Again, this was a FIGURATIVE, not a LITERAL description. I hold no rancor over this issue, but please, please, can we move on?

As far as being revolutionary, yes in my experience they are revolutionary in their immediately audible performance.

Thanks,
Robert

gammajo - I am listening to the same CD for the third time just to validate to myself that I am not imagining what I am hearing and feeling. I will install the other Ultra IC Jack lent me into my main listening room. I plan to utilize it between the CD player and line stage. You are lucky to have discovered these cables early. I'm glad Steve revealed this secret. It never occurred to me to ask Jack before. I wish you continued enjoyment of music played through these cables.

Enjoy the ICs Sam

1) As a matter of language words are useful only to the extent they help us to distinguish certain things from other things. I assume "superconductivity" has a precise and accepted technical meaning among scientists.

In the context of a manufacturer's explicitly technical discussion I believe it is misleading and disingenuous to use a specific and highly technical term in a "figurative" manner.

2) I will have to get new, longer, 30' interconnects (probably XLRs) when I resurrect my stereo after my house repairs are commenced and eventually completed. Despite owning Transparent cables philosophically I do not believe in RLC network boxes on cables. (I consider the RLC components to be basic tone controls.)

If I hear half of what Steve and other owners of MasterBuilt cables hear I will either get MB cables or Basis Audio cables (which A.J. says are easily proven to pass waveforms without adulteration).

3) Has anyone seen on an oscilloscope, or does the MB manufacturer discuss or report, how perfectly the MB cables pass waveforms without adulteration?

kernelbob said:

Hi ack,

I tried to put to rest the "superconductivity" issue in an earlier post, but I'll try again. The statement from MB regarding "superconductivity" is a figurative not literal description. We all know and MasterBuilt knows that their cables are not superconductive. To continue beating this horse is of no value. Again, no one I stating this as literal truth. It is unfortunate that the word was tossed out (in quotes) to try to emphasize that the cables design was to minimize any disturbance to the signal.

When I first saw that word used from MB, I cringed because I know this would generate endless back and forth discussion that is completely beside the point and is a diversion from useful dialog. Again, any mention of "superconductivity" was not intended as a claim that the cables have achieved the promised land of room temperature superconductivity. I don't know what else that can be said to try to clarify. Again, this was a FIGURATIVE, not a LITERAL description. I hold no rancor over this issue, but please, please, can we move on?

As far as being revolutionary, yes in my experience they are revolutionary in their immediately audible performance.

Thanks,
Robert

Click to expand...

Hi, thanks. The point is not really the word "super-conductivity", but the misleading nature of the claims and the inference (and even straight claim) that the cable is of low resistance as if it were super-conducting, which is exceptionally irrelevant from an electrical perspective, in the grand scheme of the circuits in our equipment. It is in fact them who are beating on a dead horse, not I, and offer little in terms of relevant substance in the design.

And thanks Ron!

Steve Williams said:

Truly Tasos,IMO you can't see the trees for the forest. I don't know what they are made of and how they function. I ONLY care how they sound to my ears. The information you seek is proprietary and won't be divulged. It's the same as Wilson not telling his clients where the drivers are crossed. Surely you must believe that they have right to keep private those things for the same reasons

Tasos all I can tell you is I haven't been out of my sound room in a week as I am enjoying music on my system in a way I have never heard it. while you and Amir are talking super conductors. Who cares? I don't

I will say again as best I can. My system has never sounded better with this loom of Ultra and Signature cable that I am using. Shouldn't that be all that matters to an audiophile. I think you're chasing zebras here rather than horses.

For other people not to have a grasp on how this hobby progresses that there will always her something newer and better IMO are living in a bubble. To search comments that I made 5 years ago was about as narrow minded a comment I have read here in 6 years and IMO also was only meant to provoke argument. Thanks to Peter and Bonzo et al who understand this hobby and replied accordingly. I couldn't have said it any better

Click to expand...

Direct attack, Steve... Stick to the discussion please and address the posts, not the individual. I know what you care about, and I know how I look at things. Enjoy the cables.

Does anyone have the ability to compare the power cords with Tara cobalt, Siltech, Verictum, or any of the cables with Ansuz?

Ron Resnick said:

As a matter of language words are useful only to the extent they help us to distinguish certain things from other things. I assume "superconductivity" has a precise and accepted technical meaning among scientists.

In the context of a manufacturer's explicitly technical discussion I believe it is misleading and disengenuous to use a specific and highly technical term in a "figurative" manner.

Click to expand...

+1

ack said:

Hi, thanks. The point is not really the word "super-conductivity", but the misleading nature of the claims and the inference (and even straight claim) that the cable is of low resistance as if it were super-conducting, which is exceptionally irrelevant from an electrical perspective, in the grand scheme of the circuits in our equipment. It is in fact them who are beating on a dead horse, not I, and offer little in terms of relevant substance in the design.

And thanks Ron!

Click to expand...

+1