LFD Cables (phono and I.C.) from the UK, cables as components

[Johan K]

Mik asking his clients for payment for the dongle

Luckily when Mike bought it price was only 1 million

Love these movies!! Very much my humor..
Most of all I love the ”Mole” scene - Sooo funny !!

 

[Johan K]

 

[Mike Lavigne]

these dongles looks like lessloss x640 filters .
are they decrease grain by emi filtering?

a post/comment to an 18 month old thread with a complete baseless guess. is that how you typically judge things? just assume there is circuitry inside with zero basis for doing that? why go out of your way to stir this up? someone put you up to it?

then Ked piles on.

these 'dongles' are simply a way to overcome the DIN connection limitations. a DIN connector has very limited space so compromises the signal path. the 'dongle' overcomes that limitation. Mik describes it in more detail. reach out to Mik if you want more information.

there are no hidden circuits or nefarious goings on inside the dongles. those who have heard these at Mik's place appreciate what they can do.

phono cartridges output very low signals, so phono cables are very significant. and the DIN connection is a major limitation to phono cable performance.

ignorance can be the source of humor. Mik is not here and likely won't be to respond.

carry on.

 

[Loheswaran]

I have experienced the entire range of lfd electronics and have all top tier products amongst my collection they are amongst the finest solid stage amplifiers I have ever heard bar none and in fact I would go far so they re write the rules of the common debate of solid verses tubes. They do become costly has one has factor the expenditure of the appropriate the added cost of ancillaries ie cables. There are many many complete un commercial cables and electronics in my hand ones that manufacturers would just shudder the thought of coming up with a prototype let alone producing.

The tweaking of the wiring is used in different forms and iterations thoughout the amplifier ranges and one can easily hear the differencest just with small conductor alterations make to the overall performance and the selection of mostly unobtainable passive and active components. This manipulation is what likes of Be Yamamura was touching on all those years back with using pure aluminium conductors etc that made his concepts quite unique. What mike is experiencing is only very small part of customised solutions available (at a price). A lot of the wacky tweaking I have come up with ie extensive use of platinum has been inspired by Dr Bews. This is certainly not new we have to just look at wacky products as the Lfd Battery disc stage that was way ahead of its time in 1985 so much much so that veterans in industry very surprised they were charging five times as much in todays this would equate to ludicrous sums these days and not just hyper inflated prices appear to charge in the last 20 years. Accolade must also be give to Be Yamamura who was a friend of Dr Bews for all his inspiration and to Professor Hawksford and to Eric Tsang who had spent the best part of three apartments in London on crazy cable conductors just to find out what's what.

I’ve heard about Eric Tsang from a cable making friend of mine.
I have a love hate with cables. I love them coz the good ones work and hate them as they are too costly for me.
I then had a good discussion with Taj Moughadden founder of Roksan and thereafter Vertere. He explained about the fact that in the HB cables he makes they are thin enough to go inside a persons hair and are incredibly fine. These aren’t ‘off the shelf’ and are difficult to put together with a high breakage/wastage rate to get perfect.

He further explained about the different diameters for different frequencies- I’ve had his basic cables and they are quite superb. I understand that Tsang has a similar approach. Time to fill the piggy

 

[Chop]

Just resurrecting this thread 6 months on.
I'm going even further to the dark side.... Mik has tempted me with a LFD Diamond Viper interconnect! He tells me it will be way better than my LFD arm cable so I couldn't resist it, despite not really being able to afford it right now... I'll pick it up in a couple of weeks. A small report will follow when I have it.

 

[Chop]

The Diamond Viper v2 - a sort of mini review

I thought I’d share some thoughts now I have a couple of months experience having the LFD Diamond Viper v2 (for speed of writing lets call it DV) interconnect in my system. I bought from Unique Audio in the UK a 1.25m length going between pre and power amp. For comparison it replaced the Cut Loose Silver Reference cable, which itself isn't exactly a slouch - Cut Loose is the guy that hand made all the Audio Note UK top of the range cables.

I’m writing because it’s hard to find anything on line about the Diamond Viper interconnect. I think that is for two reasons, partly because the LFD business is deliberately under the radar and not interested in reviews, and partly because this is hand built & expensive & there aren’t that many DV cables out there.
For me though, I think there isn’t much written out there because it’s really difficult to explain exactly what its doing in a system. But I’m going to try!

Here's the quick description:
It’s easy to tell immediately that the sound is better and more beautiful and more believable and sounds more like people. Problem is that the normal cliché audio vocabulary doesn’t really help to explain why, and therefore it’s hard to write without sounding like a pretentious idiot. Lets simply say the variation in any parameter of recorded sound quality from record to record is more starkly apparent.
Overall I think of it like this: Would you expect a big pre amp upgrade to improve everything? Well, the DV does that. Think of it as what you have now but on steroids. Much better, and more beautiful.

You want more detail than that?
Well, I think the biggest contributing factor is that a big layer of hash that I didn’t know was there drops away. The hash dropping away exposes EVERYTHING - better 3D imaging and a more natural timbre & dynamic range to instruments.
Ah, dynamics: I have come to think that it has a far, far wider range of dynamic and tonal gradations to the sound than anything I have heard before. I suppose by dynamic gradations I mean micro dynamics. Specific instruments in a mix having more subtle dynamic range variations so the performance sounds more believable. Here’s a silly example. The Police’s Roxanne - I had never noticed just how hard Stuart Copeland is hitting the snare on the verses and how much it varies from beat to beat.

With regard to the imaging: It doesn’t make everything image better. That would be … unnatural, right? This isn’t etched unnatural imaging. A quartet in front of you doesn’t have hard delineated edges to each instrument but you can place them in space. Imaging is better with DV because the tonal characteristics of each instrument and how it is being played are more apparent. This works on quartets, voices in a room, orchestral and rock bands. I think that must be all down to the hash being lowered.

The overall sound is purer, cleaner and smoother. If someone said that to me about a product my immediate thoughts would be “Aha, so smoother means its less dynamic right??” Erm no, it’s the exact opposite. It pops the sound out of your speakers. It’s really dynamic without anything ever shouting at you or being bright. There is a naturalness and sparkle to the midrange and up, but without any brightness.
IF – and its quite a big if – there is a characteristic it’s that there is also a power and weight to the lower end WITHOUT it being bass heavy or bloated in any way.


Anyway, hope this poorly structured ramble helps someone…