Cheers - a 15-20 year old phono to DIN Cobra cable. I have a newer Clearway cable too.
Very good point about the dealers though dealers could always sell them at the show - in fact a cable I bought from the manufacturer’s display was paid for at the Audio-T desk.
With regards to black box upgrades I think I’m at the point where these would be £5,000-£10,000 upgrades or more and I’m not ready for that currently, so for more modest costs I could potentially improve interconnects in the short term and take them forwards when black boxes are refreshed.
I switched from the cobra many years ago to the chameleon vee3 on the advise from my dealer and was and still am really impressed with them.
Compared to the cobra the chameleon has bags more detail and is faster sounding with greater stereo imaging, bass is tighter
Just done a bit of A/B listening now - the Shawline sounds utterly anaemic by comparison to the older Cobra. It’s more forward, ‘pleasant’ in a background music kind of way and I’d like to say it has a more controlled low end but the bass is simply lacking. The Cobra brings emotion, timbre to instruments, depth and width of soundstage, and simply a more sonorous low end with authority and scale. It’s really night and day.
Maybe you should stick with the cobra or maybe look to a S/H pair of chameleons?.
Its a tough call really.
How do the clearways sound compared to the cobras?
Sadly it’s not a tough call at all. Certainly makes me realise how good the Cobra was - wish I’d bought more at the time!
With 3 sources currently I need something at least as good as the Cobra for the others I feel.
I feel exactly the same way about my chameleons after listening to both chord shawline and tellurium q blacks.
Look to fleabay for S/H cobras
Just coming back from the Bristol Show which is run by Audio-t, they do have cables available at show rates where available. From memory, I don’t believe they discount any Naim equipment t the show, but I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
I know companies like Chord sell cables at shows.
I take your point about the cost of the next black box upgrade and look at cables now would be a more cost effective solution.
Kind regards
PB
Do Chord publish the OFC oxygen ratings of the copper and the purity of the silver that they use?
I can’t see any on their site.
I can’t recall whether they previously published this data.
But I always wonder why a cable manufacturer doesn’t publish this information, if they use high purity metals.
One reason why might be that they don’t believe that those stats are as important as how the cable sounds (and how the sound ages over the decades it may be used for).
Nevertheless, I like to see those data - and I like to know what the surface area of a cross section of the conductor is in mm2.
The Anthem is a decent interconnect too. I went from a Cobra on my CDX2 and was very pleased. However, with the aforementioned Shawline which I got to connect my Aria phono stage to LP12 I was not convinced. I bought a WitchHat at nearly half the price which really impressed me. They produce what I would class as “neutral” cables, no bass and vocal bias which I think is a Chord characteristic. Horses for courses and all that…
The website gives specification of the speaker cables, showing both AWG and cross sectional area. I think it is an update since the X series was introduced.
The page for Chord Epic says:
Silver-plated OFC - But it doesn’t state what level of oxygen remains in the cable - the N rating. By contrast Atlas, e.g., say “Atlas’ Ohno Continuous Cast (OCC) 7N 99.99999% pure copper”.
But, yes, they do give the Chord Epic sizes:
| AWG | 12 |
|---|---|
| mm2 | 3.31 |
| Diameter | 11mm |
I use Epic Reference on main system (upgrade from Epic Twin, prefer to SuperLumina), and Odyssey on bedroom system (upgrade from Rumour, prefer both to NACA5). Both improved over a 2 to 3 month period, but sounded terrific from the off.
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Your main system (beside the speakers, which I haven’t heard) is the system I’m slowly building towards (but may never get to!).
Have you ever tried or heard Chord Epic with Ohmnic banana plugs?
Hi JimDog. Just looked, and it appears my Epic Reference cables are terminated with Chord Ohmic banana plugs! I see from the Chord website that they are now the standard termination.
Unless Naim bring out a successor to the 272 which is a ‘must have’ in terms of SQ improvement, this is my forever system! If you’ve never heard any ProAc speakers, I strongly recommend a demo when you’re next thinking about an upgrade. Naim & ProAc go together like wine and cheese, fish and chips, Batman and Robin, gin and tonic - you get my drift!
So do a good pair of oak-matured Arivas and a 272 (and a side order of Cisco 2960)…
But, yes, I have added ProAc to my speaker shopping list (along with Harbeth, Dynaudio, SL2, JBL) for when my old faithfuls finally bite the dust…
But do Chord still make Epic Reference? I can only see Epic and Epic XL on their site.
I’m getting 2 x 3.5M of Epic, but it’s not the same cable as Epic Reference.
As ever, I’m out of date! I paid £150 per metre for the Reference, the XL is obviously the improved version, but @ £200 per metre. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with the Epic (are you paying the advertised £50 per metre?).
Especially as I have tried some Chord cables and their Campana (£2,50/mt) has still the best VFM in the whole world of speaker wires. A tad limited at the very extremes, but find another wire with such coherence and good imaging at the price.
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But the real point is, that nobody will ever use (safe for me, of course) a speaker wire that costs only £2,50/mt believing that it works as well as stuff costing from 20 times much up.
Yes, I love my 15 year old Chord Rumour 2 but I do feel a deep urge to try something much more costly.
My anticonsumerist self hates the idea of buying more stuff but I do love hearing music played through a well tuned hifi system.