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We again have three wonderful speaker cables on loan from HEAK: the Kimber Carbon 18XL, Dyrholm Phoenix and the OePhi Reference. What we’re curious about are the differences in sound and performance. Does investing more also mean more music?
We have been getting an extraordinary number of requests to test cables since our big cable survey – 32 interlinks and 32 speaker cables. We don’t accept everything, because we don’t want to just test cables, but sometimes the offering distributer, brand or importer opts a nice idea. Like this ‘triple test’ with some cables we don’t know yet.
Kimber Carbon 18XL
The Kimber Carbon 18XL features the well-known braided Kimber geometry. Basically, the structure consists of a core constructed of multiple strands and around it Kimber wrapped another series of conductors. The conductors vary in diameter. Finally, the whole is braided again to eliminate noise.
The Carbon 18XL has an added bonus: the cable is finished with a fluorocarbon dielectric. That should insulate even better than regular Teflon. The 3-meter pair we have for testing costs 8595 Euros, or 7695 for 2,5m.
Dyrholm Phoenix
Denmark’s Dyrholm has given its Phoenix series an update in 2020. The “new” Phoenix comes much closer to the Zodiac series, but keeps the price interesting. Although 4275 Euro remains a pretty serious amount for a pair of 2.5 meter speaker cable.
The Dyrholm Phoenix is constructed with silver-plated copper conductors of various diameters. All strands are insulated with cotton. These in turn are bundled. Around the bundle goes a nice jacket. The digital interlinks and interlinks are shielded with galvanized copper. The speaker cable is not. What the reason for this is is not clear to us.
OePhi Reference
The (also Danish) OePhi doesn’t give a whole lot of information about its cable. Except that this is the top model and that they use conductors made of pure copper. Also, they mention that the cable is very fast and has a high bandwith. We’ll see if that’s true later.
The construction is remarkable with two separate conductors spaced apart with spacers. We do like the fact that OePhi uses spacers instead of just leaving the separate conductors loose: that’s just a bad idea, we know by now. A pair of 2.5 meters costs 5650 Euro.
Measured values are per meter or for the full 2.5m length?
As always i love reading your tests and value your opinions on everything you compare!
This is just a small suggestion, that i hope you are not offended by.
When testing things like cables, switches and power, have you thought about replacing phrases like “How do they sound” with “How do they influence this setup to sound”?
It might sound like a small nit picking, and maybe it is, but i truly believe that many of your readers that often might be sceptic are going to be even more sceptic when someone says that a cable has a certain sound. Isn´t it so that the cable only influences other parts of the system downstream to behave/react different and change the sound in components after the cable/switch/power. That could potentially mean that the same cable could “sound” different in another system, meaning that it doesn´t have a sound, as such? I actually think it will make a big difference what wording you use, from an educational perspective.