Van den Hul
Contents
| Cable | Van den Hul Inspiration Hybrid, Cloud 3T and The Nova |
| Balance low, mid and high | Inspiration: Rich reproduction. Round and full. Treble somewhat mild.
Cloud 3T: Not a pleasant balance in our system. Bass does not come through well and mids and high are presented separately from each other. Nova: Very well balanced. Lots of attack and energy. |
| Tone of vocals and instruments | Inspiration: Warm vocals, but not too much. Lots of information and depth in the instruments.
Cloud 3T: Vocals and woodwinds are easy to follow, but everything in the lower register is not. Little texture underneath. Nova: Lots of detail and openness. Lots of insight. |
| Stereo image | Inspiration: It comes to you. Nice sound stage; good proportion. Not very large, but intimate.
Cloud 3T: Narrow image and everything seems placed far away. Bit of a tunnel. Nova: Big picture. Impressive. You have to listen though! |
| Rhythm | Inspiration: Lots of reverb and fast transients. Not most exciting cable in terms of timing. But pleasant.
Cloud 3T: It looks like dynamics with a brake on it. Crazy effect. Nova: Rhythmically a strong cable. Attack, punchy… |
| Overall | Inspiration: Very correct cable. Rich playback. Snappy and fast. But also relaxed.
Cloud 3T: Crazy effect. Music feels a little dead. Bass is not good. It’s a balance problem. Nova: We know again why this is our reference: you can listen very deep into the music. Is it perfect? No… but it is very good! (The perfect cable does not exist by the way). |
| Material and construction | Inspiration: 4 x 1.97mm2 conductors (hybrid / so carbon treated)
Cloud 3T: 8 groups of 3T conductors. Each group is 6 x 7 strands. Total 8 AWG. Nova: 4 x 8 AWG (8.4mm2) copper / silver conductors (with Hybrid technology ). |
| Price | VdH Inspiration Hybrid: 1599 Euro, Cloud 3T: 2849 Euro , The Nova: 3549 Euro |
Measurements Van den Hul
LCR measurements
Propagation variation
VdH Inspiration Hybrid
VdH Cloud 3T
VdH The Nova
Response measurements
Noise measurements
Hi team,
This is quite an amazing project that you have done.
I am trying to use this information to help my selection decision making on some new cables. My conclusion is that the Audiomica ones which you tested seem to be the best value in terms of price vs your feedback about their sound. And from the qualitative feedback it seems like those cables would play well with most systems. Is this a correct conclusion to draw from the testing?
I understand that I would probably want to try the cables out on my system to make sure that they fit with the sound that I like.
I am relatively new to hi-fi so I apologise if this is a question that is a philosophically wrong way to think about things.
I wonder, if the impedance of the cables would not provide a more significant perspective instead of individual values of R, C and L ?
Hey Jaap, that is a really nice test with lots of information, thanks for that! Would it be possible to have it all into one table for a good overview, instead having to scroll through the individual pages? May be too much to ask 🙂
Keep up the awesome work!
Standard cable of 2.5mm2… I am using 16mm2 “standard wire”, 3m long. Very low resistance. That ticks one box. I guess I can theoretically calculate the inductance and capacitance. Wonder if these are of significant consequence at 20kHz. Maybe I can twist the cable to reduce the inductance if it has some impact.
This is beyond – need to study it – not just read, to understand.
Thanks for including the “peasant” installation cable AudioQuest 14/4 – I use the more expensive version XTRM 14/4. My question is – how did you terminate the cable and in what configuration? I have it terminated with nakamichi bananas and connected in a star-quad configuration.
Martin
And, just like that, Alpha-Audio shoots to the top of the audio reviewer heap! The GOAT of tests and shoot-outs. Well done kind sirs, that was an impressive and Herculean effort!
Thanks,
Eric