AS GOOD AS IT GETS

TWO DEVICES THAT TRANSFORMED MY SYSTEM

H. Richard Weiner

I. Remembrance of Things Past

Most of us cherish the memory of a high fidelity system we heard years ago. We can tell you where we were, and exactly what music was playing. In some cases, the system had one remarkable feature, such as great soundstaging; in others, it redefined our whole concept of music reproduction. We spend a lot of time and money trying to reclaim that memory.

Here’s a thirty-year old snapshot: I’m an impoverished graduate student set free from seminars for the day, walking down Davies Street in Vancouver. I walk into a store and see a pair of speakers that look like the back seat of a Volkswagen. (The rest of the system is Quad 33/303 electronics, Phillips table with London Decca cartridge.) They’re playing a Butterfield Blues Band song: “Get Out My Life, Woman.”

Nothing in my previous hifi experience has prepared me for the sound of Quad 57s. This is far more true to life than Klipschorns, Empire Paragons, or Tannoy Golds. “That’s amazing,” I tell the salesman.

In the time between then and now I have bought numerous components, but I kept searching for a system as shockingly real as the one I heard on a rainy afternoon in western Canada. I bought Quads, drove them with an Electrocompaniet amp, then an ARC amp. I switched out preamps at least six times, changed cartridges repeatedly, got a new isolation base, tried dozens of interconnects from four or five different companies. CD players, when they were introduced, came and went. Amps were auditioned and sent packing before I settled on a VAC amp. I got Steve Sammet’s preamp. Each step was progress, but never reached the goal. I acquired a pair of stacked Quad 57s, but still I’d listen for an evening and mutter, “They ought to sound better. I know they can sound better.”

It’s terrific to tell you that I have finally gotten my system to sound the way I always expected it to. It’s a pleasure to write about the products that brought it to that level, and even better to say that the responsible parties are cheap.

II. Homegrown Audio Silver Lace

Years ago we joked that anyone with a router and a Madisound catalogue could become a speaker manufacturer. The same was not the case for wire companies. Most of them were large firms that purchased or even manufactured raw material in bulk, owned very sophisticated machines to wind the conductors in proprietary arrays, covered it with exotic dielectrics and terminated it with extravagantly expensive terminations. Prices rose until the wires could become the most expensive component in a system.

Marty and some other enlightened beings suggested that we adapt industrial wire for speaker cable, and the results were surprisingly good. The wire isn’t as sleek as commercial products, but it’s neutral, powerful and only 40 cents a foot. Its errors are mostly omission, with a little less speed and a touch less clarity than I’d want, but nothing to complain about.

Last year I made some 10 gauge jumpers of Lowe’s wire, and needed spade terminations. Rather than choose from the usual suspects (Vampire, Kimber, Cardas), I ordered a Homegrown Audio (http://www.homegrownaudio.com/) product – copper plated in silver, with a rhodium finish. The price was right, and the delivery was very quick. Encouraged by this small encounter, I asked for a set of the company’s best finished wire, Silver Lace.

To the best of my knowledge, only a few assessments of Homegrown wire have appeared in print, and none of them has suggested that it was nearly perfect audio equipment. So let me be the first: Homegrown Audio makes products that surpass anything I have heard in my system before. They are the first to allow my system to perform at its full potential.

Silver Lace, both interconnect and speaker wire, sounds like the best possible solid state amp: sleek and organized, with a pure and very slightly cool tone. The treble extension is remarkably refined: it gets the most music out of the tweeter without any glare or sizzle. The midrange is tightly focused, and the bass has good control and accurate pitch. Nothing is left unsaid but nothing is overstated, either. The best way to think of these products is to imagine the original source passing unaltered.

How does Silver Lace compare with other wire? I’ve discussed Lowe’s wire at length because a lot of people have tried it, and because it does at least as well as most commercial products. Silver Lace is better in every respect in the three systems where I tried it.

What’s the secret? The company web site says they use silver wire in a proprietary winding, but there are no claims for unusual or exotic technologies. They don’t brag about the number of PhD’s on the design staff, or how they alone possess secrets that repeal physical law.

The wires are mercifully easy to work with. I’ve had wire that was almost as stiff as electrical conduit, and others as fragile as bad solder joints. The Silver Lace is thin and flexible. I’ve been able to place it everywhere in my system without strain, either to my muscles or the wire.

Alan Yun sent me his new Silverline Audio 17.5, an astonishingly good stand-mounted speaker that I’ll discuss in my next report. Alan specifies that his speakers sound better biwired, so I put together a second run of Lowe’s wire to make the test. He’s right: running the two sections of the crossover separately sounds better than running them together. Then I ran the single run of Silver Lace speaker wire into the 17.5s, and it was more airy, more musical, more rhythmically correct – well, you get the idea. One run of Silver Lace beat two runs of another brand on a speaker optimized for biwiring.

The prices are quite reasonable. One meter of their best interconnect with excellent RCA terminations costs $270, and eight feet of the best speaker wire costs $760. You could argue that direct sales allows the company to reduce their price by about half (average markup on wire is above 40%), but that doesn’t convey how good this stuff is. The thing to remember is that Silver Lace is better than any other wire I’ve had in my system, and it is the only one which has permitted the Quads to perform the way I want them to. I would recommend it at any price.

Now if they would just make some power cables. . .

III. Monarchy’s Silver Pizza Box

When I moved into this house, I performed my due diligence as an audio nut. I had the electrician put in a separate circuit board for the listening room. Then I had new outlets run installed for the components. Of course I checked polarity of each component as I plugged it in. I paid the electrician and settled onto the sofa, convinced that I had done everything I could to clean my power.

Dr. C. C. Poon, whose Monarchy Audio equipment has improved many systems, suggested that I try a new isolation device, the M150. I was skeptical since I had gone to all the trouble described above, but I remembered all of the Monarchy devices that have performed well over the years and agreed to a trial.

A week later the M150 arrived. It’s a stainless steel box about the size of an extra-large pizza that weighs 75 pounds. There are two clusters of six outlets each on one side and a thick captive power cord on the other. It costs $980. You can read the specifications and look at pictures on the Monarchy site, http://www.monarchyaudio.com/.

My reference amp, the VAC Renaissance 70/70, is a true dual mono design. I plugged one power cord into each cluster of outlets and flipped amp on. I confess that my expectations weren’t especially high.

The first album was the SACD reissue of Reiner’s reading of Scheherazade, one of the sonic spectaculars that my system has never reproduced realistically. From the first fortissimo I recognized a radical change had taken place. The Quads had learned how to do dynamics! I still had the speakers’ near-perfect neutrality, but with substantially greater loudness contrasts. Imagine a pair of horn speakers without any coloration and you will get a sense of what I heard that night.

Everything from chamber music and acapella vocals to massed orchestra and chorus performances improved with the M150. The louds got louder while the softs become clearer. In all cases, the noise floor dropped a bit. I was able to retain the harmonic richness of an all-tube system while gaining the firmness and control of solid state.

Problems I had attributed to digital equipment, such as gritty and dry high frequencies, uncertain focus and confused instrument placement, were removed by the isolation device. Although my system had higher resolving power, the sound was natural. Added detail did not come at the price of etch.

Over the next few nights I plugged one component after another into the M150, and the effect became more pronounced. The system has better control, a more clearly defined soundstage, more extended high frequencies – altogether a more realistic presentation. There are twelve outlets, so I was able to run everything off the unit. Overall, the M150 transformed a polite, nuanced and slightly dull assemblage of components and transformed it into a dramatic, exciting system. This pizza box, together with the Homegrown wire, made the most significant improvement to my reference listening gear in the past five years.

It’s easy to move with the two handles, so I placed it in both of my systems. We tried it at a friend’s place and had the same result.

I sent Dr. Poon a brief note expressing my enthusiasm for the product. He replied that he had recently developed an AC regenerator. Would I care to try it? I didn’t hesitate to agree, and this time I don’t have any doubts that it will improve my system.

IV. Indispensibilities

I envied Marty when he’d write about components that could not be removed from his system without damaging the overall performance. Now I have two of my own.

I took the Homegrown wires out of my main system, and the sound deteriorated so badly I did chores around the house. The assembly I had spent so much time and money gathering now sounded dull and uninvolving. Quickly I put the Silver Lace back where it belonged.

The same phenomenon occurred with the M150. By plugging components directly into the wall, I lost a great deal of drama. My system wasn’t bad when I removed the Monarchy device, it just took several steps away from liveliness.

It’s been decades since graduate school, but the musical experiences are still fresh in mind. These memories not only drive us to bizarre extremes of audiophilia, they can also protect us. We are sent hunting, but we can – if we remain true to the original purpose of finding excellent sound – eventually wind up with the system we always wanted.

Homegrown Audio Co.
28 Kirk Avenue
Roanoke, VA, 24011
Tel: 540-767-2600
Fax: 540-767-2601
Sales: sales@homegrownaudio.com
Technical Questions: tech2@homegrownaudio.com

Monarchy Audio
380 Swift Ave., #21

South San Francisco, CA94080, USA
Tel : (650) 873-3055   Fax : (650) 588-0335
Email : monarchy@earthlink.net