March 1, 2003

Shunyata Research Constellation Series Aries Interconnects and Lyra Speaker Cables

To a lot of people, the whole audio cable industry represents everything that is wrong with the high-end audio industry. They see the products as overpriced, trading on pseudoscience, and redolent of a particular type of rapacious P. T. Barnum commercial sensibility.

There's a kernel of truth to this. There certainly are some outrageous claims made for some cables and no one can deny that even "affordable" cables seem to have gasp-inducing price tags, but I reckon the cable industry as a whole is no more populated with rogues and scoundrels than, say, the ranks of car mechanics, chiropractors, or lawyers.

As in those fields, my guess is that most cable manufacturers are honest, sincere folks who are trying to offer a decent product and make a buck or two. But the rotten apples certainly do muddy the waters they all swim in, so to speak.

I think the real problem confronting the cable industry as a whole, is the number of sincere, honest manufacturers in it who think they've found the one real truth and that everyone else out there is deceived or deceptive. I believe it was Art Dudley who first observed that listening to the claims of competing cable manufacturers was the closest audio equivalent to being fought over by opposing bands of missionaries all touting the sole true religion.

And brother, let me tell you from experience, an audio reviewer simply can't win when he reviews a cable -- especially one that costs more than a few hundred bucks. If he praises it, he's inundated with mail from people convinced he's been "bought" or is hopelessly stupid; if he pans it, everybody yawns and shouts, "Next!"

All of which explains why I don't, as a rule, even go there any more -- reviewing cables is hard, thankless work. When I was an editor at a stereo magazine, we'd assign cable reviews to the young reviewers who hadn't learned to say no yet (it usually took about one cable review for them to learn). So, if I'm reviewing an audio cable, it must be special.

The Shunyata Research Constellation Series cables are very special. They perform extremely well, they are based upon real scientific concepts, and they are even (by audiophile standards, anyway) reasonably priced ($650 USD for a meter pair of Aries; $1250 for an eight-foot pair of Lyra).

What a concept.

Nature always desires what is better

Shunyata Research takes its name from the Sanskrit term for the "silence from which all creation emanates." Its cables are the brainchild of designer Caelin Gabriel, who has licensed exclusive patent rights to a matrix geometry developed by physicist and speaker designer (Wilson Audio, Talon, Chesky) Tierry Budge.

Gabriel, himself a former NSA scientist, approaches the design of his AC accessories (such as the superb Power Snakes AC cables and Hydra Power-Distribution Center) and audio cables with a purist material science sensibility.

The Constellation Series cables started with Gabriel's vision of a superior loudspeaker cable. The Lyra cable employs a complex matrix design that minimizes the effects of electromagnetic interference (EMI) and self-induced inductance. This geometry consists of a dual-helix, counter-rotating braid designed to cross each of its individual conductors to the others at 90-degree angles, "eliminating the resistance that occurs when electromagnetic fields propagate along the lateral length of heavy gauge, bulk wire," according to the designer.

If you're getting dizzy trying to imagine how that works, that's understandable. The Lyra speaker cable looks like no other wire I've ever seen. Its outer casing is a braided sheath made out of what resembles monofilament fishing line. It seems almost hollow, but within it one can perceive individual strands of rather stiff wire coiling around two central "rods." While the individual strands are quite stiff, the braided cable itself is relatively flexible and easy to route among components and around corners. The Lyra is not one of those speaker cables that require you to position your speakers within "line of sight" of your amp's terminals.

According to Gabriel, the main distinguishing characteristic of the Lyra is its unique geometry. It's constructed of a high-purity copper. While he is adamant that no one metal is "better" than another, they're just different, he is not a fan of silver cables, claiming he has never cared for the sound the metal imparts to transient attacks. According to him, "Copper's only weakness is that it can sound fuzzy or grainy if the purity isn't high, and it tends to lack a certain amount of speed and impact compared to silver, but if you have an exceptional geometry, as we do, you can compensate for that. I find that it's difficult to compensate for the sound of silver -- you can never really completely get away from it."

As to the cable's geometry: "The counter-rotating dual-helix is probably the first genuinely original cable geometry developed in years. A conventional braid is wound around a central core, and that's good because it moves the electromagnetic lines of flux outside the cable conductor itself. If it's wound around a central core, the very strong electromagnetic lines of force are in the center of the cable where there's no wire. That's good because it reduces inductance. However, if the signal and the return wires are both wound around the same core, then their electromagnetic lines of flux meet at the same point -- and that means that effectively those lines interact very strongly with one another."

On the Lyra, the centers for the signal and return are offset from one another. Gabriel again: "If you look inside the cables you see the loops of the wire are quite large and the centers of the signal and return are physically separated. This gives the Lyra superior ability to move information, because the inductance of the cable is extremely low -- and also because the cable winding keeps the wires quite far apart, but where they do cross, they do so at almost perfect 90-degree angles, which keeps the capacitance low."

The braided Lyra is complex to make. "A three-conductor braid is relatively simple," Gabriel says. "A four-conductor cable is lot more difficult to do, and, for most people, a five-strand braid is impossible to keep straight. The Lyra is a four by four braid -- eight conductors and two center strands -- so you have 10 different wires, and you can't cross wires over, you have to pull them through the loop the other wires form, which means the cable has to be braided by hand. We employ women who work out of their homes braiding these cables to length -- it is quite labor intensive and we can't make it in bulk and then trim it as needed. Each length must be painstakingly hand-made according to our computer-modeled design."

All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them

The Aries interconnect was the result of several years' effort on Gabriel's part to come up with an interconnect he "considered unique enough to justify bringing a new product to market." Its conductors are Litz types (a true Litz configuration is composed of individually insulated, micro-fine wires woven together in a pattern that ensures each is identical in length) made to Shunyata's specification.

The Litz conductors used in the Aries are configured in an exclusive spiral-helix geometry that utilizes unique, non-signal-carrying isolation strands to minimize cross talk and self-induced EMF distortions. Gabriel discovered that typically used insulation materials, dyes, and pigments subtly degraded the performance of signal-carrying cables, so the conductors and isolation strands on the Aries are jacketed in a protective medical-grade, transparent outer sleeve.

Gabriel explains, "We use a microscopically thin insulation, 600 individually insulated conductors or ultra-pure copper, and a similar geometry to our power cables -- which is to say we pay a lot of attention to the return leg of the cable. Our research indicates that a lot of the distortions that exist in cable designs are self-induced from the field of the signal traveling the wire going to and coming back from the component. In the Aries, we addressed that by using a spiral geometry with no center wire and we use separation rods to keep the wires physically away from one another, which reduces their field interactions."

The Aries uses exceptionally well-made RCA locking-style connectors and balanced XLR connectors sourced from Neutrik. Both connectors were chosen for their superior contact and performance after extensive listening tests.

Oh yeah, one more thing distinguishes the Shunyata cables: The company manufactures its own wire; it doesn't purchase bulk cable from outside vendors. "We don't purchase wire," Gabriel emphasizes. "We don't buy somebody else's off-the-shelf wire, we make it. We select the ingots, we make the wire, we use our own stranding process, and then we select the dielectric we'll house it in."

It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life

One last word from Caelin Gabriel -- I asked him what he thought of all the folks who insist that the realm of audio cables is filled with snake-oil salesman who peddle technically dubious products to the gullible.

He responded, "That's not entirely without merit. There are some claims that simply are offensive. However, things are not as simple as some people would argue. The problem with the hard-line approach to cables is that people like to cite Ohm's Law and Kirkhoff's Current Law without examining where these engineering rules came from. These rules are generalizations that make it easy to comprehend the concepts they codify.

"But some of these assumptions simply aren't true. For example, the one that states a wire has zero resistance -- we know that's untrue. The received knowledge also makes assumptions about capacitors and resistors that aren't true, either, such as that capacitors rotate phase 90 degrees. That’s almost true, but 90 degrees isn't the precise number for most caps, as nearly any crossover designer will testify -- it's just a rule of thumb that works pretty well most of the time."

He builded better than he knew

I used the Constellation cables in a wide variety of systems over an extended period of time. Source components included the Audio Research CD3, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 3D CD player, and MF Tri-Vista SACD player. Preamps included the Ayre K-1x, Conrad-Johnson Premier 17LS, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista, and Krell KAV-280P. Power amps included the Ayre V-5x, MF Nu-Vista 300, Linn Klimax Twin, Krell KAV-2250, and VTL TT-25. Speakers that marched through the listening room included the Dynaudio Evidence Temptation, Vince Christian e9/c12 speaker system, Roman Audio Centurions, and ProAc Studio One Ses. I also used the balanced Aries between the ARC CD3 and the capable-of-revealing-a-gnat's-fart-in-a-cathedral HeadRoom BlockHead balanced monoblock headphone amplifier/Cardas-cabled balanced Sennheiser HD 600 headphone system. And, of course, I use many other cable combinations in the different combinations that resulted from all those choices.

And, whether from tubes or solid state, reference monitor or stand-mounted two-way, balanced or single-ended system, behemoth amp or tiny triode, I never, ever felt as though I was missing information or obscuring any with cable-source colorations.

Do you realize how rare that is for an obsessive/compulsive audiophile personality?

I have been told that Wagner’s music is better than it sounds

Now I'm not going to claim the Aries and Lyra are perfect -- or even the best cables out there. The most basic truth about cables is that they are networks and most of them seem to have component/speaker combinations they mesh extremely well with and vice versa. A speaker cable that works extremely well with a complex load like the Thiel CS7.2 -- such as the networked MIT cables -- might not be the best choice for, say, a high-efficiency design such as the Soliloquy 5.0. Life is short and even I have a limit to the combinations I can try, but I must say that I never heard a system in six months of auditioning that made me question the transparency or honesty of the Shunyatas.

The most obvious characteristic of both cables is their neutrality. Each component sounded distinct and like itself, and the minute differences between similar-sounding instruments or venues that are typically buried within recorded ambiance were starkly revealed. No, "starkly" is too hard a word -- it makes it sound as though these differences were glaring or spotlit, which they were not. Through the Aries/Lyra cables, differences were simply different -- things were more like themselves and less like one another.

Guitars, for instance, or, in the case of the David Grisman, Bob Brozman, and Mike Auldridge Tone Poems 3: The Sounds of the Great Slide & Resophonic Instruments [Acoustic Disc 0042 CD], a phenomenal collection of hollow-neck koa Hawaiian guitars; German-silver National single-coned and tri-coned resonator guitars; wood-bodied dobros from Gibson, R. Q. Jones, Guernsey, and Bear Creek; as well as various ukuleles, mandolins, and tenor guitars. The range of tonal color of this record is astonishing and the Constellation cables let it come through with a harmonic vividness that was startlingly natural.

By the way, all three Tone Poems recordings feature beautiful 40-plus-page booklets with essays and photographs of the rare instruments used on the recordings, but the reason to buy 'em is they're fun to listen to. It's good music and awfully well recorded, if somewhat closely so.

Another noteworthy property of the Aries/Lyra combo was its apparent speed and timbral accuracy. No, I'm not claiming to hear the difference between the speed of sound and the speed of sound minus a few milliseconds. When I say the Constellation cables sound fast, I mean that they do not skew the arrival of either the high frequencies or the lows (both time distortions are frequent and are among the chief causes of cable colorations).

This lack of smear and hash was preternaturally apparent on Hot Jazz by Mark O'Connor, Jon Burr, and Frank Vignola. The disc features blisteringly hot trio performances of, well, hot jazz and the interplay between the three musicians is fast and furious. Any lag, any blurring of detail would be nakedly revealed by this disc as there's nowhere to hide for either the musicians or the musical reproduction. The Shunyata cables delivered sound that was full-bodied, with lots of Burr's deep, propulsive bass and O'Connor's mercurial fiddle, driven along by Vignola's fluidly percussive pick-work. As the music clatters along at its breakneck pace, one simply has to marvel at how clean, how complex, and how completely and naturally interconnected it all is. There's lots of space and air in the sound and almost none at all between the individual components. What a marvelous paradox!

What supremely natural presentation.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists.
But the pauses between the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides!

I could go on in the same vein for days -- after all, I spent a lot of time auditioning the Shunyata cables but my experiences all boiled down to this: I can't find any shortcomings in a product that barely has any apparent sound at all.

Are the Shunyata cables perfect? My mind tells me they can't be because no physical product can approach a theoretical ideal, but I could never find any apparent flaw with the cables in any system combination I auditioned them in.

Admittedly, I did not have a speaker with a complex crossover, such as the Thiel CS7.2s, or a reactive load, such as an electrostat, on hand during the audition, so I cannot assure you the Shunyatas work as well with those components as they did with the ones I did manage to audition. Nor did I have a microwatt tube amp or flat-to-the-speed-of-light ultra-wide-bandwidth amplifier that pre-supposes a control network embedded in its cables, so again, I cannot speak of those either. However, I was extremely impressed and satisfied with all the combinations I did try and have no reservations recommending the Shunyata Aries and Lyra.

The cables are well made and perform well. I'm no physicist, but their technology makes sense and does not ask me to abandon the physics I do grasp. And, while they aren't inexpensive, considering the cost of hand labor and ultra-high-performance parts (not to mention economy of scale), they seem fairly priced.

Add exemplary performance to that equation and you have cables that are bound to please.

 ...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com

Shunyata Research Constellation Series Aries Interconnects and Lyra Speaker Cables
Prices: Aries interconnects, $650 USD per meter pair; Lyra speaker cables, $1250 per eight-foot pair.
Warranty: Five years parts and labor.

Shunyata Research Inc.
5594 N.E. Minder Rd.
Poulsbo, WA 98370
Phone: (608) 850-6752

E-mail: info@powersnakes.com  
Website: http://www.powersnakes.com/