Discovery Cables:

Musical Realism That Meets the Test of Time

I have used Discovery over the years as one of my main reference cables, and have never had reason to regret my choice. Discovery's top-of-the-line products are not cheap. Its Essence Interconnects cost $850 per one-meter pair in either the RCA or XLR versions and $250 per additional meter. Its Essential Speaker Cable costs $800 per 8-foot pair with spade or banana termination, $100 per additional stereo foot.

Each new generation has provided one of the most neutral sounds available in any cable at any price. The Essential and Essence are no exception and they come surprisingly close in overall quality, transparency, and neutrality to two far more expensive sets of cables I use as my most demanding refer­ences: Kimber Select and Transparent Audio Reference XL. Given the price differential, that is high praise, indeed.

Moreover, I have never had an interaction problem that I could trace to a Discovery Cable interconnect or speaker cable. No weird static or hum problems, no digital drop outs, no unexplained changes in timbre. Discovery Cable won't fix an equipment problem like ground loops, amplifi­er-speaker load incompatibility, etc., but it won't create one or make one worse, and I have never had an RF problem I could not trace directly back to a problem component.

The Discovery interconnects and speaker cables share a common design philosophy, based on solid engineering basics and not flash and pseudo-science. Both the Essence interconnects and Essential speaker cable use stranded OFC conductors, with Teflon dielectric. Both have multiple con­ductors (eight in the Essence interconnect and 12 in the Essential speaker cable) and spiral them around a hollow Teflon tube. In the case of the Essence, a careful effort is made to provide top-quality shielding. There is both a foil shield and then a braid shield with a PVC outer jacket.

The Essence cables use four positive and four negative con­ductors alongside to get the values of inductance and capaci­tance the designer is aiming for. The hollow Teflon tube allows air between the conductors. The stranding technique used in each is a reverse lay-up. A single strand of copper is drawn, and then nine strands of copper are run with a left-hand lay and then nine strands of copper in a right-hand lay. This helps break up EMI (eledromagnetic interference) within the con­ductors. Teflon is then extruded over the copper. The Essential speaker cable employs the same technology, except Discovery Cable uses twelve 18AWG conductors around the hollow tube, while the Essence interconnects utilize eight 22AWG.

All right. I have told you that the Discovery Cables are neutral, cost-effective, well designed, and use high-quality materials. Now I am going to depart from the usual cable review and take a different approach.

A typical cable review would, at this point, tell you that Discovery Cables provide some magical set of unique sound characteristics, and that I had a true aesthetic epiphany lis­tening to some specific recordings with some specific elec­tronics. It would also at least imply that if you rush out and buy he Discovery Cables, you will have a similar experience.

Sorry, but this kind of rubbish makes me wince when I read most cable reviews. After three decades or so of playing around with cables, the last thing on earth I want are unique aesthetic insights. In fact, any time I hear them, I get wor­ried. Interconnects and speaker cables are nothing more than passive filters. The better the product, the less its particular combination of electrical characteristics will do to color the sound in any way. As a result, the first rule in cables must be the same as in medicine: "First do no harm."

Unfortunately, buying expensive cables can easily mean violating these principles. I have heard plenty of expensive audiophile cables over the years that sound far worse than the products sold by Radio Shack or the cheapest wire available from firms like Kimber and Monster Cable. Some such cables produce added midrange and treble information because they are either deliberately or inadvertently designed to have such coloration. Other such products roll off the highs and pro­duce a slightly tube-like character.

Over the years, I have heard far more radio-frequency interference problems with specialty audio cables than with the cheap stuff mid-fl manufacturers throw in the box with their components. I have also heard far more low-level hum problems because of trick grounding and efforts to "polarize" the cable or give it special features. In some cases, I have even heard audiophiles praise such cables when careful listening indicates they were doing nothing more than "warm" the sound by adding trace elements of additional hum.

On occasion, I have found "cable junkies" creating a system where the end result is something approaching the theater of the absurd. Cable junkies try to create systems out of colored components that they try to fix with colored cables. As time goes on, they become aware that something is still wrong, so they substitute new cables of a different type at given points in the chain, trying to use a new cable coloration to fix the old. The worst cases occur when the speaker cable has some kind of termination network to limit speaker and amplifier interaction. The result is almost always colored, plus a set-up that raises real questions about the stability of the entire system.

This experience has led me to create "iron laws" about cables. First: Any active component requiring a specific cable to function properly is a sloppy and incompetent design.

Second law: A filter is a filter, and the effect of all filters in a given- system is cumulative. One important corollary here is that mixing different brands or models of cables is likely to be tricky because each cable — even the best — is a slightly different filter. If one type of cable or filter is needed to correct for another, there is something wrong with both.

The ideal cable is inaudible and sonically invisible. In practice, no cable can be inaudible, but the other side of this coin is that any properly designed cable comes close. The dif­ference between good cables is always subtle, and even cheap ones can be good. For example, Radio Shack interconnects and video cables are often well made and well designed. While high-gauge AC wiring is generally better than the Shack's speaker cables, Kimber and Monster make excellent entry-level speaker cables at very low prices.

What makes products like the DiScovery cables stand out in comparison with such low-cost solutions is not flash or dramatic changes in sound, but the fact that they are consis­tently more musically revealing in musically natural ways, and that they provide such improvements in sound quality with a wide range of components.

These sonic differences do not show up in dramatic ways, or by trading new colorations for old. I also have rarely been able to determine whether a decent cable design is likely to be better over time by listening to a brief session or a short series of A/B tests. It takes me a long time to audition cables, and I have to listen to them with familiar acoustic instru­ments and music so I have a real standard of reference.

The fact there are slight differences in the sound of dif­ferent brands and models does not make these differences musically significant. In general, you will hear more differ­ences by moving four rows in a concert hall, or ten feet fur­ther away from a guitar soloist, than you will between really good cables. That doesn't make one listening position right and the others wrong. It simply makes the sound different.

Differences that involve a touch more bass or treble, a lit­tle more apparent transparency, which actually comes from just a touch more upper midrange energy, or a host of other minor sonic differences may be audible, but it is no more musically significant than most of the differences between the ceramic and metal cones used to isolate components. Hearing a slight nuance or subtle difference is only important if it can be related directly to consistently hearing something that is more musically natural.

Musically important differences in systems with high-qual­ity components and proper set-up do not come easily. This is why so many expensive accessories and tweaks produce unim­portant sonic differences and are little more than sonic rubbish. It is also why "cable fatigue" leads some audiophiles to keep changing brands and models only to find that the new col­orations really have no lasting value.

The differences between interconnects and speaker cablescan also be highly interactive, particularly in the case of speaker cables. One particular brand or model can "lock in" with a set of components or provide just the right interaction between a particular amplifier and speaker. This is great for the lucky audiophile, but the same cables may do nothing for a d ffeient system.

I find it takes weeks, sometimes months, to run through enough components to know if the sonic nuances in a cable will vary significantly with different components. Reviewers and dealers cannot predict the synergy or lack of it that will occur between specific interconnects and speaker cables with a specific set of components unless they own them, but good and great cables do perform well with a remarkably wide range of products.

This brings me back to the reason I am praising the Discovery Cables. They don't give me epiphanies or special insights — they give me music. They reveal the kind of valuable musical nuances that show up only after prolonged listening to a wide range of music and components — the kind of nuances that become most clear when you replace the Discovery Cables with an inferior product. With really good products, it is easi­er to hear a few veils added than to hear them removed.

The Discovery Essential and Essence cables have met all of my tests of what interconnects and speaker cables should be over months of listening to different recordings and a wide range of components. Yes, there are many other good cables, and the differences between good cables are subtle. I keep coming back to the Discovery -Cables for the same rea­son I keep coming back to the Kimber Select and Transparent Audio Reference XL (at far higher prices). These products consistently take me down the path to neutrality and musical realism, and they do it recording after recording, component after component, month after month.  

-ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

Reprinted with permission from THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ®