GOODSOUND!GoodSound! "Equipment" Archives

Published August 1, 2005

 

Harmonic Technology Harmony Wave Speaker Cables and Precision-Link Interconnects


To me, cables are not sexy. It’s hard to get excited about installing a new set of cables in my system. But think about this for a minute: If your amp is to your stereo system as your heart is to your body, then the preamp is your brain, the tuner or CD player your eyes and ears (i.e., responsible for processing information), and your speakers the mouthpiece through which your voice is projected. To extend the simile, cables and interconnects are the veins and arteries that carry the lifeblood of your rig. During the course of this review I learned that the effect that these transducers have on the ultimate quality of a system’s sound can be great and important.

Copper’s copper, ain’t it?

The Harmony Wave speaker cables ($129 USD/8’ pair) came in preterminated biwire runs with banana plugs at the speaker and amp ends, as I’d requested. Their construction is aesthetically pleasing in an industrial kind of way, with red, white, blue, and black color-coding to denote polarity and designate connection to woofer or tweeter. The Precision-Link interconnect ($129/1m pair) came in a cool zip-up case of fabric and plastic. It’s silver in color, substantially thicker than my Kimber Kable PBJs, and has screw-lock ends to fasten it to the RCA terminals it’s inserted into.

The Harmony Waves and Precision-Links use what Harmonic Technology calls "Single Crystal technology," which, as described and illustrated in a brochure provided with the cables, essentially fuses the millions of crystals that form the copper strands that make up copper wire into a contiguous single crystal, thereby eliminating "crystal barriers," which impede signal transmission. I wasn’t gonna argue, but I was gonna listen.

System

I swapped out my original Monster Cables for the biwire Harmony Waves and fed my Magnepan 1.6QR speakers with my B&K ST-2140 power amp. After listening with the Harmony Waves and my Kimber PBJ interconnects for some time, I connected the ST-2140 to my B&K PT-3 tuner-preamp with a 1m pair of Precision-Link interconnects and routed my Sony SACD-222ES SACD player into the PT3 with another 1m pair of Precision-Links.

(Harmonic) Technology in the service of music

The Harmony Waves impressed me, especially because I was skeptical from the beginning about what difference these cables would make in my system. After all, my original 12-gauge Monster Cable is made of oxygen-free copper and is thicker than the Harmony Wave (which comprises a mix of 14- and 16-gauge wires).

The Harmony Waves made a difference across the board -- they were consistently better than my Monsters in all ways that are musically important, save for ultimate deep-bass resolution and extension.

Starting off with Elaine Elias’ Brazilian Classics [CD, Blue Note 584337 2], I was surprised and pleased by what I heard. On "Passarium," the mingled interplay of the bass drum, snare drum, and ride cymbal was portrayed with a great clarity and roundness that my reference cable missed. The sustain and decay of the cymbal’s bell and the drum’s bodies were fuller and more dimensional with the Harmony Waves in the system. I really liked how the snare remained crisp while retaining body. That’s a tough balance to pull off, and the Harmony Waves let it happen more satisfyingly than my reference cables did.

Microdynamics are important in conveying the Latin-influenced ebb and flow of "Passarium," and they were very good through the Harmonic Technology cables. The bass guitar was rich and clean, with nice weight. While transient information in the bass was generally well portrayed, I sometimes heard a little softening of textures in the lowest notes that I don’t hear with my reference cables. Elias’ sultry siren call on "Chega de Saudade" was seductively smooth but still contained a wealth of detail -- call it refined, if you will, but it was an open window into the recording nonetheless. Her voice hung solidly in a plane just in front of the Maggies and discrete from the accompanying acoustic guitar.

I liked what I was hearing in terms of instrumental timbre, and I thought the Harmony Waves might provide significant gains over my reference cable in the portrayal of a single acoustic instrument. I loaded the legendary Andrés Segovia’s Five Centuries of the Spanish Guitar [CD, MCA Classics MCAD-42071] into the Sony and cued up "Guardame las Vacas." Here the master lovingly runs through the most amazing scales with a sound and passion that evoke another time and place. Through the Harmony Waves, his instrument was full-bodied and full of vivacity and color -- all fiery reds and oranges and yellows. And yeah, I could hear his fingers sliding along the strings, and the occasional muted thump of his hand on the guitar’s wooden body.

Most impressive, though, was how the surrounding space became clear to discern. While the Maggies can conjure through my old cables an image of Segovia’s guitar that is exceptionally realistic, the Harmony Waves added a degree of realism to the soundscape as a whole. The reverberant information that lends Segovia’s interpretations their almost haunting quality was preserved fully intact, whereas with the Monsters there was a kind of atmospheric flatness that, in retrospect, detracted from my full appreciation of the musical event. With the Harmony Waves, I could more fully understand where Segovia was in relation to the recording venue that surrounded him.

Listening to recordings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Night on Bald Mountain, and Khovanshchina [CD, Infinity Digital QK57233], I realized that my old Monsters do outperform the Harmony Waves in the reproduction of deep bass. During the exceptional orchestral crescendos of The Great Gate of Kiev, from Pictures, the Harmony Waves held everything together very nicely and preserved a real sense of place and space between the individual instruments. The oft-referenced bell was rendered beautifully -- ringing, round, metallic, and tangible in its presence. But while the Maggies could never really render the deepest organ notes, with the Monsters in the chain I get more bass depth and slightly better resolution than with the Harmony Waves. For their asking price, the Harmony Waves were superb in their portrayals of instrumental timbres and such soundstage information as ambience and instrument placement. In the deepest bass, they were only good.

I then inserted the Precision-Link interconnects into the chain, anxious to hear how they would compare with my reference Kimber PBJs. The Kimbers are almost an oddity to me in their embodiment of a certain romantic juxtaposition of opposites that strikes nearly ideal balances of resolution and musicality, of clarity and warmth. It is rare to find these to such a high degree in an audio component, let alone one as reasonably priced as the Kimber.

A disc I love musically and sonically is Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly [CD, Warner Bros. 23696-2]. On "Maxine," the Precision-Link interconnects displayed an impressively big soundstage with a good degree of resolution. The piano chords at the song’s beginning were clearly rendered and blossomed realistically, but the overall sound of the instrument was a little cooler than with the Kimbers. The sense of continuity I hear with the Kimbers was a little diminished with the Precision-Links, in that the piano’s sustain and ringing trailed off just a bit more quickly. When Fagen’s neocool hipster voice came in, it was clean and easily identifiable through the Precision-Links, and the overall sonic picture had good cohesiveness and, again, impressive dimension. On "Goodbye Look," the hi-hat cymbal in the song’s opening had a nice, incisive quality and was well placed in space. The Precision-Links slightly accentuated the accents (pun intended) -- it was easy to discern the stick striking the cymbal in a modified shuffle groove, and the opening and closing of the hi-hat that creates its unique "swooshing" sound. The sound was a little coarse in absolute terms, though nothing to gripe about at the price. Realistically, that’s a common tradeoff to make for heightened clarity; you choose your priorities.

I liked the overall quality of bass notes in the introduction to "You’re No Good," from Van Halen II [CD, Warner Bros. 47738-2], and Eddie Van Halen’s guitar had a high degree of energy and rawness (in a positive sense). "Spanish Fly" showed that the Precision-Links had no trouble delineating individual notes played in rapid-fire succession. David Lee Roth’s voice rang with its inherent bravura intact, even if it didn’t have quite the lower-midrange fullness I hear with the Kimbers in the system. The opening staccato notes of "Women in Love" were emotionally evocative, and rang true to an ear that knows how Eddie Van Halen’s guitar is supposed to sound.

Comparison

In almost every musically meaningful way, the Harmony Wave speaker cables bettered my Monster Cables (about $1/ft). Although the Monsters are a little better at rendering really deep bass, this advantage is a relatively small one. The Harmony Waves are streets ahead of the Monsters in terms of resolution, soundstaging, and portrayal of instrumental timbres.

While I liked the Precision-Link interconnect, I can’t say it betters my Kimber PBJ ($84/1m pair). It’s pretty well settled that the PBJs were (they’ve been discontinued and supplanted by an updated model) the interconnect in their price class. The Precision-Links came close to the Kimber’s performance in soundstage dimension and instrumental and vocal clarity, but to my ear failed to match the Kimber’s inherent overall refinement. Taken in context, the Precision-Links represent a very good value at their price and, in a different system, may actually work better than the PBJs.

Cables matter

I learned something in writing this review -- cables do have a significant effect on the sound of our gear and, by extension, our music. The Harmonic Technology Harmony Waves are a superb value and made great music -- I heartily recommend them. The Precision-Link interconnects are a very competent interconnect with no glaring faults, and, in the right system, will undoubtedly perform very well -- also recommended.

...Chris J. Izzo

Prices of equipment reviewed


GOODSOUND!All Contents Copyright © 2005
Schneider Publishing Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Any reproduction of content on
this site without permission is strictly forbidden.