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So as I listened to the JRob coax, I wondered what effect the RCA connectors would have on things? Looking over at the AudioQuest Coral wire and the high mass, gold covered bronze RCAs, I decided to re-terminate the cable with the Eichman Bullet RCA clones (Tellurium copper) that I also used on the JRob cable.
Here is where it gets funky. I originally purchased the Coral CQ because it was supposed to be high quality, twin solid core (21AWG), balanced run (single, identical conductor per leg) and was pretty cheap. I did not want the more expensive Coral cable (mine was the budget Coral CQ) because it used 3 runs (all identical solid core 21 AWG, 2 runs on the – leg and a single run on the + leg) and for a non balanced cable, this seemed sort of odd? Both the Coral and the Coral CQ also have a foil shield and a silver coated drain wire.
I removed the RCA barrels and cut off the shrink wrap and low and behold:
1) the drain wire was connected at amp end (not preamp end) so basically I had a 12’ antenna connected to my amp input. Whoever built the wire, reversed the direction arrows on the cable jacket
2) my “budget” Coral CQ is actually the more expensive 3 leg Coral, they simply left the third run unconnected at both sides.
So I reconnected the drain wire at amp end, connected the third leg between neg runs (two 21AWG connected to – leg and a single 21AWG to the + leg), connected the Bullet clone RCA with WBT silver solder and tried them again.
Much better, a decent portion of the hardness/glare is now gone. The AQs are smoother but still provide lots of detail. So now, I like my AQ at low volumes and the JRobs at high volume. But, the JRobs have a way of being truthful to the music that may be lacking in the AQs. I was listening to a very simple song from Michael Kiwanuka "Love & Hate" and with the JRob's, I could follow the song it made sense on some level. Then I listened again with the AQs and heard all sorts of detail, the distortion that is present in the recording etc etc but it sounded a lot more like a collection of noises and less like a song? And this is with very few hours on the JRobs, the AQ have thousands of hours on them.
This is part of the problem with commercial stuff, you often really don’t know what is under the jacket or under the hood. Back in the late 90s, we had a customer bring in a broken set of “Reference” speaker cables from a well know manufacturer (Synergistic Research). The solder connection between cable and spade termination had failed and the customer wanted to know if we could fix it? These cables were tremendously thick and stiff and cost many thousands of dollars. I peeled back the layers and layers of shrink wrap and found the reason for the failure, a cold solder joint. The reason for the cold joint was apparently because the speaker cable was made up of a couple (4?) runs of what looked like 4AWG stranded battery cable and getting enough heat into that joint to get a good connection was almost impossible. I blasted the spade with a 100w solder gun for a few minutes and finally got a decent join but that turned me off to high priced cable. I will admit that the damn stuff sounded pretty decent but at $1k per meter at certainly should!
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