AV123's Southern California Get Together 2006

Here is a special post from Mike Hawker, he sponsored his own event hi-lighting all sorts of A/V equipment, featuring some awesome speakers from AV123. Mike was gracious enough to let Cobalt Cable participate. Without further adieu...

During the AV123.com So Cal GTG (southern California get-together) held in ascended, California, attendees had a chance to sit in on a Speaker Wire Demonstration to compare and judge the differences between "good" (Cobalt Cable) and "bad" (Mogami spliced to Radio Shack) speaker wire.

The Speaker Wire Demo was set up in a bedroom of the house serving as a 2 channel room. The equipment in the room was an Onix Melody SP3 tube amp and an Onix CD-1 cd player sending the information to either a set of Onix Rocket RS250's or RS450's. The Demo was done using the RS250's because they were sitting on the dresser at ear level so they were placed better for listening.

I used one song off of a Sheffield Drive CD that was a jazzy number with piano, drums and horns. I had one speaker connected to the "good" wire and the other connected to the "bad" wire. We played the song through one speaker and then the other by simply unplugging them. First one then the other then we repeated. There were about 15 people in the room listening intently to the differences expecting minor or subtle differences (including me- who before this- would have bet there wouldn't have been a difference.)

EVERYONE in the room picked the correct speaker that had the good wire. We had some discussion about how it could have been just the smaller gauge of the "bad" wire, but considering we really weren't pushing the SP3 (we were only running 20 watts a channel or so) and, we were only going about 4 feet, I wouldn't think gauge would have come into play.... but what do I know. Adam Reiter took the helm for a bit and explained some things about skin effect and other technical stuff. There was no mistaking the difference between the two. No matter how you spliced it (pun intended) the Cobalt Cable was CLEARLY better.

Will I go and spend $500 a foot for fancy cryogenically frozen jewel encrusted cable? No. But when I added up what it would have cost me to build these cables myself including the wire, connectors, flex sleeve etc, it didn't seem like I was spending that much more for pre-made cables. In fact, I ordered a set for my HT system's front three.

Give a demo a try for yourself in your own environment. I think you'll be as surprised as I was...... and happy that you've spent money on an upgrade that you could actually hear.

Mike Hawker

Here is a link to the AV123 Forum and the thread where Mike also provided pictures, check it out!

Thanks again Mike, great job!