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Cable Asylum Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys. |
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Cable Asylum Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys. |
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When the calendar flipped to 1994, San Francisco's Ultimate Sound moved to Union Square. They were on Grant, between O'Farrell and Geary. The ground floor store sold sports jerseys. A rickety elevator to the 2nd floor got you to Ultimate Sound. Because of this location, and the fact that they catered to entry-level high-end audio, Ultimate Sound did well.
Ultimate Sound's customers may have worked in San Francisco, and plenty also lived in the City. The more you went to Ultimate Sound, the more you ran into other repeat customers. You'd exchange numbers, and go to each other's home. In the mid-1990s, Sutro Tower was strictly analog. And in fact, no one had heard of digital broadcast signals.
But quite a few of Ultimate Sound's customers lived across the Bay. My friends ACS and Scylla were still students at UC Berekley. Since they were more familiar with the East Bay than I was, one would often meet me, and then we'd go searching for the audiophile's house. And in those days, you had to use paper maps.
Since these were Ultimate Sound customers, it made sense, that several had purchased Kimber's TC series speaker cables.
I remember one guy, who lived somewhere above 580. He had a 1980s AM/FM tuner. He taped the T-shaped 300-ohm ribbon antenna to the wall. And man, despite living across the Bay, he got great reception. He pointed to the west, and said that, if you removed a few trees, his home had a direct sight/view of Sutro Tower. I lived maybe two miles from Sutro Tower, but all of San Francisco's buildings must have been creating multi-path interference.
At the time, I did not give it much thought. This guy, using small hooks, suspended Kimber 8TC on the wall. I had just assumed that the length was too long. Instead of coiling the excess length, he looped it on the wall.
In 1996, I bought a Thiel CS.5 floorstanding loudspeaker. When initially setting it up, my girlfriend ACS tipped each speaker over, while I attached Kimber 8TC to the posts, inconveniently located near the speaker's very bottom. Moreover, the lousy posts only accepted spades. Thus, your cable either had to be bent, or it had to approach from below. The latter was only possible, if you had purchased stands from Sound Anchors.
Anyway, ACS sat on the couch. While I was fiddling with the CS.5's positioning, she shouted, "Wait a minute. What did you do? The sound changed. And I think it got worse."
Quite shocking to me and her, it turned out that, when I dropped the 8TC on the floor, the sound got a little worse. It became more muffled, with less treble extension and air. We'd later learn that the carpet created its own electromagnetic field, which adversely affected speaker cable performance. Lifting the cable off the ground restored the music's treble extension and air.
So when I looked back at that Oakland audiophile, maybe he was suspending his 8TC on the wall, as an act to get them off the floor.
Which brings us to Kimber's own 12TC. Ours have been properly treated on an audiodharma Cable Cooker, brought to multiple systems, and given regular playing time. Since many of our homes have carpeted floors, we experimented. Just like with the old 8TC, the 12TC can be affected by carpeted floors. So we prop them up, off of the floor.
Some audiophiles will adamantly argue that some cable risers/towers work and/or sound better than others. While I do not find that to be the case at my home, the key is simply to get the 12TC off of the floor.
We do not find the 12TC (Cooked or not) to excel in any one sonic parameter. By comparing it to other speaker cables, we observe its shortcomings, its deviations from being the perfect signal conductor.
One of my benchmark speaker cables is the Tara Labs The One CX. Coming after The One CX, the 12TC is lacking in see-through transparency. This shortcoming manifests itself, when you use "map the soundstage" test tracks. With the 12TC, there's some discontinuity, in the soundstage's front-to-back positioning and layering.
From XLO's Signature 3 series on up, you find that the 12TC isn't as adept, at preserving image outlines. This also reduces the contrast, between music and background silence.
The 12TC does not handle the Deep DEEP bass as well as it should. In this part of the spectrum, there are mild losses in power and control.
The 12TC does not fully resolve low-level details. And as an extension of these losses in resolution, the top octaves are not as open, airy, expressive, and dynamic. You more easily hear this, if you have a bi-wire speaker. Leave the woofer post unattached. Then use 12TC to the speaker's tweeter post, and compare it to other cables. Then, you clearly notice the 12TC's shortcomings up top.
Picture a ninja, dexterously wielding nunchuck sticks, and then switching to a katana. The 12TC does not have the finger-snapping quickness and control, as, for example, Kimber's own Carbon 8.
While the 12TC mildly subtracts and distorts here and there, only you can judge for yourself, if the 12TC represents "middling mediocrity," or an acceptable balance. The 12TC does not seem to overreact, to the myriad amps and speakers we've thrown at it. Two wrongs don't make a right, but between our ProAc Response One SC and Totem Model 1 Signature, the 12TC, at least in terms of tonal balance, is marginally better on the ProAc. You see, the Response One SC has a rising top octave, whereas the M1S rolls off the top octave.
With the 12TC, nothing really sticks out, or draws attention (unwanted or not) to itself. Again, you yourself have to determine if you like or dislike the 12TC. But you can still understand and respect why it is a relatively popular model.
-Lummy The Loch Monster
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Topic - Kimber 12TC, Part 4 - Luminator 17:28:14 03/09/24 (0)
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