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
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