PHY-HP cotton insulated speakercable
Recently I got a speakercable from PHY-HP. This is a French
manufacturer of high-end loudspeakerunits, mainly high efficiency, all built
with the use of natural materials. This speakercable was "on his way through",
as it had to be delivered to a friend of my, Rob Hoogenbosch.
I am using the same speakercable for a few years now, and am very happy in doing
so. Since my cable is soldered to my units, I thought it might be a good idea
to make some nice pictures of this cable and do a little review on them... Last
week Rob and I had a little listening session as Rob was interested in buying
a pair of these speakercable. We compared this cable to his home-made cable,
a cable made out of a pair solid core silver with a diameter of 0.8mm. Each
wire insulated in PTFE-tape, just wrapped around it. The pair is then wrapped
in a circular way around a hollow tube (6mm), in such a manner that the tube
is always in between the two wires. Then the whole cable is wrapped again in
PTFE-tape.. (monkish work...) This cable just sounded as good as the medium
Siltech speakercable! Not better, but at least cheaper..
| The PHY-HP is made out of 3 different wires, each 2.5sq/mm copper. These wires are heavily silver-plated. Each wire is insulated with three layers of pure cotton, all of them together are again insulated with cotton. This is a different cable than most of the cables I came across. The third wire is meant for connecting the speaker chassis separately to the amplifiers chassis. Most of the cables with silver-plated copper wires, have a tendency in sounding a little harsh in the highs... almost as the highs are "on top" of the rest, at least in my opninion. The PHY-HP proves to me that that is not always the case... |
Okay, what makes the PHY-HP better than the home-made cable?
Well, right from the start the PHY has more low-end response, resulting in a
bigger soundstage.... Voices are better projected, more real. This cable has
a remarkably good tonal balance! The music almost seems to "poor out of
your speakers"!
This cable is a little tricky to connect, because of the rigid structure. You
really have to "bend your way" from the amplifier to your speakers,
before actually connecting it. This to avoid tension on the solder-joints...
The PHY-HP speakercable is not cheap! But it is worth its money, looking at
the used materials and, in the first place, its tonal qualities! If you are
looking for a natural sound, not spectacular (in the most literal meaning of
the word), these PHY-HP's are the way to go!
Go for more information to PHY-HP's website
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