I began building my own cables in the late eighties, experimenting with various multiple gauge solid core designs - getting better results than a number of commercially available cables at the time. One time my friend Ric Schultz, now of Electronic Visionary Systems, came by with a very large diameter wire constructed entirely from bundles of litz made by his friend Sig Modes. This cable completely obliterated all preconceptions I had held up to that time as to how cables might influence the behaviour of a high-resolution system. I was practically begging him not to leave mu house with this newfound revelation. Sig‚s cable was, sadly, one of a kind and not available commercially so there was nothing to be done. I didn‚t have another such revelatory experience until the 1992 C.E.S. in Las Vegas, when I came across A.R.T., an ostensibly Italian line of audio cables. I was drawn into their room by the sound of "La Folia", by Panagua, but stayed to hear an Italian gentleman extol the virtues of the cables and accessories he was peddling. I remember him saying that the high quality of the sound in the room was due more to the cables and accessories than to the amplifiers and speakers. This seemed a little far-fetched at the time, but he gave me a pair of cables to audition. When I got back home and had a chance to listen, I instantly realized I had encountered something very unique. I was so impressed I became the US importer. Over time I acquired more and more of their products, and each time I placed a new cable or accessory into the system it produced the same kind of salutary effect ˆ sounds became more natural, less harsh, less glaring and more rich with information.

Later when I travelled to Italy I learned that the cables were actually produced in Japan and that they were designed by Be Yamamura.

At the time, Mr. Yamamura was building the first of his exponentially curved, cork-covered back loaded horns with modified Lowther drivers called the "Dionisio". There was a pair on hand in his Tuscan hillside home when I visited. Joined with his true air-bearing graphite turntable, current mode electronics and cabling, these speakers produced a kind of realism and organic sound I not experienced up to that time, and which haunted me for years.

I spent a fair amount of time with Mr. Yamamura, burrowing into the heart of his concepts, developing a deep sense of his understanding of cable design and learning about vibration control and protection of equipment from noise. I wrote a handbook that was distributed worldwide called the Yamamura Method‚, and conceived and built the first prototype Millennium Tube - used to passively absorb noise at metal-to-metal junctions in audio systems and presented it to Yamamura, who then made a practical model that could be easily manufactured.

After several years of representing Mr. Yamamura I took a hiatus from promoting hi-fi.

For three years there was no audio system in our house, but one day after I had divested myself of most of the high end equipment, I decided to put together a very modest system based around a pair of Totem Acoustic Model One‚s and a class D amplifier I had in storage. The tweaking impulse was soon to follow, and this, in turn, grew into a raging obsession with cable design. I spent a couple of years researching configuration and materials culminating in the construction of a power cord which delivered more than I had a right to expect. That prototype design was far too complicated to put into production, but it let me know that I was on the right track. From there I produced the Nataraja Series of Interconnects and Speaker cables followed by my top end series, the Cosmos. Then came the Deva, my entry level series. I struggled with this as I was trying to build something to a lower price point that still remained in the PranaWire family of sound. After numerous iterations I came up with a method of building that yielded a super cable for a modest cost. Most recently the Samadhi Series of Power cables has yielded satisfying results.

This is a difficult question to answer as it encompasses such a large area. Cables are more important to Hi-Fi than some people care to admit. There are those who don’t believe that the quality of cables can make a difference in high fidelity reproduction. There are many reasons why they may refuse to acknowledge the importance cables. I have learned that there is no arguing with such people, nor do I care to. They are entitled to their beliefs, however, I would caution others who have not yet formed their own opinions to keep their minds and their options open. There are plenty of classically trained engineers who at first refused to believe that cables make a difference who have had to revise their opinion based on their own hearing. So the first thing is to keep an open mind in audio.

Of course a modicum of skepticism is also a healthy thing. One should be convinced of the benefits of what one is purchasing before simply falling in line behind others who tell you what is best. There is an old Chinese saying: "The eyes believe what they see". The ears believe what others tell them. Everyone needs to trust their own ears. I can‚t stress this enough.

One reason people are skeptical about the cable industry is that some few „cable manufacturers‰ buy or used to buy standard cabling from large providers, put their own label and a fancy jacket on it and charge way more than may be justified. On the other hand, the public doesn’t necessarily have a clear idea of what it takes to make a truly high end cable. In the case of PranaWire, all of our cables are made completely by hand from the inside out in individual lengths. There is no way that they can be machine made. While the disadvantage is that it takes longer to build a pair of our Cosmos interconnects than it takes to construct a pair of mono-block tube amplifiers, the advantage is that we can do things to our cables that are simply impossible were we to attempt to mechanize its production.

I have said for a long time that 99% of all Hi-Fi cables fall on a continuum that goes from dark, rolled off and muddy to bright etched and aggravating, but that what is in the middle of that continuum is not correct either. You know you have stepped off of that continuum when the cable you are auditioning exhibits the following qualities:

1. There is a new, never before experienced density of information
2. That density is totally non-fatiguing
3. Along with that density usually you will find increased solidity of individual sounds and an increased holographic presentation.
4. The background is super quiet. It may, in fact, be so quiet that you find yourself in unfamiliar territory. You know you are hearing something that has a compelling rightness about it yet you‚re not necessarily sure about it. It takes some getting used to.
5. Whereas previously the sound seemed to emanate from the speakers themselves, it is now floating freely in space. This is a good sign. Another good sign (usually) is that the sound is a little further back. To me cables that put the sound in your face tend to have an (inaudible) noise component that is creating that forwardness.

There has been an explosion of cable manufacturers. The quality has clearly improved over the years. There are some few that are producing true super high quality cables.

There has been the creation of a perception in the marketplace that expensive cables are simply overpriced. This is due to several factors: One is, as I mentioned previously, that some unscrupulous manufacturers have been found to repackage standard cabling and affix a hefty unjustified markup. Another is built into the method of conducting business itself. A manufacturer needs to make a profit. Otherwise why be in business? So does the distributor and the dealer. So typically let us say that a manufacturer designs a product that sells for $100 retail. He has determined that he must get a minimum of $35 to make it worthwhile. His distributor buys that product for $35 and pays freight and duties etc. And sells it to the dealer for $50 ˆ $60. And the dealer sells it for $100, except in the case where the customer has also bought an amplifier and speakers, when he might "give a break" on the cables. There is nothing wrong with this system. No one ever questions paying $4.00 for shaving cream, yet the margins may even be far higher. Where the system has gone wrong is when manufacturers have built so much profit into their product that they are able to sell to the dealer at a 70 or 80% discount. In that case you are paying $100 for a product that should really cost $40 to $60.

Some manufacturers pay the sales person in the store a "kickback" to move their product. This creates an ethical hole in the audio industry, because the salesperson in the dealership, someone whose opinion you are supposed to be able to trust, may have reasons other than quality for recommending a particular product. Also, dealers who have excess inventory have been known to move equipment sideways. That is, they will sell it to a third party who will sell it at a huge discount on the internet. In some cases, the dealer himself may do this, though in that case he would be risking his relationship with the manufacturer.

It was out of disgust for such practices that I determined that PranaWire would be sold direct to end users or through select agents who are paid a commission only. This does two things, it eliminates the necessity for multiple markups and short circuits the possibility of the practices described above from taking place.

I do want to be clear, however; the majority of manufactures and dealers are ethical, upstanding people who are playing fair with the public, but it only takes a few "bad apples" to skew perceptions. I know quite a few cable manufacturers who are struggling financially. Please don‚t think it is an easy road to riches. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Everything influences everything. There is no such thing as a vacuum, even in a vacuum. Signal does not travel through conductors like water through a hose; rather, signal in its relationship with the conductor unleashes a host of primary, secondary and tertiary interactions in both the conductor, the dielectric materials and the space surrounding the cable. Cables generate their own autoimmune disease whereby stray signal may re-enter the signal path out of phase. Shields couple magnetically with conductors and each other. Materials interact triboelectrically, and generate static by the very fact that everything is always in motion and that charge imbalances are unavoidable. Nothing is at rest, even at rest. Noise permeates the ether, high frequency signals and pulses abound and conductors are excellent antennas. In case you hadn‚t noticed, the universe is conspiring to smear signal. Whew, I need to take a breath.

Actually, your cable needs to take a breath. It needs to be freed from the influences that keep it in a confused state. This is not a simple matter. There is not one simple solution such as cotton dielectric, or twisted pairs or 14 nines whatever; rather, one has to address the above problems with a number of solutions working in concert. Taking this approach one can have great successes but also great failures. I love the part in the 6moons interview with Caelin Gabriel of Shunyata Research where he says he has a warehouse full of power cord designs. Every designer has a closet or a roomful of almost- rans. Each failure and each new experiment teaches us something about the nature of the materials we are working with and how they interact. We can‚t predict how a new configuration will behave with certainty, but the results of the latest experiment will invariably open new ground for inquiry.

One of my aims is to use as few synthetic materials as possible. This is not based on my preference for ecologically sound manufacturing practices, although that would be a good enough reason in itself, but because the complexity of my designs requires that the materials employed interact well with each other. For example, Teflon and PVC may have desirable dielectric properties, but they have very poor triboelectric properties when placed in proximity with silver, for instance. Of course, glass fibers will also have the same poor results and they might be considered as a natural material. As the complexity of the design increases, the chances of generating undesirable results grow exponentially. All of my designs to date make some use of synthetics as, in a practical sense, they are unavoidable

Different designers use different "metaphors" to describe what they are doing. One may claim that all benefits are derived from addressing skin effect, another may claim that it is vibration damping that is paramount. Yet another will say that maintaining symmetry of field surrounding the conductor is what needs to be addressed. This is, of course, an oversimplification. The main point is that the language used to describe what is going on is useful to the designer as "metaphor" and strictly speaking may not be what is happening on an objective, "scientific" level. This kind of "voodoo talk" drives some people crazy and, as a result, they tend to dismiss exotic cables out of hand. Since the maladies afflicting conductors not only influence the behavior of a design individually, but also interact with each other, generating complexities of behavior we may never be able to measure, the language we use and devise can be useful in negotiating this labyrinth.

Ultimately, there is no objective measurement that can tell us whether a design is fully correct. One person’s "accurate" may be the antithesis of another person’s "accurate" yet both designs may "measure" the same. This is a truism in audio. No one claims that a wine is "accurate"; rather, oenophiles discuss the range of subtle flavors and aromas they are able to perceive. I remember the embers of herbs winking red and flickering out on hot rocks in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony I attended - brief lives that gave rise to a special smell I‚d never before encountered, but which awoke in me a memory a recognition that was ancient and for which I was grateful. This is the kind of moment we look for in sound. The critical mind is suspended, and we are left with the sheer enjoyment of perception -and gratitude.

We will keep making the best cables we know how and will continue to improve on them. I don’t think that we will fully dispense with cables in the near future, nor should we want to. New technologies come and go. The latest departure from traditional analog cable design always seems like the promise of the future, but to date has always left something to be desired and has degraded the signal in some subtle way. I think we are in an exciting time for cable design as there are many new materials available. I have the privilege of working with the very finest connectors in existence today. They have improved considerably from even a few years ago. Still, new modalities of connection may yield even greater benefits in the future.

The advent of room temperature superconductors will not rid us of the necessity of protecting the signal and the field it generates. If anything it may require even more rigorous taming of all the negative influences that abound as its superior conductivity may unleash as yet unforseen influences and interactions.