The Oyaide Tonearm Cable: Everything matters. Really.

We're using this cable right now, and
wow do we hear more music.

It took me nearly a decade to come to terms with the simple concept that seemingly innocuous things, such as placing pennies under speaker spikes, or swapping out one cable for another one, can have such dramatic effects.  Some you can explain by understanding a likely mechanism, and some ... you just don't know why, you just hear what.  As an electrical engineer, my mind has to deal with quite a bit of cognitive dissonance once in awhile over this.  And I just have to tell myself at that point that "as long as it sounds better, I shouldn't get too worried" when something that shouldn't make a difference, makes a difference.

In fact, there is an ongoing debate, really heated sometimes, about various tweaks.  Like American politicians discussing US policy - there is an awful lot of shouting, yelling, hurt feelings, and anger with no resolution.  Thankfully your stereo doesn't end up shut down in the process, and you can still pay your utility bills on time.

So, with that caveat, we recently replaced the phono cable that came with our turntable with one made by a little known (in the US) company called Oyaide.  They spend nearly nothing on advertising in the US, so as a consequence their products are not astonishingly expensive.  We decided to purchase it when one of our local dealers, The Analog Shop, recommended it.  We ordered a couple of other pieces from them, too (and expect a review on each in time).

Enter the Cable

The cable.  It required some routing and hand forming
but oh so worth it.

When the cable came in, along with a new headshell, I was excited.  I had had some difficulty fitting a different phono cable from another company in the past due to a combination of the inaccessibility of my tonearm's base and the wide spread between inputs to the phonostage. My hope was that this new cable would be much easier to manage.

I had a review in my head already kind of worked out.  I wanted to write something really nonplussed, like in the major magazines like:  "Initially it sounded flat and constrained but over a week, the cable opened up allowing greater imaging and solidity, a step up from the stock cable."

But it was not to be.

It sounded great right out of the box and plugged in, but in a way that I found hard to put my finger on.  It sounded louder ... but still not louder.  The quieter bits got quieter.  We had more bass, and smoother treble extension.  Instruments sounded more real, and there was more detail than before, but it never was harsh, exaggerated or anything.  We had a lot more apparent bass, too.  It made me think that something may have been broken before, or horribly mismatched that was now righted.

So ... in went the old cable to check it, and ... it sounded like it did before but somehow ... smaller and flatter.

So the old cable went into the box, and the new one back in.

The cable, while allowing a a new level of sonic realism, has a few challenges.  The main one, well the only one really, is that the cable is on the stiff side, and we have a table with a suspension.  The cable naturally wanted to touch the table the turntable was sitting on, which interfered with the operation of the suspension.  This made footfalls especially difficult.  But, a little hand forming and routing, and positioning the turntable near the back of the table, allowed the cable to lay in such a way that the suspension behaved normally.  So it was a little fiddly in this respect.  But like a lot of audiophile things,  you have to fuss a little, but once you do, you will be richly rewarded.

And we'd have to say, the minor fussiness is well worth it. (That is this week's MAJOR UNDERSTATEMENT, I assure you!)

Two Listening Tests

Ella and Louis has Greater Realism - Quad-Like!

We listened to our Vinyl version of Ella and Louis [200g Vinyl, 45rpm]- and we experienced the holographic presence we loved on the Quads with all the little micro-details that made the performance so realistic.  We didn't before with the stock cable - it just sounded great.  Mrs Mancave exclaimed "I bet this is what the Quads would sound like in our room!"  Both of us were in agreement.  The Oyaide kicked up the whole system to a new level here.  Clearly small details that make the difference between "good" and "great" were brought through with the new cable.

We then put on a Vinyl version of Genesis' Selling England by the Pound [180g LP]  The test track of ours, "I know What I like (In Your Wardrobe)."  The separation of voices when Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel were singing was as almost as distinct as I have ever heard it - ceding only a small amount of ground to the very best we've ever heard with the album (See our review of the Quad speakers).  We played the SACD next through the same chain, level matching by ear, and found the analog to be a step up from the SACD (A major step up, in my opinion.). If you were a cable skeptic, you might chalk it up to subtle differences in the mastering that was done SACD vs LP.  To that we'll just point out that the best sounding version at this point was analog, and it was a tie before we swapped out the cable.

We heard more music

Now, rather than going through an exhaustive test of all vinyl we listened to, we really just sat back and really enjoyed ourselves. We paid much less attention to the sound and just really enjoyed and got into the music.  We have been playing just vinyl all week.  And every LP - be it recorded well, or poorly, sounded better than it did before to our memory.  The instruments sounded more real, complex passages didn't get tangled, even the illusion of a soundstage got larger. It was hard to believe this was just due to a cable swap, but that's what happened.

Conclusions

We aren't changing the cable back, we think this is a much better match to our tonearm, cartridge and phono amp than what was there before.  Vinyl has been kicked up to a level where it is much harder to make a case for digital.  There is more realistic music than we have had on a consistent basis with this new cable.  And the skeptic within me, while forced to face the reality that a cable swap made a large difference, will have to point out that given the nature of cartridges, phono stages and the delicate signals being transferred, the "right" cable might make all the difference in the world.  It sure did for us.  And if you have a different cartridge, and phono stage, we'd recommend you try out the Oyaide, but your mileage might just vary.

My inner engineer is having a fit.  But it just sounds better.  Highly recommended.

Oh ... and our digital now sounds less good than analog.  Audio reproduction is like that, one improvement invites more. D'oh!