Wireworld Eclipse 7 Speaker Cables Review

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• Here we go again with the wires that open up the sound stage and all sorts of other vague impressions. As I commented on the preview, Copper wire of the same AWG will all perform the same. There is no magic wire. There is no magic insulation that will improve the sound. Taking .0001% of oxygen out of the wire does nothing at room temperature. There is no special way to wrap the multi strand wire that will do anything. Oh wait, maybe if you wrap the wire around Shakti stones.... Wire is wire. If you want better sound, as I said before, buy better speakers. Add $1550 to the price of whatever speakers you own and I'll bet you'll get a heck of a lot better return on your investment. Better return, in this context, means you'll actually get something.

  • If you don't believe that exotic speaker wire has any benefit over another, why do you read the review? All same AWG copper does not sound the same, sorry to say. Differences in technology and construction are not only readily heard, but easily measured in many instances. Sorry to disappoint you. One of the most brilliant engineers and innovators in speaker cables and interconnects is a gentleman named Galen Gaeris of Belden Company, designer of ICONOCLAST series, who has numerous patents in cable design and actually has, you know, graphs and stuff to back it up. Email him your questions and he'll answer them. Give it a try. He's very nice and patient. I'd highly recommend reading this very insightful 3 part series in the Copper monthly e-magazine put out by PS Audio and general speaker cable design and technology written by Galen. You might learn a thing or two. Unless, of course, you refuse to learn anything. In that case, feel free to keep on trolling.
    http://www.psaudio.com/article/cables-time-is-of-the-essence-part-1/

    • So your answer is to tell us that the engineer at a wire company says, yes there is a difference and a manufacturer of audio equipment tells you there is a difference in copper. With proof like that what could possibly be amiss.

      • I really can''t help you if you bury your head in the sand regarding a) there are no differences between copper speaker wires and b) if you can't measure it, it can't be real. First of all, either you have a system that is incapable is discerning differences between different speaker cables or your ears are incapable. Impossible to tell. The fact is that MANY other people can tell a difference in various speaker cables. I can. They made a big difference in my system. I I don't think I have anything special in terms of audiophile hearing. I don't. But I hear it nonetheless.

        And as far as the old, tired gambit that if it's not measurably different, it must be the same. Come on, dude. I am a scientist and have incredible powerful diagnostic tools at my disposal on a daily basis. I am confronted every day with things that measure the same, but there are clearly differences in the clinical picture. Besides, only a fool thinks that because something measures better on some technical aspect that it will sound better. This is clearly fallacious reasoning. I could list numerous examples of this in hi-fi where a class D amp will have negligible THD, a perfectly flat frequency response, and excellent intermodulation spectrum and sound like crap compared to a class A/B tube amp with nowhere near the specs of the class D amp? By your logic, the class D amp should mop the floor with the tube amp, but it doesn't. Go ahead and compare a Classe Sigma 2200i to, say a PS Audio BHK S250. The BHK makes the Classe sound like a child's toy, but it doesn't measure as well on many matrics. It's because we're either not measuring the right things or we don't have yet the means to measure the pertinent differences that make things sound better or worse. Actually, in that article I linked, Galen Gaeris actually HAS measured things in cables that correlate with better sound (maybe not what others do . If you took the time to read what I linked and sent him an email or two, you would know what I'm talking about.

        So go ahead with your quest to ridicule things you clearly don't understand. Maybe it will make you feel better about not being able to hear the differences people are talking about.

        • You are correct, I'm not a scientist. Though I have a degree in mathematics with minors in physics and chemistry I earned a living at designing computerized manufacturing systems. I suppose this is the background that ties me irrevocably to logic. That logic points to the fact that the sound you ultimately hear is produced by some sort of mechanical transducer. Be it a sheet of Mylar in an electrostatic speaker or a beryllium tweeter or a paper cone. They all move according to the laws of physics and react to a particular input in a controlled and measurable manner. If not you couldn't reasonably reproduce a facsimile of recorded music. After that there is the psychological part "perception". I didn't ridicule anything except maybe the lack of any facts, but I'll leave you with this and I hope it helps. "The best always costs more, but just because it costs more doesn't make it the best". If you want to spend your money trying to reproduce , for yourself someone else's perception, be my guest.

        • I will leave you with one of the main things I have learned over the years in science and medicine. The more I learn, the more I realize what I don't know. I think this applies to many things in the audiophile world. I love this hobby as it is a wonderful intersection between the technical (gear) and art (music). I spend a lot of time with it and know a fair amount of "stuff". What I used to ridicule as snake oil, I have now become more open minded to the possibility that some things just sound better that have no obvious rational explanation. USB and ethernet cables, for example. It makes no logical sense that different cables, given a certain level of quality of construction, would sound different. Two cables are passing the same data from CPU to DAC in a bitperfect manner yet they sound distinctly different. Illogical? Yes. But clearly there nonetheless.

        • Clearly there? OK. There is, however, an explanation. It's called "I believe" and don't bother me with facts or reason. As I said before, it's your money...

        • OK. I'll be sure not to bother you with facts or reason as you are clearly immune to them.

        • You are not bothering me with facts. You have mentioned perception but you have not introduced any facts into your assertions. You've only spoken of magic "perceptions". Your claim is that you are a scientist or technician of some sort, but you completely ignore the scientific method. If you don't know what that is look it up. There is a pretty good explanation on Wikipedia, My problem with this review is it's all perception. As I stated before wires don't make any sound unless they are vibrating. Electrons don't make any sound. Bits don't make a sound. The only thing that makes a "SOUND" is the transducer, It moves air. We know how and how much, We can measure the arrival of the sound, it's intensity, direction, timing, frequency, harmonics etc. Those things are facts. If all those things are the same then the sound is the same. There are no magic star trek subspace communications. This discussion has devolved into name calling and I won't participate. This is just a hobby. That's all. My feeling is that if you take this $1550 and spend it at some jazz clubs, the symphony or at a blues concert you'll enjoy it more than a set of copper wires and you'll support the musicians. Your perception = your money, but wire is wire. So, if you want to sit in your living room and enjoy your wires that's great. I'll be at Buddy Guy's Legends.
          .

        • Measurements don't prove that anything is audible. That proof can only come from a proper listening test, which is relatively simple. To begin, you'll need to prove that the loss of a conventional cable is audible in your playback chain. This is accomplished by replacing a cable with the best and shortest connection possible, which serves as the test control. If the loss of the conventional cable is not audible in comparison to the control, then no fidelity improvements will be possible from an upgrade cable. However, degradation is usually audible in these tests, because cables generally have inadequate transient response, which masks low level information and colors the sound. I've been demonstrating these tests for years to consumers and audio professionals around the world. One noteworthy attendee of my presentations is Bobby Owsinski, a leading author of pro audio engineering curriculum for universities, who endorsed the tests and Wireworld cables, which he now uses in all of his post production work.

        • OK, then give me some true double blind testing and show consistent results. You won't because you can't.
          When it's been done there has never been any proof of sufficiently large (AWG) copper WIRES making any hear able consistently identifiable difference from any other wire.
          As I said previously, it's your money. My message is to people who don't have $1500 to waste chasing someone else's delusion. The money spent buying better speakers will give you much greater ACTUAL (i.e. real) return on your investment, My only caveat is that if you make a bad cable it can definitely be worse than a 10 gauge copper wire. The converse of that has never been proven,

        • Very few widely accepted audio upgrades have been proven by double-blind tests. Getting double-blind listening tests to reveal fine audio differences of any kind are extremely difficult and require special training procedures and selected listeners. For reference, you many want to read the documentation provide by the Motion Pictures Expert Group, MPEG. You are disagreeing with their findings in addition to the findings of the author of the books you'd be using if you were currently audio engineering at a university. There are none so blind as those who will not see, or hear.

        • Well, that solves the entire issue. If most of us need special training to be able to detect the FINE differences between these subtle audio traits then by not getting this training we can save $1550 on cables because we are not trained to hear the difference. Thank you so much. You've validated my argument better than ever I could. So we, the mass of unwashed and untrained, can forgo these royal cable's because we are not members of the higher class listeners who are capable of hearing the difference. To follow on your comment "None so Blind ya-da ya-da" I'll leave you with this one "The emperor has no clothes"!

        • Not at all. The test I recommended that you make with a standard cable like the 10AWG speaker cable you mentioned vs. mono amps connected directly to your speakers will tell you if the loss you hear from that cable is worth correcting. Why is it that you have the energy to argue, but not the curiosity to find out for yourself?

        • It takes very little energy to think and not much more to construct a well reasoned argument, if that's what you want to call this discussion. If you say in order for these cables to sound better you need to connect them to a set of monobloc amplifiers then are we now testing the cables or the amplifiers. You can't change two variables and claim that you are running the same test.
          I mentioned before that I've heard cables that make things worse, but never better. I admit that I quit looking years ago when I realized that even when measurements were taken that the differences measured were at a level akin to farting in a hurricane. The problem is, and I can't stress this enough, the gross mechanical object that is actually producing the sound, the transducer. With the use of FFT in speaker design there have been many real improvements in transducer design and abilities to more accurately reproduce music in the last 20-30 years.
          These improvements greatly overshadow the "openness and balance" (sic) provided by these $1550 cables. If you want better sound your money will be well spent buying better speakers, not chasing a fart in the wind speaker wire. Oh, sorry, I should have said cable not wire. Cables cost more.
          Lastly Mr. Salz, this has not been an argument in the classical sense but merely a discussion of widely divergent opinions. Arguments require facts and none were evident in the initial review. I do not lack curiosity but I've developed, over my lifetime, a keen sense for the detection of BS.
          If you want a scholarly definition of BS, I will point you to a Princeton University Press publication "On Bullshit" by professor emeritus Harry G. Frankfurt, PhD. The book is only 67 (3X5) pages. I'm sure you will find it both enlightening and amusing.

        • I've explained how to test for the sonic degradation caused by standard cables, which is the real issue here. The best an audio cable can do is simply to preserve the signal, and I've spend decades learning to make cables with fast enough transient response to do just that. Leading audio engineers, including Bobby Owsinski, Bob Hodas and Greg Calbi have endorsed the test and purchased expensive Wireworld cables to use in their daily work. Are you actually naive enough to say that they bought into some kind of BS?

        • IF the people you mentioned are some of those special people trained to hear these "differences" then I suppose they find these cables useful. Once again, it's their money. For the rest of us, you know, untrained in the fine art of listening this is BS. Also, I'm not claiming this is BS, I'm defining it as BS for which I gave you a reference.
          Every part of this discourse has pointed to the fact that your entire pseudo argument has been based on citing experts that have skin in the game. In addition to Ignoring true testing methods that would demonstrate repeat-ability in your findings or the lack thereof and demeaning the competence of anyone who points out the flawed methods you employ to bolster your supposed argument. Science isn't the same as magic.
          I've even pointed you to the tools to bolster your argument. The scientific method first and fast Fourier transforms to analyze wave forms to name a couple. Of course you ignore those and come back with Billy and Bobby agree with me, so there!
          My last advice, "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight".

        • Square wave and impulse graphs are extremely useful tools, but they do not define what an individual can hear. Of course, superior square wave and impulse preservation is necessary to improve fidelity and I'll be publishing a paper on that issue soon. The temporal resolution of human hearing is now accepted as 5 microseconds, and most cables smear transients far below that speed, but the real issue of value depends completely on the audibility of the problems solved and that's why the listening test is essential for informed decision making. The fact that numerous leading audio engineers and educators endorse the bypass as the appropriate test for cables should make you curious enough to try it with your own cables on your own system.

          Do you own a headphone amp? Simply listen to the best short connection (1" to 2" of wire between plugs usually works) you can make to your best source and then replace it with your usual interconnect to either hear or not hear the loss. If you don't hear loss or think it's worth correcting, then my products are not for you. If you decide you want your sound to be as close to the reference as possible for the money, I have cables you'll want to test.

        • Thanks for the offer but I'm obviously one of the untrained that's unable to hear these fine differences. My entire argument is that you have $1550 to improve your system concentrate on the device (i. e. Speaker) that actually produce's the sound you hear. You continue to point to anecdotal evidence that isn't verifiable or repeatable.
          However I do admire your true abilities and applaud them. Anyone that can take $30 worth of wire and some fancy coverings and plugs the assembly of which probably cost less than $100 and sell them for $1550 with no proof whatsoever that they produce any verifiable results is a type of genius to be admired. Had you lived in the 1800's you'd probably have been the countries top snake oil salesman. It's been fun.

        • I agree that speakers and room acoustics absolutely come ahead of electronics and cables in their sonic impact, but when the room and speakers are performing well, the limitations of electronics and cables can be very evident. That's why I teach people to test for those losses with an objective reference that enables them to define the value of various upgrades in relation to their own perception. The professional audio engineers who perform those tests and rely on their ears for a living and have subsequently purchased Wireworld cables have not succumbed to any type of snake oil.

        • All of them or just the three guy's you mentioned. It's called product placement.
          But again we get the same old tune. It can't be tested. It can't be heard except by those trained few. Yes the transients are below the threshold of human hearing but...
          Every time I suggest a method available or a process you come back with no tests are valid, blind testing won't work and so on but here are all my buddies who agree with me.
          There is a simple way to resolve this. Secrets should review things that are tested and reliably can be shown to make a difference by listening to the improvements and explaining why and alternately let people, such as yourself, write opinion pieces. If you start the article "In my opinion" then I have no objection and it relieves you of the cumbersome burden of proof. Just don't print it as a review of tested and verifiable facts. I feel comfortable with this suggestion because you have continuously said that tests won't work and listening tests are unreliable. So either a select few people can hear it but no tests can verify that it's actually there or it actually isn't there, whatever "it" is.
          We're left with, in your opinion it's something and in my opinion it's nothing. That's something with which we both can live.

        • You're misquoting the most essential issue. l'm claiming that bypass test is the quality test for cables and that it is endorsed by leading audio engineers and educators. BTW, the pros were mostly skeptics before they hear a cable bypass test for themselves, which you refuse to do. Yes the very people who record, mix and master our movies and music actually trust their ears on upgrade electronics and cables, especially after they have heard what cables lose.

        • I misquoted an issue? How does one misquote an issue? If you want to throw around misquoting something tell me where I said upgrading electronics wasn't of value. I said you can't change multiple things and be sure which change caused any observed difference. I was questioning the method not the value of the test subject.
          This is , however moot. Since we don't seem to have the same interpretation of fact versus opinion we'll never be able to come to any agreement. Since this is just a hobby,for me, since I'm not selling anything, and it's only value is entertainment I quit. You win. Bye.

        • I read this entire argument by all of you, and I got a kick out of it! I understand each of your opinions. Measuring sound quality is VERY subjective. That is the problem.

          I just received my June 2018 issue of Sound and Vision and has a 6 page article, "Speaker Cables, Can You Hear the Difference?". They did not use any exotic cables, but simple cheap stuff to Monster Cables. Ultimately even the pro listener cannot hear the difference in this exhaustive test. I'd love to see a double blind cable test between a cheap brand name, average level brand name, and the most expensive brand name.

          IMHO, I do feel that there can be subtle differences when it comes to quality cables, but ultimately putting your budget mostly towards other components, especially the speakers make the biggest improvement in sound quality.

        • Excellent point. Better "specs" don't always measure up. Sound is a qualitative, it's subjective.

  • That's why I said value of improvement perception is relative.

    • You appear to be conflating relative perception with actual improvement. You can perceive anything you want because it's your money. My point is still valid. $1550 added to the price of whatever speaker you have can and will give you a significant and easily discernible difference in performance over the perceived improvement of magic wire.
      Again, the sound comes from a transducer reacting to the input of an electric current. If there are no measurable differences between the current and waveform, there will be no difference in what the transducer produces. You're a scientist,. Act like one. The end.

      • I am not arguing the validity of your point about improvement. But still this is relative, since it is about your perception of the value of the improvement.
        Secondly, I don't understand your statement about me not acting as a scientist. What's the relevance of that? And how do you know that there are no measurable differences here? I don't.

        • Thanks for commenting.

        • OK, then show me the measurable differences. If you have a mechanical transducer it's reacting to something to produce sound. The principles governing this reproduction are well understood and easily measured. So measure something to back up your perception. The transducer must be reacting differently for a reason. Tell us what it is. That's what a scientist would do.

• Well said RA. Secrets, you should know better. Stop doing cable and wire reviews with nothing but fluffy comments by the writer.
  We need measurements. Show us that this $1500 10 gauge wire is better than 10 gauge wire from Home Depot.

  • You can only judge better or not by trying it in your system. "Better" measurements do not always correspond to better sound.

    • Specious argument. The problem is not "better" measurements make better sound. The argument is show us a difference in any measurements that support your argument that there is a difference in the sound.

• Nice review, but I would have preferred a cable review done with a speaker with actual deep bass capability to 20hz. I understand that the 702 S2 is a tower speaker, but a rather diminutive one, at that. Even the NHT T6 has been reviewed and found to roll off sharply below 32Hz. How can you make any serious conclusions about deep bass reproduction without a speaker capable of prodigious deep bass?

  • I did not specifically talk about deep bass, only about bass response in general. So my conclusion was drawn based on the bass response I got from the same speakers.

    • OK, fair enough. For those of us with big speakers, we're left wondering how these cables might compare to the other cables in the lowest octave.

      • The best is probably to try them with your speakers. Your finding might vary. But in my experience, cables responses do not roll off steeply.

  • My last comment on this subject. The propagation of a current through a wire is by the movement of electrons. I think I can safely guarantee you that no electrons discriminate against notes below 32Hz.

• I believe that cables do make audible difference in sound quality, but I doubt that measurements will show any difference. Cables don't have to expensive but component matching with different sets of cables is helpful and is practiced widely in audiophile world. One has to trust their ears with any component in their set up and decide if it makes a difference after a double blind test with a friend. Some say interconnects make a difference but not speaker/power cables and others say all cables are same. We just hope that the reviewer is sincere in reporting his findings and go easy on the comments.

  • Right on Peter. Hence I mentioned in the beginning that I only reported how the cables performed in my system and their potential to others' systems.

  • I did some bench test measurements, and the Wireworld Eclipse cables are much, much better than generic cables in terms of resistance and reactive impedance. And I mean the difference is HUGE. I will be publishing an article about this in the near future. This translates to better clarity, although I have had problems identifying what the sound improvements were in the past. I come from a scientific background, and by nature, we are doubters until shown objective proof that a hypothesis is true. Now that I know what to listen for, the improvement is noticeable. It is not dramatic, but it is noticeable. If the improvement was dramatic, there would not be the controversy about cables that does exist. Also, because some amplifiers like a certain amount of inductance, cables perform differently depending on the amplifier. So, cables continue to be controversial. I think over the next few years, the subject of cables could become less of an issue, with bench testing results being published.

• Did Enid Lumley's spirit just enter the room unnoticed? I'm thinking that if you covered these in Reynolds Wrap the soundstage and pace would go through the roof. But only if you painted the ends liberally with green CD ink. And then it would only work for the digitally encoded part of the signal. Make sure you get the ends correct. Don't want electrons going in the wrong direction. That would really screw up the energy at the micro level.

  But we really want to know how these compare with Hose Monster Valhalla wires--the ones with the Siegfried Notung modification and Loge fire hardened (in the 5 Element Furnace) spade plugs. I'd experiment with these interconnects, but this week I'm comparing the sound of different polishes on my Epiphone Les Paul's poly finish. The interaction at the micro molecular level between the polish and the polyurethane on the flux within the humbucker pickups is something you won't believe.

  • You were close, but to smooth the flux between the polyurethane and the polish you need to insert a flux-capacitor.This will greatly improve the perceived depth of image and will also balance the image. That's the only thing that will tame the tachyons, A stray tachyon can completely muddy the image. Even the perception of a tachyon will add a darkness to the sound.