In recent years, high-end audio cables have been ballooning in price at an alarming rate, with manufacturers from around the world arriving one after another offering new products tagged at hundreds of thousands — or even millions of yen a pair — and among them, one brand that has particularly caught my attention of late is Stereovox, an up-and-coming American cable manufacturer.
Stereovox was founded in Florida in 1998 by engineer Chris Sommovigo and baritone vocalist Tony de Almeida, and alongside their high-end cable manufacture, they have also launched a classical music record label making full use of the company’s own technology. Hi-Fi manufacturers who so openly identify themselves as coming from a classical music background are quite rare, and that alone is one of the reasons I find them personally interesting. The tagline written by Audio Reference, the brand’s Japanese distributor, reads: “The world’s most refined audio cables, bridging the gap between Hi-Fi and music.”
One thing that personally draws me to Stereovox cables in particular is simply how slim and beautiful they look. This is, quietly, quite an important point for cables in the higher price brackets. Even the wiring just barely visible behind an audio system needs to look composed and elegant — otherwise, in a living space that is truly suited to the system, it will feel out of place as a matter of interior design.
The conductors are ultrafine single-core wires with a simple shielded construction, and a high standard of workmanship runs consistently through every component. The high-end class uses silver conductors with an oval cross-section, while the entry class uses silver-plated copper. The top-of-the-line RCA cable, the SEI-600, is ¥350,000 for a 1m pair. The speaker cable LSP-600 is ¥700,000 for a 1.5m pair…… Good heavens. In the core STUDIO Line, the RCA cable HDSE comes in at ¥29,400 for a 1m pair, and the speaker cable HDLS at ¥75,000 for a 2m pair. By the standards of not so long ago, these would already qualify as seriously expensive top-grade cables — but with other manufacturers’ high-end cables now going for even more, the STUDIO Series has come to look almost like entry-level, which is genuinely unsettling.
Stereovox, an up-and-coming American high-end cable manufacturer — but what on earth do they actually sound like? Having not yet heard them in person, I have nothing to go on beyond the impressions in issues 110 and 117 of Audio Accessory magazine, and must rely entirely on the reviews of various critics to imagine the sound — but those magazine assessments do speak of a resolving power that far exceeds the price, and the overall impression is one that raises considerable expectations. The RCA cable Stereovox HDSE in particular seems to be selling rather well, no doubt thanks to its slim, refined appearance combined with its relatively approachable price. And so, the cable that I — the author of this compact, desktop-scale pure audio blog — would most like to try right now, or rather, would try right now if only the budget allowed, turns out to be none other than Stereovox.
Browse Other High-Quality Audio Cables
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Audio Union 901Audio Specialist Square
【Jazz & Audio Dispatches from the USA】
A Brief Audition of High-End Interconnects (Harmonic Technology, Stereovox)Contact Cleaning and the Stereovox Colibri-R
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List of comments （4）
ここのRCAプラグは面白い形してますよね。
音質にどのような影響があるのかは分かりませんが、珍しい物好きの僕としてはかなり気になります。
ただちょっと価格が…
遊びで買うにはちょっと高すぎますよね。
ですね～。私に手の届く一番安い物でも実売2万円超。
もんさんも色々なケーブルを通過されて経験がおありだと思いますが、
これで好みに合わなかったり、システムと相性が悪かったり、
同クラスの手持ちのケーブルと比べて音が良くなかったりした日には、
かなり打ちのめされてしまいます(^^;。
諭吉さんクラスのある程度高価なモデルの場合は、
購入前にちょっとでも試聴できれば良いのですけれど…。
実際にはそんな機会はなかなかありませんので…殆ど博打です。
ケーブルで36…万…
そんなに高い物が存在するんですね。。。
いや、ビックリしました(^^;
ダイスケさんはじめまして、遅レス深謝です。
36万どころか100万越えてる導線がちらほらあったりする世界です。
趣味ですからねぇ…。まぁなんでもアリって事で(^^;