Now, here are three audio cable brands that have caught my attention lately. First up is IXOS from the United Kingdom. Their cable lineup has just been completely refreshed with new products. Incidentally, until a few years ago I was using the IXOS 604 speaker cable between a CREEK 4240 and Wharfedale Diamond V.
IXOS is one of the UK’s most representative Hi-Fi accessory brands, and back home their range extends well beyond speaker cables and phono cables to a wide variety of audio accessories. Their cable lineup focuses mainly on affordable to mid-range products, and the overall feel is rather like the British equivalent of Japan’s audio-technica. They apparently even make cables for XBOX and PlayStation.
If audio-technica cables are the archetype of a “Japanese” Hi-Fi sound — affordable, informationally dense, and delicately detailed — then IXOS would be the archetype of a “British” Hi-Fi sound: more refined and dignified, rooted in a classical, natural, European tonal character. Most IXOS products are not aimed at the kind of modern, high-speed, hyper-resolving sound that is fashionable today; rather, their appeal lies in a restrained, unhurried balance that makes no great demands on the frequency extremes, and from a slightly stepped-back vantage point delivers a richly expressive, musically satisfying sound.
Even among their more affordably priced products, the sound design is not aimed at surface-level sonic impressiveness but rather at drawing music together in a way that feels genuinely musical, with a knowing grasp of where the real listening pleasures lie — a dignified, cultured sound steeped in the spirit of British culture, and one that is really most suited to listeners who attend to the essence of the music. It is, in that sense, an accessory for the grown-up music lover. It pairs particularly well with compact, garden-in-a-box-style European Hi-Fi systems at popular price points, and in terms of musical genre, I would recommend it not only for classical music but also for those who regularly listen to the Beatles and other slightly older British rock.
An introduction to the IXOS 109 RCA-to-stereo mini plug cable
Beyond the particularly good synergy with same-importer brands CREEK and MONITOR AUDIO, if you have a British amp and CDP at the heart of your system paired with compact British speakers — QUAD, Wharfedale, KEF, Celestion, Castle, Spendor, and others including the old BBC monitor lineage — and you want to draw out a more authentically British natural sound from them, IXOS would be the first cable I would put on the shortlist.
ポチップ
As an optional accessory to go with the speaker cables mentioned above, IXOS also sells banana plugs made by the same manufacturer. These are also the same item that was bundled with older models of CREEK integrated amplifiers, which use a banana-plug-only terminal design. The AT6147 (AT6301) is audio-technica’s most affordable model, but perhaps thanks to its simple construction and small size, its sonic side-effects are kept admirably low — in fact it sounded better than banana plugs from a certain popular German brand costing several thousand yen.
Auto Translated by CS4.6
List of comments （2）
Creek A50iR + Quad 11Lを使用中かつブリティッシュロックを好む、
私の為にあるような記事でございます（笑）
発売されたら試してみようかな。
兎脳さんお久しぶりです～＆遅レス深謝ですm(__)m
IXOS、とりあえずクリーク使いの方にはお薦めしておきます。
クオリティを云々するともっと高価なケーブルの選択肢も色々あるのですが、
英国テイストの基本に忠実に!となるとやっぱり外せないケーブルです。
ここからいずれグレードアップするにしても、とにかく品質の基準となるはずです。
ただ、ハードなロックには少々おっとりし過ぎるかも。