PranaWire Cosmos Series Speaker Cable

Life.

Not liveliness – which usually refers to bouncy dynamics.

Not warmth – which usually refers to 2nd harmonic distortion or rounded notes or slightly exaggerated decays of notes.

Not color, exactly – which usually refers to rich tones

Life.

It was very easy to hear, as we switched back and forth between the PranaWire Cosmos speaker cable and either Valhalla or Jorma Design No. 1 speaker cables during an audition a month or so ago. But very hard to describe.

The Cosmos speaker cable was single wire, and the Marten Design Coltranes need bi-wire, and the Acapella Triolons need tri-wire (though we still tried them on these speakers, but we were not able to determine much given the fact that the differences in the cables were causing annomolies in the speaker’s performance). But the Sound Lab speakers are single-wired and this was where we performed most of our listening.

While listening to the Sound Lab U1’s with the PranaWire, one could easily come up with description words: engaging, somewhat more dynamic – though more like a different distribution of dynamics for the various notes… no that is not right, joyful, colorful. But none of these simple description fit very well.

Colorful is a good description, but again maybe not, as people tend to use this word to describe exaggerated harmonics.

Or maybe a mix of “dynamic separation, color and a little warmth”.

nope. That’s not it.

So that is why I call it ‘life’. The music was alive. And when we took the cable off it was like we took out the music and shot it. It was like going back to watching black and white TV (for those of you old enough to remember such antiques).

The music just… died.

Not that the other cables do not do a top-notch job – we are very fond of them. They did not have any etch or glare and were not overly lean (especially with the Audio Aero Capitole driving them). The Sound Labs sound wonderfull full and detailed and dynamic with these other cables.

Yes, even with the PranaWire, there are always tradeoffs, and here the tradeoffs are a slight compression and congestion in the soundstage, especially during loud complex passages. Stuff I did not notice until the music was quite loud, and never noticed at all on very loud video soundstracks.

For various reasons we do not carry the PranaWire here at the Audio Federation at the present time, not to say that we will not someday in the future – we like Joe Cohen a lot and he seems to be able to put up with us, too.

Expensive? Definitely.

Hard to bend into position? Not so bad as you might think (and not nearly no how no way as bad as any of the higher end power cords we have here, but then again, that is setting the bar pretty low :-))

Was this just a special synergy between the Sound Labs and the PranaWire? I do not know.

But do I think about these speaker cables each time I listen to the SoundLabs? I try not to.

~sigh~