Reinhard Goebel's recording with the Musica Antiqua Köln ensemble provides a ruthless test for all equipment. Founded 30 years ago with the goal to reproduce historic classic performances in their original format, the ensemble were pioneers of a new idealism in their time. Their use of original historic instruments can easily give rise to edginess, further accentuated by Deutsche Grammophone recording style which often verges on treble overdose. How do the Swiss Cables navigate these treacherous waters?Naturally, they can’t trans-mutate these recordings into RCA Living Stereo gold, but with the Swiss Cables in the system, the instruments sound much more harmonious, without any glossing-over or sugarcoating in the play. The original character of the music is fully preserved, but with the Swiss Cables simply more music emerges from the recording. A real class act!

Next in line is the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s LP The Third decade. Founded in 1960, this avantgarde-band has always prided itself of its black roots and its African musical heritage. Original African costumes and full warrior body paintings used to be an integral part of the band’s live performances. Their music features an abundance of instruments, especially of the percussive kind. In the case of this LP, I counted no less than 70! Recorded in 1984 The Third Decade marks the end of the band’s cooperation with the ECM record label. At that point in time, their music had already lost part of its avantgardistic edge. The LP’s first title „Prayer for Jimbo Kwesi“ starts out in a rather relaxed and harmonious fashion, but that changes not long thereafter. Of special interest here is track 4, which features an abundance of percussion effects. After a slightly spaced out contra bass intro, the drummer brings on a multitude of bells, cymbals and who-knows-what other instruments. Via the Swiss Cables, they are all placed in the sound-space with superb precision and natural timbre, devoid of any trace of edginess. These instruments are harmonically extremely complex and very difficult to reproduce. The human ear will mention instantaneously if something is off-target here.

With my system completely wired with the Swiss Cables References, the sound had become utterly organic and immensely musical. While every individual Swiss Cables cable brings these signature qualities of the whole product range to its specific position in the chain, the brand's design approach clearly aims beyond offering individual super-cables, and provides for a complete cable system with consistent quality and integral sonic performance. While many of us have assembled a diverse mix of different cable brands in our systems, when it comes to the Swiss Cables, replacing all cables in the chain with their products clearly results in a added performance enhancement. That’s certainly good for the company, but before all else its simply the fact. Compared with my own eclectic mix of cables, the Swiss Cables sound clearer, more transparent and dynamic, while a little less voluminous. I view the latter as the result of their improved precision and time-coherence in the mid-range and bass bands. The sound-space projected by the Swiss Cables is slightly more compact in size, a quality which will especially benefit those with horn systems. The mid-range is slightly less forward and more relaxed, which places the musicians about one step backward in space. Especially those recordings which always make one feel as if the microphone had fallen into the piano now sound more natural and realistic, while at the same time less artificially “in-your-face”. The Swiss Cables bring immense subtlety and finesse to the sound and endow it with an infinite palette of sonic colors. Especially the latter is of great importance to me. The realistic reproduction of solo violin has remained one of the most difficult tasks in audio - the Swiss Cables master this challenge better than any other cable I know! Unsurprisingly, classic music benefits immensely from the cables’ sonic homogeneity.

Such performance reminds me of a well known Japanese tube guru’s invocation of “No superfluous sound !” While made in another context, it fully grasps the nature of the Swiss Cables. They are now the second excellent cable brand from Switzerland which I have come to know. Does the country's pristine high mountain air have any role in this ?

In my view, a system’s active components ultimately determine its sound, while cables play a supportive role. While my loudspeakers’ 98db efficiency tend to reveal even minute effects and changes, that may be different in other systems. To provide our readers with a second opinion, my colleague Dirk Sommer has listened to the Swiss Cablesin his system as well. Here his report:

The first set of Swiss Cables arrived accompanied by Anton Suter who heads their manufacturing and distribution. Unlike my „tube loving“ colleague Juergen Saile, I heed no general preference for tube amplifiers but at the time of my review happened to listen via a tube-preamplifier and tube power amplifiers as well. To connect them I need very long, symmetric interconnects while my Ayon Epsilon power amps only accept loudspeaker cables terminated with spades. Since I didn't mention these details when ordering the Swiss Cables, I had to bring in the excellent Einstein ‘The Poweramp’, which normally does duty in the living room, to handle amplifying duties in the meantime – naturally, starting with my usual set of cables. Power cable duties were handled by an ac cord originally handcrafted by the former German Cello distributor and marked by a rather substantial cross section. When I replaced it with the Swiss Cables Reference power cord, the playback leaped forward in transparency, resolution and dynamics, while the sound became more airy and slightly more spacious. In short: simply more detail emerged from the music.