Oliver Göbel quite harmlessly called me and asked if I would be interested in listening to his new cables. Since I am continuously impressed by his speakers, I spontaneously said yes to his question. He came over, we listened, I was enthusiastic and we arranged a review. We had not spoken about prices then.

Since I knew for what sum his sonically fascinating, milled from solid aluminum sculptures - vulgo Speakers - changed hands, I had not exactly expected low-cost cables. In addition, more than 20 years of high-end review writing has left its mark: No price shocks me too quickly. It didn’t bother me one bit that I was sharing my listening room for quite a period of time with a Continuum turntable and matching tonearm carrying a six-figure sum in the price list. It was only bad when the Continuum was picked up and taken away again. In addition, you can only be conditionally outraged when using a LumenWhite as a work machine (so-called oligarch hifi) if you want to remain reasonably credible. On the other hand, I am extremely satisfied, listening to my files through a D/A converter, which does not even cost as much as five meters of the best USB cable from Audioquest. The fear of products from the upper or lower end of the price scale are largely foreign to me. So we repress all thoughts of the filthy lucre, and take a closer look at the cables.

When Oliver Göbel brought over the balanced signal and speaker cables from the Lacorde Statement line to the test review, he didn’t give much away regarding questions about the construction of the conductor. At least I was able to get out of him that for both applications, a vast number of the same, individually insulated conductors with the same diameter were employed. Of course, for the speaker cables, significantly more strands of wire were used to reach a larger cross section. The alloy for the fine, drawn wires consist of copper, silver, and a third material, that Oliver Göbel does not want to name. Experiments had shown that a cryogenic treatment provided no sonic improvements to the alloy. The most difficult stage of development was to determine the most harmonious relationship between the measurements ​​of resistance, inductance and capacity and to realize it through the cable’s geometry. The individual wires were specially woven to achieve the desired parameters.
Almost as complicated was to ensure by the construction of the cable, that the geometry of woven wires would still last, even after years of use. Pressed Teflon was used as the dielectric. He used natural rubber and neoprene for damping and stabilization of the structure. The outer weaving is specially woven for Göbel High End. He also made sure that the cable is not being statically charged. That's why he did not employ any PVC. The cable is completely made in Germany - he only purchases the “raw wire” abroad. In order to “build” the cable in the standard lengths of three meters for the speaker cable and 1.2 meters for the XLR cable, 15 respectively five hours of work by hand was required, because the finished product was never just cut into pieces and terminated from the roll. The XLR connectors are heavily modified Neutrik models, the spades for the speaker cables are in-house developments, which were pressed on to the end of the cables with a force of 60 tons.