Silversmith Audio Fidelium XLR Interconnects

[scolley]

Silversmith Audio's Fidelium XLR Interconnects are not yet available to the public, but I was lucky enough to get an early pair, so am sharing my experience. I’m guessing that my being a very early adopter of the Silversmith Audio Fidelium speakers cables played some factor in Silversmith’s proprietor Jeffry Smith’s decision to allow me early access to his new Fidelium interconnects. Whatever the reason, I’m absolutely delighted he did.

 

With assurances of a 30 return period I was able to purchase for trial a pair of 4.5 foot XLR ICs, priced at $1,125. I was not expecting a large sonic change. My existing ICs are Nordost Heimdall II’s, and Jeffrey indicated in an email that my Nordost's had already had some of the physical characteristics that made his ICs sound so good. So I wasn’t expecting much. That plus I assumed that no interconnect could make that much of a difference until I first made upgrades to my room, speakers and amps. My assumption was that with my current high quality ICs, there was no way they could be a weak link in the chain.

 

The cables arrived in simple - yet quite adequate - packaging. I’m given to understand that fancier packaging is in the works, the absence of such now being a part of the reason why these cables are not yet on the market.

 

I found the cables to be of nice, quality build. Not heavy at all and very flexible. The XLR connectors appear to be well constructed, with the three conductors themselves hidden inside a black mesh cable sleeve. Jeffrey tells me that the conductors themselves are 1/2” wide foil conductors that are somewhat better than the conductors in the Fidelium speaker cables, sitting on top of each other, separated by a thin cotton layer. The gold foil is somewhat visible through the mesh sleeve. The cables have a thin golden wire spiraling around the cable, just under the surface of the black mesh. Not sure where that comes into play, but it looks nice.

 

Clearly the cable geometry is designed for a very low dielectric - mostly air - which is great. But you could easily raise heck sticking a paper clip through the gaps in the mesh sheath and contacting the semi-exposed bare wire. Low likelihood of such happening, I know. But possible. Not a cable to have if you have pets that chew on wires.

 

In my digital-only system my Meitner MA3 DAC connects directly to my PS Audio M700 mono-block amps via XLR interconnects, and that’s where these Fidelium ICs were placed. The MA3 sits on a set of three Symposium Rollerblocks (titanium bearings), so it is a somewhat free floating component. The current Nordost Heimdall II XLR interconnects are both stiff, and heavy. The Rollerblocks make a quite audible sonic improvement over stock MA3 footers, but I’ve always been concerned about the weight with which the Heimdall’s pushed them down, and the restriction they placed on free-floating DAC movement. Happily the light, flexible nature of the Fidelium ICs improved things in both respects, quite a bit.

 

So now it gets down to the sound. I’m not very good at describing what I hear, but I’ll try.

 

In short, the difference was huge. Huge. Jeffrey Smith said that I should hear immediate improvements in the “time domain”.  I’m not sonically technical enough to understand what that really means, but when playing well recorded acoustic tracks, the resolution of the space the instruments were played in was just amazing. Rooms played in sounded larger. Cymbals - in particular - had a clarity I’d never heard before. Drums more distinct, less muddy. And vocals took on more immediacy, more in-your-face clarity. It may be more accurate to say that everything was rendered with greater clarity. How much more?

 

Hard to put a number on that, but in 45 years as an on-a-budget audiophile, I’ve never heard so much of an improvement between two components that should have been comparable; those components being the old and new ICs. For just a few minutes I put the old ICs back, just to make sure I was not imagining things. IT was immediately clear that I was not.

 

I've got a good friend that is a true golden ear, so I had him come over for a listen, doing a little A/B between the cables. My system is in a mostly enclosed stand, so it was not possible for him to see which IC was in use, but he might guess. So I had my wife flip a coin to determine if I would start with the old cables in place, or the new. The coin toss dictated we start with the old cables.

When my friend came by for a listen, we played 2-4 minutes of four tracks on the old Nordost Heimdall IIs. Then I switched - not visible to my friend - and began replay of the same four tracks. Thirty seconds into the first track he said he'd already reached a conclusion, though he did not want to say anything yet, but was ready for the next track. He didn't need to hear the whole track. About 15 seconds into it he said, "Next track". He did the same thing on the next track, ready for a new track in 15 seconds. Whatever he was hearing, he clearly was not needing to listen to much of a track to know that he had identified a difference.

 

After playing the first 15 seconds of the last track, he declared that the "A" connection (Nordost Heimdalls) was so vastly inferior to the "B" connection (Fidelium ICs) that the difference in clarity - across all frequencies - was night and day. I mentioned that I agreed, and that I felt it was at least a 15 to 20 percent bump in the quality of that sound. He replied that I was being foolish, for he felt it could be 50% improvement, that the improvement was "Massive".

 

This improvement is similar to what I heard when I swapped out my Nordost Blue Heaven II speaker cables for Fidelium speaker cables a few years ago. But as dramatic as change was, this even more more dramatic. Could I be hearing such a huge difference because I have - with the benefit of the Fidelium speaker cables - a highly resolving system now? Jeffry Smith has told me that my thinking is incorrect, because quite humble systems will also resolve audibly better.

 

As with all system upgrades and changes, over time your ear gets used to the new sound. I got these new Fidelium IC's two months ago, and have listened to them many, many hours, and had assumed I had become used to the new sound. But this past week I got a major surprise.

 

I am a life long Pink Floyd fan. My favorite of their albums being Dark Side of the Moon. But I've listened to that album too many times. Now I probably don't put it on any more often than annually. The other day I put it on - my best copy, a PCM RIP from a Japanese SACD, 30th Anniversary Edition - and was nothing less than shocked and thrilled at what I heard.

 

I've heard this album hundreds and hundreds of times,but this time everything changed. Detail was off the charts. I heard voices singing that for all my life I thought was a single voice singing, but now was clearly a single voice overlaid (at a tiny timing variance) by itself. Is that overdubbing? Like a chorus of a single voice. Whatever it is, I’d never heard it before. Detail - needless to say - was quite audibly more evident than I’d ever heard hundreds (thousands?) of times before. And the changes were tonal also… a richness to vocals I’d not experienced before. Tighter bass, and much better localized (spatially) images. MUCH better resolution of the recording space, and far, far more easily understood vocals. The alarm clocks' clanging was even much less grating because they resolved so well.

 

In conclusion, I cannot recommend giving a listen to these interconnects more highly, once they become publicly available. Short of a change in speakers, I have never experienced a larger improvement by changing a single "component". I've a very few come close, but I'm giving Fidelium XLR interconnects my lifelong top spot for system upgrades. IMO they are a game changer, and should give some big industry players a run for their money.

[scolley]

It appears I misunderstood some of what Jeffrey Smith had told me about the Fidelium IC's, and thus I posted some incorrect information in my OP above. Jeffery has corrected my understanding, as follows.

 

The conductors are NOT exposed, they are COMPLETELY insulated. And apparently the visible gold color is the Kapton in which the foil is laminated, just like with the Fidelium speaker cables, just not as wide. And the colored thread in the black mesh is an additional channel marking, red for right and white for left.

 

So I guess it's an OK cable to have, even if you do have pets that chew on wires. :-)

PS - I don't post a lot here, so I may be missing something, but I don't see any way to edit my original post for corrections. If I knew how to do that, as I would like to have the correct facts in the OP.

[JoeWhip]

I met Jeffrey at the recent Tampa show and he had a set of these ICs with him. If they sound as good as his ribbon speaker cables, they will be well worth the cost. I will try them when they are available with RCAs.

[scolley]

1 hour ago, JoeWhip said:

If they sound as good as his ribbon speaker cables, they will be well worth the cost.

Everyone's mileage will vary, of course. But to my ears they were actually a larger improvement than the Fidelium speaker cables. As I recall, that was another switch from Nordost to Fideliums, in this case Blue Heaven speaker cables very well bested by the Fideliums. But IMO the interconnect upgrade was actually a bit better, and that was not expected.

[tuochongle]

On 3/22/2024 at 10:49 AM, scolley said:

Everyone's mileage will vary, of course. But to my ears they were actually a larger improvement than the Fidelium speaker cables. As I recall, that was another switch from Nordost to Fideliums, in this case Blue Heaven speaker cables very well bested by the Fideliums. But IMO the interconnect upgrade was actually a bit better, and that was not expected.

Scolley, how do you like the XLR cables so far?

[scolley]

Great question, but in the interest of full disclosure I’m not sure how much I can add to what I’ve already said. It is worth nothing I sold my more expensive Nordost Heimdall II’s a couple of weeks later with no regrets.

 

After that I got a new amp. But the decision to try a new amp was predicated on the fact that I was already totally committed to the Fidelium ICs. Every day I listened after the first few days remained a delight. 

 

Now with the new amp the change has reinforced what the Fidelium ICs do. In short, they bring amazing detail to the music. That detail is both improved transients; radically improving the you-hear-the-performance-room experience, plus making acoustic instruments sound more “real”, but also radically decreased time smearing; complex passages with multiple instruments becoming clearly audible vs. a  sonic mush, as it were.

 

What they do not appear to do is change the tonal nature of the sound. My new amp has done that. 

 

I keep checking the Fidelium website to see if they are publicly available, but apparently not yet. I’m actually looking forward to more people trying them, if for no other reason than that I know that for many people, these are going to be transformative, at an affordable cost.

 

In retrospect I realized that my impressions were based on my particular system. Specifically my DAC being connected straight to my amp - vs. a preamp in the middle - means that I only need one pair of ICs to hear the full benefit. Even if I had to by two pair though, I’d still consider them a “must listen”, ‘cuz they are so amazing.

[tuochongle]

16 hours ago, scolley said:

Great question, but in the interest of full disclosure I’m not sure how much I can add to what I’ve already said. It is worth nothing I sold my more expensive Nordost Heimdall II’s a couple of weeks later with no regrets.

 

After that I got a new amp. But the decision to try a new amp was predicated on the fact that I was already totally committed to the Fidelium ICs. Every day I listened after the first few days remained a delight. 

 

Now with the new amp the change has reinforced what the Fidelium ICs do. In short, they bring amazing detail to the music. That detail is both improved transients; radically improving the you-hear-the-performance-room experience, plus making acoustic instruments sound more “real”, but also radically decreased time smearing; complex passages with multiple instruments becoming clearly audible vs. a  sonic mush, as it were.

 

What they do not appear to do is change the tonal nature of the sound. My new amp has done that. 

 

I keep checking the Fidelium website to see if they are publicly available, but apparently not yet. I’m actually looking forward to more people trying them, if for no other reason than that I know that for many people, these are going to be transformative, at an affordable cost.

 

In retrospect I realized that my impressions were based on my particular system. Specifically my DAC being connected straight to my amp - vs. a preamp in the middle - means that I only need one pair of ICs to hear the full benefit. Even if I had to by two pair though, I’d still consider them a “must listen”, ‘cuz they are so amazing.

Thanks for the insight. My cables will arrive tomorrow. :)