Orpheus Interconnects

Any thoughts on these?

http://forum.hifichoice.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=6793

 

I have a set of Bob's earlier "Orpheus" interconnects and they seemed to work fine, even through the attenuator necessary to adapt a CD player to a Quad pre-amp. Certainly they seemed better than what I was then using. Since then, I have become (even) more sceptical - did I hear a difference because I wanted to hear a diference? - and now that I have Ian's EAR pre-amp with phono sockets, I intend to retest over Christmas, to see whether I deluded myself.

Having said that, the "Orpheus" cables are nicely made, with expensive WBT locking phono plugs. They look so nice that it's a shame that they're hidden away. Bob has offered me some "Mithril" cable on free trial - must take him up on it, although I'm put off by the price. OK, it's not high as high-end cables go, but for someone like myself who has little faith in exotic cables, it's a lot.

Bob himself is a pleasure to deal with.

 

I dont want to put on the knockers, but..

Orpheus is Maplins silver shark cable with WBT plugs.

Mithrill is a silver cable used as a speaker cable.

I know of a couple of sources where you can get 1mm thick silver cable for 8 quid a metre, if you want to try your own. PM me if you want.

Personally I prefer solid core copper cables for speaker cable, but each to their own.

A keen DIYer could make both, but having said that Bobs prices always seemed very reasonable.

cheers
Chris

 

Actually, Chris, it's an interconnect, not a speaker cable. At one point, Bob did contemplate a speaker cable to be called Mithril, but he's now used the name on a new interconnect.

 

Well, actually, Bob uses the name Mithril for both his speaker cable and one of the interconnects. The cables used for the two are different though; the interconnect cable is shielded and uses thinner conductors than the speaker cable.

Bottleneck - Bob makes no bones about the DIY-esque style of his cables. He has though sourced some good quality cable in my opinion, and uses good quality connectors to finish them off. As Tones has mentioned, Bob is also a great guy to deal with.

I've had a set of the Mithril interconnects on demo, and all I can say is they were clearly better than the Musical Fidelity Nu-Vistas I was looking to replace. The Mithril's had a clearer, more detailed top end to my mind. Oh, and I'm using the Mithril speaker cable, a review of which I posted on the HFC forum so I won't repeat that here. Having said that though, Rozzar heard my cable recently and wasn't particularly impressed...

 

MO!, I've just tested my "Orpheus" interconnects against a set of standard Linn interconnects (the ones they give you with your bits of Linn equipment) and can discern no major difference. So, this means that, when I reported positively the first time, I may have been talking humbug and hearing what I wanted to hear. On the other hand, the playing equipment on which the testing was carried out this time was a whole lot better than that used last time. Last time, it was Marantz 63II KI/Quad 33/303. This time, it was Meridian 588/EAR 834L/Quad 405-2. However, this goes against the view held by high-end owners such as Titian that the better the equipment, the bigger the difference ancillaries such as cables make.

SO, although Bob is a nice guy who makes nice interconnects, I don't think I'll be buying any more, as there's no advantage in paying over the odds for something that to my ears does the same job as any other good-quality interconnect.