INTRODUCING HEMINGWAY CABLES

As I have written before, when system building I am very distinctly speaker centric in that the loudspeaker is the most important and defining component you’ll ever buy and the most difficult choice to make as they are very expensive and there aren’t many truly great examples out there. Even amongst many well known high brands, speakers that could well score 90%+ in magazine reviews, various ills lurk.

After speakers though, I have also become more and more “wire” centric over the years. Part of this is because cables are a little like speakers in that there is a lot of choice but very few makes that are truly in the top echelon and deserving of the very high quality electronics we sell. The other part is because Amplifiers and Digital sources are so good now that its really not such a difficult purchase and even basic units from more middle of the road brands are probably still fairly competent.

So what we find over and over again in the Lotus demo room and in customers homes, is that good signal and digital cables and mains cables and indeed mains conditioners that we sell, more than often make as much if not more difference than entire box upgrades but usually at a far lower cost. They push our extremely capable existing boxes by a huge amount, releasing more and more performance the more you spend. Always finish the system off properly instead of lusting after bigger more sexier units !

To give you an idea, the difference in performance between a Thrax or Vitus integrated using say £2000 speaker cables versus £8000 speaker cables is enormous and what’s more, £8000 is not overkill. I have customers using speaker cables on our entry integrated amplifiers which cost as much as the amps themselves. Move up to the illustrious Vitus SIA-030 or the jaw droppingly transparent Thrax Dionysus+Teres (£37,000) and Speaker cables + XLR spend could and arguably should look more like £20,000. That may surprise some of you reading this but I can show you the reality of it inside 5 minutes or so in my demo room.

The same is true of digital. I have customers using our best £5300 USB cable with £3000 Dacs, so a USB cable more that the cost of the DAC. It is categorically not overkill, and the reason comes back to the earlier point that boxes are nowadays made to a very very high standard; they begin at a very high level and there is way more potential in them than people realise, whereas the USB connection is hugely limiting. Even our entry integrated amplifiers would destroy expensive high end Pre-Powers from 5 or 6 years ago. The inbuilt DAC modules from Thrax and Vitus costing £3000, they will give two/three box setups from say dCS from 10 years ago a very very hard time. So in summary, it is speakers, wires, mains and the home network that generally holds a system back and our boxes can be pushed a long long way further by better cabling and mains. A system of cheaper boxes with very good ancillaries will always outperform one comprised of better boxes but poorer cabling and mains.

First a little history. In 2018 after we said goodbye to Rich Schultz’s now defunct “HighFidelity Cables” outfit, we began to search far and wide for a new premier cable brand that that had a wide range of products from the budget to the highest performance level possible. We also required a cable that was so neutral and invisible, that it could be used very effectively in a full Tidal system. No easy task and many things we tried were rejected. That brand ended up of course as Tara Labs and we have had huge success with the company from Oregon for a good 4 years now. This year we have begun to retail their mains cables as well, now available with a UK 3 pin plug, and like the wires they are supremely balanced, linear and even handed. Summer 2023, they are already selling extremely well and have become at least as popular as our Shunyata offerings.

With only Tara Labs and Tidal cables in the roster though, I was always passively on the lookout for a third cable brand but only if something came along that was truly special and would genuinely add something different and significant to the Lotus portfolio, a lot more than just a perfunctory 3^rd option for cables. It wasn’t till the 2022 Munich high end show that I had an inkling that I had possibly found the answer. This was the year we cemented our partnership with Thrax Audio and they in turn have had a working relationship with Hemingway for a good few years now. At Munich we met with the company and what we learnt from Thrax and also what we heard, set the ball rolling.

Hemingway are based in from South Korea. Doyoung Chung is the grandmaster who is responsible for all the underlying genius. He was formerly the lead engineer at Indratec, a company which spent a number of decades deeply researching the adverse effects of radio frequency and electro magnetic interference on their products, community antenna television system components, radio-frequency power amplifiers and other equipment used by governments to manage automobile traffic and collect highway tolls. Doyoung also happens to be a devout audiophile like you and me though with no less than 6 personal systems for his own usage and in 2008 Indratec funded the birth of Hemingway Cables with a very considerable R&D budget and this enormous inherited knowledge base of existing research.

Hemingway then incorporate a number of truly authentic and unique technologies into their products which probably invite more detailed examination outside the limited scope of my article here, but perhaps most crucial of all is their 2008 FMCF patent – frequency modulation cavity fundamentals. In highly oversimplified form, FMCF is the control of vibration and magnetic fields through the use of free space in the wire insulation. With this technology, electromagnetic fields along the wire – those staunch enemies of a clean noise free signal – can be manipulated and optimised to ultimately bring about what the company likes to call ‘the perfection of ultra realism’.

New technology is so important in our industry. Anyone can come along and design a new amplifier or speaker cables but unless there is some new and deeply intelligent advancement there that truly moves the game along, then you are probably just looking at a slightly different variation of something pre-existing and a different coloured box or fascia, rather than a golden chalice, an undiscovered galaxy, a ‘’game changer’. This then, is what Hemingway is; something completely different and you will hear it too just within the first few bars of the first track. Yes, I know that there is a new wire manufacturer probably every 6 months that claims to revise the whole industry but as ever, I try and report here as honestly as I can and then let you audition, try, borrow, and be the judge for yourself. My early trials with Hemingway cables not only surprised myself and a smattering of my best customers, but also a number of industry friends, colleagues and co-workers, most of whom have heard most of the premier cable brands that ever existed.

At the time of writing the Hemingway range is very simple. A budget line known as Indigo and then two premium lines, Creation series and Zcore. They also thankfully manufacture two different ethernet Lan cables which we are already retailing.

The Indigo range packs a generous degree of performance at a modest price. These cables (£3000 for 3m and £1500 for XLR/RCA) are less costly than many popular midrange UK choices from the likes of Chord, TelluriumQ, Vertere, Nordost etc.but still incorporating Hemingway’s unique technologies. They are lofty enough to be considered an endpoint for many systems or an introduction to Hemingway if you have a larger budget.

Next in pricing comes the Signatures which have a very slight deviation from perfect neutrality – more on that later –  and then after that is the premium Z-Core range which most people will want to get into. They scale from Alpha to Beta, Sigma and then the very expensive Omega flagships. The Alphas at the moment seem to be the biggest sellers and the most obvious choice for customers with amplifiers and DACs that cost in the £10,000 – £25,000 range. Alphas are £8800 for 3m speaker cables and £5500 for XLR.

Note that all the sizings, thicknesses and diameters are the same through the ranges and the speaker cables are very thin as well which will be good news for many who don’t like bulky unwieldy and unsightly wires that you so often get with the highest preforming cables. 10mm is the small width of all the speaker cables and they are flexible too and the spades are very compact. Standard lengths for the price are a generous 3m for the speaker cables which should accommodate most systems, and a decent 1.5m for the XLR/RCA.

The first thing to know about Hemingway is that when you hook them up and press play, you will immediately hear a dramatic change. This is almost regardless of system value or brand of equipment. In this respect they might at first remind you of similarly startling dem-room superstars such as Vertex-AQ, Nordost, Ansuz but let me add very quickly that Hemingway categorically do not alter or manipulate the actual sound itself. There is no shaping, tailoring, pushing or pulling of the frequency spectrum. They are utterly neutral and linear in this respect. If they were sparkling the treble, boosting the mid bass, chopping the midrange up, pushing the presence region onto the tip of your nose then they probably would never make it into my shop. So they also do not alter the tonality of the sound and there is no “hifi effect”; that is to say they do not overindulge or make prominent, one or more sonic properties. There is no thickening, no skeletal effect, no extra leading edge, no rolling off of the treble or slowing of the transients. The tone is neutral, natural and spot on, just the same as Tara Labs or the Tidal cables. Regular customers will already be familiar with our core philosophy that our electronics are very refined and neutral and do not need to be warmed or sped up or imbued with false dynamics, detail or aggression; the equipment just needs to be revealed as much and as neutrally as possible. Any flavourings you add won’t strictly be necessary but are obviously perfectly acceptable and possible if that’s just the way you like your music.

So what is this dramatic effect that you will notice ? Well simply put, it is a collection of properties that make up the architecture of the sound which change markedly. Hemingway never set out to alter these properties but it is just that they all naturally come about as a result of a dramatically lowering the noise floor. Other cables can improve these aspects too, but not as dramatically or often at the expense of other properties worsening. And what’s more, these cables fundamentally are banishing noise not just in the wire itself but throughout the whole system with a new technology that has never been employed before and is theirs alone. More on this later.

Although some of these properties are interlinked, to help my description allow me to cover off each one by one:

Focus

One of the most noticeable Hemingway architectural traits is a feeling of focus. The music sounds as if it has been dramatically cleaned up and from this simpler, purer rendition is a feeling of focusing to instruments, voices, sounds and notes. The musical landscape is better defined and more sure of its own shape and outline. There is no blurring or smearing of one part of the music into another. Although everything exists as a coherent and homogenous whole, there is strong definition throughout the musical picture.

Pronunciation

Closely linked to this greater precision are a number of other properties, the first of which is a sense of pronunciation. The music has a confidence and a definite nature to it. Whereas edge and structure was perhaps more vague and wishy washy before, everything is more assured and carefully pronounced as if one has subtly applied the 3d emboss filter in photoshop, or there is a well judged back light to the whole musical panorama. Outlines and shapes are well defined and eminently readable.

Precision

Linked again to a feeling of focus and pronunciation is the sense of increased precision. Everything sounds like is more definite and bold in its placement, its timing and its location in space. There is a feeling of order, a certain sense of discipline and control to the music that was lacking before. Hemingway cables have an authoritative and extremely surefooted way of delivering the music. It is for me one of the most satisfying traits they possess.

Stability

The precision of the music, its disciplined orderly way of unravelling, also means that there is a new found sense of stability and calmness to proceedings. Changes in loudness, the progression of melodies, the structure of rhythms, all these transitions and sequences all take place and change in a highly stable and controlled manner. This gives solidity and confidence to the music. Your tracks seems to be precipitate forth with more enthusiasm, more flair and more boldness.

Timing

Hemingway cables do not make the music sound faster than it actually us. They obviously do not truncate or razor the edges and they don’t heat up the highest frequencies, so there is not a speeding up effect that you can’t get with some equipment, but what they may well do is make your old cables sound a little fat, bloated and slow. It is not that Hemingway is lean, just that they dispense with a lot of noise so the music fits together in the most coherent and snug way you can imagine. The impeccable, simplified and nimble way Hemingway cables time and unravel the music is something you will also likely spot from the word go.

Holography

Now we get to many people’s favourite architectural property. Hemingway cables are very dimensional. Your system will likely feel like its been stretched out more in all three axis, widened and deepened with greater space and cleaner more natural air between everything, and better precision and focus to the location of everything. As we know, imaging is important for a sense of realism and Hemingway score top marks here. The impression is that whilst the music is more precise and disciplined, it also has greater spatial freedom and has in another sense been let loose and allowed to flourish.

Timbre and texture

Another property that potently contributes to a feeling of realism is the texture and harmonics of notes and instruments. Hemingway cables do something magical here too. If a regular cable presents a perfect round orange hanging from a tree, Hemingway removes the peel and ripens the orange just to the raw juicy flesh. Your favourite instruments sound like they have been progressively cleaned and purified, a top layer that was unnecessary has been removed leaving so much more of the instrument’s actual sound. The deep warm harmonic vibrations of the double bass, the wavering emotional vulnerability of the vocalists fragile ballad, the soft granular saxophone rift that floats into the air and decays to a faint vapour. This is music, this is emotion, and Hemingway somehow crystallises it in a more concentrated, more precious and more enriched form.

How can you easily summarise the net effect of all these properties put together ? Simpler, more coherent, more melodious, more musical, easier to follow, more real, more stable, more sophisticated and perhaps most important, more vivid and alive. Music through Hemingway is full of life and energy.

It is also important to understand that Hemingway also bring about great uplifts in overall resolution and transparency which is effectively the basics of what any cable should do. Match them with Tara Labs or Tidal cables pound for pound and ignoring the presentational aspects above, they are as high performing in terms of how much of the music they are revealing. That in itself is high praise indeed and it means that even if they didn’t perform all the magical things they do, they would still probably represent a meaningful performance upgrade over your existing cables or indeed a rival cable costing similar money.

As you would expect, when you go through the range from Indigo to Signature then the four Z-core lines, you essentially reveal more and more of the source, more of the music, and all the properties above become greater and greater, calmness to 3d, better order and timing etc.

As I alluded to before, Hemingway is built with an inherent technology which is doing something more than just being a very good uber-transparent piece of wire. We first realised this when we tried a set of £5900 signature speaker cables in very modest system costing only £9000. Conventional wisdom would always suggest that this is an unbalanced apportioning of budget and cables that open would likely reveal too many system weaknesses. Well the customer who tried this experiment was completely shocked at what happened. The Signatures seemed to actually upgrade the whole system somehow and we surmised that there must be a cleaning effect taking place through the entire signal chain from the electronic boxes to the speaker crossovers. When we quizzed Hemingway themselves on this they were very pleased that we’d spotted it and confirmed our suspicions, adding that when you remove Hemingway cables from a system and fit something else, this noise lowering effect actually stays in the system for another 30—60 seconds and its possible to actually hear it drain way.

Similarly, we have now had customer reports from home demos that when you audition a Hemingway loom sequentially, that is when you run the speaker cables first and then add in say an XLR interconnect as second stage, the sound quality cumulatively multiplies with each track you play. The system gets better and better as you play music because there is a synergy effect from using two or more wires which builds up over time. This is something that is actually audible and again, it points to there being a technology in place which needs a period of time to fully extrapolate out into the entire system. It also tells us that using a full Hemingway loom provides a very powerful extra benefit over just the cumulative upgrade of the wires themselves.

The brand alliance between Hemingway and Thrax is well known. If you read through my seven sonic traits above you probably already have a good starter description of how Thrax sounds; alive, defined, bold and projected holographically into the room. So it is no wonder that the two go together so well. It’s a very natural pairing and interestingly when you go from a decent other cable to a Hemingway cable on a Thrax system you experience that same change described above but it is arguably more subtle than with other brands of electronics simply because almost any Thrax system already presents in the Hemingway style, without the cable even being present. Fit them together though and you simply benefit from more of everything and you can feel everything working with the same common purpose and in the same philosophical direction. It is a very natural and powerful fit where all the planets are very much aligned the same way. The Thrax speakers in particular – Sirens and Lyra – sound incredible when fed with Z-core.

Hemingway with Vitus was something that I wasn’t prepared for and certainly wasn’t expecting. I first noticed it on a Vitus RI-101mk2 versus Thrax Enyo integrated amplifier shootout. The is a comparison I know well and a common customer AB demo. The Enyo in many setups, particularly when using the built in DAC modules and conforming to a lower overall system budget, is a really difficult opponent and has many trump cards up its sleeve. Even against the Signature level Vitus SIA-025 it can unleash some devastating blows. As a valve design it is supremely spacious and holographic and the timbre and tonality of instruments has that sweetness and tonal charm that only a valve amplifier can fully realise. But on this particular customer demo we had the Hemingway Z-core Alpha cables fitted and let me tell you that the RI-101 sounded definite, focused, ripened and just more alive and compelling than I had ever experienced it before. On that day the tables were turned and it was giving the Enyo a very hard time.

Since that day we have done quite a few more experiments and already clocked up a surprising number of Hemingway sales to all sorts of real life Vitus customers. The best way to summarise is to say that some of the 7 traits you read above are by chance, areas in which the Vitus is less than excellent. The Vitus presentation has changed a little the last 10 years but as a general rule the house sound is characterised by a smooth and elegant treble, a refined sound that has good dynamic range but is often – depending on system – a shade more laid back than it is forceful or aggressive. Vitus typically sounds best when it is fully warmed up and stillpointed to squeeze out every last degree of energy, dynamic range and vigour from its performance.

So the increased focus, projection, pronunciation, the strong outline and surefooted confidence to the music, these are all things which take Vitus to a new level. I have found that they are all upgrades that are more than welcome whether it be RI-101, SIA-025 or SIA-030. The Danish equipment laps it up and produces a new level of engagement and music satisfaction for the listener. The other properties like ripened harmonics, imaging etc, areas in which the Vitus is already superb, these strengths only get better again. Vitus with Hemingway sounds alive, up on its toes, more real, dynamic and extrovert in way which you really must experience if you are serious about advancing your system.

It’s my belief that Hemingway can also be used to fix certain systems. Following on from all of the above, it is fairly obvious that any system that is a bit vague, doesn’t time especially well, is perhaps a little flat or too laid back, lacks definition and shape or is maybe flat dimensionally or murky in its structural definition, any system like this is going to alter markedly and be improved in one or more of these weak areas. There will be more reporting on this as we progress with the brand but there is already some good evidence to this effect.

Established wisdom tells us that speaker cables should be paired with the speaker so although we have looked into pairings with electronics, what have we found so far in regard to speakers ? My feeling at this point is that any really good speaker that is linear and neutral will enjoy Hemingways high resolving powers, neutrality and naturalness. Certainly, the Thrax speakers sound amazing with them as do Avalons, which have focus, 3d, space and tonal colour as hallmarks. Hemingway Rockport was also an equally happy marriage, Rockport being another brand which holds image stability, super black backgrounds and the rendition of real and very well developed harmonics as core philosophies.

Perhaps the mismatches will be with speakers that have already tried to manipulate the sound and in doing so, have imbued them with a more false representation of the music, all in the name of greater involvement or infectiousness. Maybe speakers with lots of added aggression, added detail with an overly incisive tweeter, or clinical sounding speakers that have a starkness or skeletal like quality. The less “hifi” and more natural the speaker, the better the Hemingway will probably syncopate.

In summary, I would like once again to underline just how important the addition of Hemingway is to Lotus. This is not just a premier line of cabling that occupies the very top table, but one that can powerfully clean and upgrade a system in a manner that no other product of its type that we know of can achieve. If you have a system with weaknesses, Hemingway can at the very least begin to overturn and cure those weaknesses. If you have a system which is already stellar, then prepare for it to go stratospheric.