Van den Hul has been talking about this cable for almost a year now. We saw a sample at CES, but were finally able to listen to The Orchid this weekend when our 1m rca's arrived. Van den Hul has hit a sonic and visual homerun with their latest creation. Quite possibly the best sounding interconnect they've produced yet. It is extremely open up top, it has great bass that boogies and a very full sounding midrange. Compared to the Atlas Navigator All Cu, The Orchid has a more realistic sound that brings you closer to the music. Dale and I listened to music Saturday night til dawn on the Sonneteer Byron cdp and Orton Integrated amp (30 wpc solid state). Speakers were the Neat Petite mk. III stand mounts (6" driver/ribbon tweeter) with Van den Hul's The Breeze (tweeters) and Harmonix CS-120 (drivers) for speaker cables. The Orchid was stunning all night long, no matter what we played.
The Navigator All Cu is an awesome interconnect,
edit: but The Orchid is better. For now, I'd like to retract that statement and go with "different". I think it's too early to tell if one is clearly better than the other. I'll be commenting on specific traits after we spend some more time with the interconnect. It's going to require more listening and cable swaps to see a clear picture. The Navigator All Cu and The Orchid are both really good. Sorry for jumping the gun on that claim. (end edit) The Orchid has the size, weight and convenience of an active cable with the sonic benefits traditioinally only gained with 7mm-8mm heavy duty audiophile cables (
edited for grammer 5.13.06). Do we sound excited. We are.
Prices:
$225 (.6m set) / $440 (1m set) / $1420 (3m set) / $1890 (4m set)
edit: those are msrp's...We'll be able to show a little Eugene Hi-Fi love on those prices.We ordered a 4m and .6m demo set today. I think the 3m sets should be seriously considered at these prices. My 4m mic cables almost always have extra cable coiled up at the bottom of the stand. If your stand doesn't go above 8 ft., a 3m set will get the job done.
If all goes well, the inaugural run with these cables will be for Wilco in Calgary on 6/28 (GA) and Edmonton on 6/29 (lower balcony, center). Our goal is to make it back to Eugene for Widespread Panic on July 11th where we'll be doing a direct comparison (1st set/2nd set) with the Navigator All Cu cables.
Technical information on The Orchid can be found here:
http://www.vandenhul.nl/cable/orchid.htm It's conductor is Matched Crystal OFC with a very dense and pure silver coating, insulated with Van den Hul's patented Linear Structured Carbon. The solid core conductor also employs a PTFE (Teflon) dialectric.
We had the opportunity to meet A.J. Van den Hul (founder) at CES this year. It turns out he is a field recording hobbiest as well. We spoke for 15 minutes or so about field recording experiences and techniques. The all-carbon xlr, The Second, has been his favorite microphone cable up to this point. However, it was clear that their attention and excitement was focused on The Orchid, repeatedly mentioning how great the dynamics are and how versatile it is with regards to various applications. Below is a rundown of A.J.'s recording rig.
~crackpot
A.J. Van den Hul's recording rig:
1. The microphones used were B&K type 4190 with B&K amplifiers type 2669. Special custom designed acoustic couplers were used. We applied the lowest number of microphones possible; in many recordings not more than four. All microphone powering was done by external batteries.
2. For all analog and digital signal routing we used our well-proven Linear Structured Carbon ® cable The SECOND ®. Over 200 meters were used for all analog and digital connections.
3. The mains was filtered and stabilized at exactly 220 Volt 50 Hz. Each mains cable again had its own filter.
4. The mixing console used is custom built and contains broadband opamps.
5. The decision was made to work exclusively at 96 kHz samplerate with 24 bit resolution (DVD standard). Recording was done on two Nagra-D recorders.
6. The AD conversion for the Nagra-D recorders was performed by the dCS 904 converter. For the Sony 2500 backup DAT recorder we used a strongly upgraded dCS 900 AD converter.
7. The conversion from 96 kHz 24 bit DVD to 44.1 kHz 16 bit CD-standard was done with the dCS 972 digital to digital converter.
8. Monitoring was done using the dCS Elgar DA converter. We furthermore used the Sony MDR-CD3000 headphones and the Tannoy 800 A active.
9. All mains plug polarities were optimized using our POLARITY CHECKER to minimize ground leakage currents.
10. Each piece of music is an original recording without cuts or editing.
The aim of all these technical exercises was to sonically come as close as possible to what I recall as the best of analog. A kind of sound common around the mid-seventies without rumble or noise and with higher dynamics and strong spatial impressions. The digital to digital conversion from 96 kHz 24 bit DVD to 44.1 kHz 16 bit CD-standard using the dCS 972 allowed us to retain a lot of the original sound quality that was available during the very lively recording sessions.
Topic: Van den Hul introduces 2.9 mm balanced cable -"The Orchid" (Tunnel Technology) (Read 17180 times)