Unlike power cords which have securely arrived at being considered major components rather than accessories -- thus opening the flood gates to unique advances in design and pricing alike -- headphone replacement cables are still a far more obscure sub-category for obvious reasons: Headphone users are disproportionately (mis)represented by the audio press. Wes Phillips is one of the lone mainstream stalwarts who has and continues to hold high the banner of headphone use and writes about all of its associated components. Though there surely are far more just to prove my obscure point, firms I'm personally aware of that offer headphone replacement wire harnesses are Stefan AudioArt, Cardas, Moon Audio and Clou Cable. When you consider the reference ambitions of the HD600 and K-1000 'phones (the former already upgraded once again to now 650 status), it is a little shocking how little regard their designers accorded the 'attached' importance of high-quality optimized cable connections. Doesn't 'reference' mean comprehensive attention to all of the persnickety details? How insignificant a detail is wiring on a headphone? Get it?


Because of the substantial improvements both the Cardas and Stefan Audio Art replacement harnesses under evaluation made over the stocker, it seems that the engineers at Sennheiser and AKG need to go back to the drawing board and play ketchup with a really big bottle of the red stuff. With that stone cast, I must add in fairness that the Sennheiser's miniature prong interface allows ready removal of the stock wiring. This at least telegraphs factory awareness that owners might want to experiment with cable upgrades. It also enables after-market providers to patch right into this scene and rip out the original wiring lock stock and barrel. The AGK's leads are permanent affairs altogether. To replace them would require a pretty delicate operation outside the ken of most owners to mandate shipping your precious cans to a modifier of your choice. After-market hotrodders like ex-Sennheiser engineer James Serdechny of Stefan AudioArt and George Cardas this far have remained content to merely replacing the AKG tail beyond the Neutrik interface. This leaves the original wiring upwards of this plug in place. The addition of an aftermarket cable now mimics the mixing of red and white wine, the desired 'rosé' a function of percentile dominance of wanted traits masking unwanted one. Make no mistake, it works as advertised - but it still makes you wonder how much better the K-1000s might sound if one could conveniently consign all of its stock wiring to the trash heap where it seems to belong.

Back to the HD600s. Both George and James abandon Sennheiser's stock mini-into-1/4" plug in favor of a dedicated big plug which should eliminate contact losses associated with electrons 'jumping' across a now redundant barrier. At least such reasoning garners points in the black book of audiophile obsessions. Onward ho now to the listening impressions.


Stock vs. replacement harnesses on HD600
What to pick from the overgrazed clichés of audiophile similes? The photographer's lens locking into stronger focus? Cardboard cutouts assuming three-dimensional depth? Enhanced visibility into the edges and corners of the soundfield? All of these would be true. An image I like comes from Scottish mythology which is filled with heroic exploits of violent battles that often took strategic advantage of the green isle's legendary fogs. Armies of pumped-up Scots would advance on the enemy cloaked in the invisibility of thick mists. Imagine the effects of the replacement harness akin to being a bloody Englischer dreaming of marauding the remote highlands. You're suddenly faced with a blue-painted warrior who emerges stealth-like from out of the dreary fog. Within a few deadly moments, he transform from bare ghostlike grey-tone outlines into a full-color sword-yielding threat. Your ass is grass. Sayonara.


Naturally and just because it's fun, I've painted this example with rather bold colors to convey the general gist in no uncertain terms. The perceptible gains in clarity did invite visions of receding fog or perhaps the kind or archeological work that uses fine brushes to remove sand and soil from critical finds. Those discoveries congeal from mere outlines to more and more detailed likeness as the historians remove finer and finer layers of remaining grit and gunk. Put differently, this enhanced transparency or ability to reveal smaller details pushed the raise-the-curtains threshold downwards. Fullness or the impression of hearing everything occurred earlier and at lower levels so that swapping from stock to upgrade wiring seemed not unlike turning up the volume control by a few clicks. Things didn't really get louder but the sensation of hearing more and deeper into the musical fabric surely seemed like it. Together with this sense of things arriving rather than being postponed, top-to-bottom coherence and overall smoothness were much improved. With these generalities out of the way, let's hone in on the differences between the Cardas and Stefan AudioArt. The former is sold by DIYCable as well as Tyll Hertsen's HeadRoom, the latter direct.
Cardas vs. Stefan Audio Art on HD600
The Cardas didn't quite have the same kind of lateral soundfield spread as the Stefan cable which also conveyed a heightened sense of audible space around solo vocals. This kind of spaciousness -- like before in the amp comparisons -- introduced a fine degree of softness which the Cardas countered on the flip side with slightly more emphasized definition, moving the performers a few rows closer (Cardas) or farther away (Stefan). No actual moving took place, merely a subliminal sense thereof. Picking a winner in this department proved futile since there is no one correct perspective, merely preferences of degrees in how ambient and direct sound fields intermix. While my ultimate preference came down on the Stefan Audio Art side, you could side with the Cardas - and we'd both be right e.g. satisfied listeners. On the Peruvian harp on Lila Downs' La Linea rendition of "La Llorona", the Cardas was a bit sharper and metallic coming off the strings while the Stefan caressed her unique voice with even more smoothness. We're talking flowing gradations of differences here, nothing at all super-definitive.

It bears stressing that by completely eliminating room interactions and the various consequences on soundstaging and colorations which play out on speaker stage, headphone listening minimizes most of these artefacts to a very large extent. When it comes to experimenting with cable changes, contributions concentrate on tonal (timbre, leading edge and decay) and balance effects (relative distribution of bass, midrange and treble bands) as well as the overall perception of transparency and detail retrieval. The performance delta between stock wiring and aftermarket upgrades was easy to ascertain. The delta separating -- or more accurately, distinguishing -- these two replacement cables was far more elusive and exhausting.
In the end, I kept coming back to the Stefan Audio Art for a peculiar something I had a really hard time quantifying. Extending the soundfield farther outwards as though moving my ears further apart to increase the possible space between them for a larger stage (my wife reminds me that my head is big enough as it is) was certainly one of the clearer factors for the illusion of a slightly bigger sound. What seemed like a gentle polishing of surface textures also was a contributor for my preference but overall, I confess to being more vague about this that I'd like to be. It would require a better listener or one with more time on his or her hands to be more specific which, in the final analysis, merely means that I couldn't with any confidence declare one cable better than the other except when compared to the dead stocker.


Should it matter, the black sleeve of the Stefan AudioArt Equinox cable makes for a more fashionable statement on the black headphones than the sky-blue covering of the Cardas. But when reviewers default to cable dress codes, you can pretty much conclude that they're grasping for straws to say anything of real substance. The Stefan Equinox cable is $189 for a 9' length, the Cardas $150.


Unlike the unattractively stiff Clou cable, both of today's contenders are very flexible to drape naturally under your chin out-of-sight, out-of-mind. They're both mandatory choices for Sennheiser HD580/600/650 owners who take their cans more serious than using the provided mini plug of the stock cable. Their very close pricing means that the only thing that should matter to you in the end is personal sonic preference. Hence, you come out a winner no matter what.


Cardas vs. Stefan Audio Art on K-1000
Having consigned the stock tail of my reference 'phones to the trash in a fit of Teutonic disdain right after upgrading to the Stefan AudioArt replacement a year ago, I can't report on direct A/Bs against it now except to say that I purchased James' replacement because it went a long ways towards re-integrating the skewed HF balance of the stock cans while otherwise slaughtering the original wire in all the ways already described in the HD600 cable section. I'm customarily feeding my K-1000s from the speaker outputs of an unmodified Unison Research Unico 80-watter. James had now sent a review loaner to plug into Chazz's 4-pin socket instead of being terminated with spades.


Perhaps because I'm so intimately attuned to the Austrian cans, this cable comparison was far easier. The Cardas had distinctly more pronounced HF presence which is really not what these phones require when you're envisioning a perfectly complimentary cable design that's deliberately crafted to revoice the headphones attached to it. The Cardas, to a more subdued extent, also exhibited less weight in the bottom end, another area in which the AKGs could use a little help, this time of the additive rather than subtractive nature as in the treble. While I certainly couldn't fault the Cardas in the transparency or detail categories, I was soon left with the impression that, compared to the stock tail, it perhaps was designed as a better cable per se rather than as meticulously tweaked mirror image to a specific headphone design which suffers very specific voicing weaknesses.


From their respective stock perspectives, the Sennheisers are a far more balanced design than the AKGs. The latter have peculiar strengths not shared by any other headphone in my experience. Those attracted to their specific virtues will favor them over all others while also admitting to the need of putting in some work to identify just the right amplifier that can even drive them properly to begin with, never mind a copasetic cable that minimizes or eliminates their remaining weaknesses. It's apparent to me that the Stefan AudioArt cable designer must share my liability assessment of the K-1000s. Unlike the resolution-tweaked Cardas cable, he deliberately voiced his wire to compensate rather than exaggerate. And while I'm certain that you wouldn't call the Cardas treble exaggerated when comparing it to the stock cable, it does seem so when compared to the AudioArt which hence becomes the unequivocal winner and the only one I can recommend without reservations.

Riding into the sunset
Like most reviewers who sooner or later become inured to real-world pricing, I can readily admit how easy it is to fall in love with expertly executed expensive designs. I can also admit that despite strong efforts to the contrary, I've gotten inured myself. Just look at my system. That said, I'm at least aware that this deranged process is compromising my working-class existence. I thus get truly excited whenever I discover affordable products that ring my jaded bell and, as with the just-reviewed Gallo Reference IIIs, even make me want to part with my own heavily guarded money. After all, if I can't pay rent on my modest digs, I'm out of business, period, never mind superior sound.


From the DeVore Fidelity Gibbon 8 and Odyssey Audio Lorelei speakers to the Eastern Electric and Audio Zone electronics, from the Bel Canto Design DAC-2 to the Stereovox digital interconnect, to identify equipment that doesn't make sonic excuses nor demands clever monetary justifications becomes one of the highlights of what I do. The DIYCable Chazz headphone amplifier now joins this elite cadre of stimulating discoveries. Using the Sennheiser HD600s as widely known examples of affordable yet truly accomplished regular dynamic headphones, Chazz with the Valve Art EL34s in ultralinear mode is a recommendation of the highest order.


While I'm not quite as convinced that it is the perfect or final mate for the AKG K-1000s, those cans are so obscure and rare by comparison as to not really matter much when considering headphone listeners at large. Add good looks; solid construction; the DIY vs assembled avenues of approach; the upgrade or tweak kits available through Kevin Haskins; the truly endless tube rolling options; and the fact that Chazz didn't burp once during its stay, didn't make any untoward noises nor displayed any other questionable habits. What we have hear then is a highly flexible machine that's within reach not just for financially liberated 'philes and backed up by a gentleman who is truly on a crusade to make good sound as affordable as possible.


So impressed was I indeed with today's results of this more-for-less approach that I've already committed to taking a serious listen to Kevin's Exodus Audio digital amplifier. It is based on the LC Audio modules from right across the street of Acoustic Reality's Peter Thompson in Denmark. It too is priced very aggressively and offers solder slingers an opportunity to save money and get hands-on involved. Back to Chazz and all that Jazz : If there's pizzazz in a model designation, Chazz has proven that he deserves his funky name. He's looking forward to making your acquaintance. If I owned Sennheisers or Grados, I'd keep him myself...
DIYCable website
Cardas Audio website
Stefan AudioArt website
Designer/supplier's website