What a reviewer hears with cables might not at all gel with what a reader might hear with the same cables. If you agree with that basic premise, you'd equally cop to the "why bother" attitude that many snake-phobic reviewers have carefully cultivated to escape the dross of such assignments. Naturally, no woman no cry, no cable no sound. Cables are essential. To shun them in the pages of hifi magazines defeats a few purposes.

On the flippant side, little in hifi requires less knowledge and skill than whipping together a cable. If you don't own a soldering iron, plenty of Sino OEMs will make whatever you can dream up for pennies on your eventual retail dollar. Astronomical pricing. Baronial Münchhausen claims. Pseudo science. Plain gobblygook. Material fanaticism. The lot. What cables to write about and how to pick 'em involves far more voodoo—instinct and sympathies—than the sort of hard facts which help with CD players, speakers or amps. With Franck Tchang's LiveLine wires and Teo Audio's Liquid Cable, there was true novelty to sign me up. With other cable review solicitations arriving as predictably as monthly utility bills, there's often little more than thinly disguised we-need-publicity-to-survive hand wringing. Many a good story falls apart upon closer scrutiny. Or prices are horrendous, diameters unmanageable. Yet others pursue difference for no apparent reason other than to be different. Naturally, my voodoo selection process is far from infallible. I bet horses and kingdoms that I overlook cables of exceptional merit for all the wrong reasons. C'est la vie. Competing publications and their many writers even out the scales.



Enter Entreq. Per-Olof's common-sense approach and a focus on natural "müsli-man" ingredients appealed to my sensibilities. With cables, I've come to believe that solid core beats strands; thin trumps thick both on conductors and contacts; silk, rice paper and cotton dielectrics outdo plastics; and so forth. Personal encounters with Bernard Salabert of PHY-HP, Samuel Furon of Ocellia, Lloyd Walker of Walker Audio, Franck Tchang of ASI and similar individuals informed this bias. Ditto unrelated preferences for wool carpets over synthetics, life fruit to syrup-doused cadavers, plain cuisine to French sauces and simplicity to complications - er, complexity in all facets of life.



Peruse Entreq's website to appreciate the tie-in and take note of their 6-week home trial allowance (ship fees back to Åstorp/Sweden the only return obligation). You'll come across the environmentally friendly angle; proprietary silver/copper connectors (on speaker cables, hot in silver, return in copper); externally separated leads; cotton sleeves; 45-year cured Beechwood; flax; an external earth drain system; AC wraps encasing copper-based sand and metal inside leather to minimize magnetic fields and damp physical resonance when wrapped around a cable; shotgun power cords; component footers; and equipment racks. Also, Entreq manufactures in Sweden and does not turn Belden or Neotech wire into home-grown stuff for a fat surcharge.