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The hybrid version of the industry-reference Bullet Plug RCA connector is particularly interesting. Not only is the return pure silver but it makes a single-point contact with the female socket, creating a star ground. With Quiessence speaker cables copper bayonet plugs (banana connectors) or copper spades are used for the signal conductor and silver bayonet plugs or spades for the returns.


Was Keith Eichmann involved in the design of the Quiessence Reference line?

Yes, Keith Eichmann designed the Quiessence line of interconnects and speaker cables and was directly involved in their manufacture.


Seeing that both Keith and co-founder/engineer Rob Woodland have since departed the company, who will be taking up the role of product designer?


We will in the future be working with a number of collaborators to further product development and design new products. We have a big focus on product evolution for existing products. With so many users, distributors and partners all converging on the forums, we are collecting reviews, suggestions and customer thoughts to help better the product.

Quietly quiescent. I ran the Quiessence ICs from the AMR CD-77.1’s outputs to both the Supratek Sauvignon and NuForce P20 preamps and later into a recently picked-up Musical Fidelity kW500 monster 2-box integrated which has fortuitously matched with the Wilson Sasha to actually sound superb. The ETI speaker cables ran from either the Cymer SE-35 or NuForce Reference 18 monos or the MuFi.


Firing up my usual test discs (and more recently AIFF rips via BitPerfect) showed these ETI cables to present a very black background against which music emerged with ease, clarity and flow. There may be something to this ‘ground nulling circuitry’ biz. My cable collection seems to constantly proliferate so there were plenty of contenders for comparison purposes. The ETI cables shone for their utter transparency and strict neutrality. There were no embellishments nor imbalances that would reveal or expose certain frequency anomalies. Music just flowed unimpeded, unedited and unsoiled. This of course is exactly what a cable must do but ghee if that doesn’t make the reviewing process difficult... what does one talk about? Should you have a component with a slightly tipped-up treble or a somewhat less than fully controlled bass register, the Quiessence cables will not give you an out. Truthful messengers they most certainly are. This of course was compounded by the magnifying glass that is the Wilson Sasha.

The transparency on offer had a number of derivative qualities that, provided the rest of the electronics chain is up to it, allowed the communication of instrumental textures and musical nuance. For example Ani Di Franco’s subtle (and sometimes not so much) guitar strumming and picking revealed the kind of astonishing micro detail and transient attack the ETI cables revel in. The ETI conduit is free-flowingly clear and unrestricted by any form of what I’d call smearing or signal alteration. In "Crime for Crime", perhaps the standout track (although the whole album is outstanding) of Di Franco’s Not a Pretty Girl, the drum whacks towards the middle of the song simply jumped out of the mix in startling fashion. If your system can do dynamics, be prepared. The ETIs will translate properly - and here the staggering power and headroom of the kW500 certainly played a strong supporting role.