This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below |
 |
 |
Also its treble was more vivid. It seems how a given system presents vocals will inform the basic choice between these two cables. If the system is a little warm but not faded, the GigaWatt will be ideal whereas the Acrolink would be too lightweight and as such not maximize all the system’s sonic assets. Where speed is required and the midrange already as it should be to require no added vigour, I would look elsewhere and perhaps in the direction of the Acrolink. In favor of the Polish cable meanwhile is its relatively low price when factoring imported competitors and a truly exceptional deep sound. It will allow you to melt into the armchair and listen to disc after disc with curiosity about the next discovery. You’ll never feel bored.
|
 |
Simultaneously this isn’t a lit-up hard sound, which initially could be mistaken as dynamic and open. When used with the PC-2 EVO conditioner, this cable becomes a true revolution. True, the price doubles too but listen to this combination before you cry wolf. The pairing is unbelievably saturated and vibrant. It reaches deeply into the emotions of micro events to make us believe we’re partaking in a live experience. Obviously that’s an illusion as we’re listening to mere recordings but suspending disbelief is the relevant thing. There still remains a gap to the four-times dearer Acrolink PC9300 but this difference is not grave enough to kill for (or to have your wife kill herself in despair over your expensive hobby). The PC-2 EVO + LS-1 is something extraordinary and absolutely surprising at its price.
|
|
|
Description: GigaWatt conditioners are built exceptionally well with very solid enclosures and a very thick aluminum front panel in whose center sits a smoked acrylic plate hiding a blue LED behind it. On the back we get six GigaWatt sockets in three duplexes. This 3 x 2 arrangement is reflected internally where each pair gets its own filtering block. The analog and digital duplex has two preceding circuits and there’s a big input filter behind the power inlet.
Most GigaWatt devices including the PC-2 EVO use a system of massive power distribution bars made from thick copper billets 30mm² per bar. Using separate bars for each duplex allows for stable power delivery regardless of load. These copper bars are proprietary GigaWatt designs whose manufacture is very expensive due to the 99.99% cathode Cu-OF and Cu-ETP coppers employed, the latter metallurgically refined copper with high conductance. The copper bars are enamelled and annealed to increase density, conductance, plasticity and resistance to corrosion. The mechanical tooling process involved avoids heat emissions which could oxidize the copper and negatively influence its material quality. In the flagship GigaWatt PC-4 and Special Edition limited series, these distribution bars are additionally silver plated.
|
 |
Even the conductors in GigaWatt power strips and conditioners are not off-the-shelf items but manufactured to spec and designed in Poland. The conductors in the LS-1 differ in cross section, amount of wires in the conductor and dielectric (FEP Teflon rather than PTFE). The purity of the copper expressed as nines after the comma has no influence because that’s nothing more but a cheap marketing trick. For curious readers, GigaWatt uses 6N copper and 12-micron silver. Most cable manufacturers use stock spool wire at for example 10zl/meter, put on readily available plugs and sell them for 5000-7000zl. GigaWatt makes all their cables from scratch including the plugs. For small enthusiast’s companies that’s their passion and game. They always calculate an initial loss when investing in new products. In larger more commercially oriented companies this cannot happen. That’s why the LS-1 costs what it does whilst being a real sonic value.
|
|
|
It is somewhat revolutionary to see a new lossless passive filter on this cable. As perhaps the first in the world to do so, the LS-1 runs a nano-crystal alloy filter mounted at a special juncture identified by measurements directly atop the cable to add another noise barrier (the first is the conductor geometry which limits self inductance while maintaining an advantageous high capacitance).
This filter reduces broad-band noise and damps output oscillations. To damp power delivery EMI, different filters rely on different magnetic materials. The effectiveness of such filters is influenced by circuit inductance, magnetic permeability and size of the magnetic material. During the times of PAL (the predecessor of GigaWatt) the company used ferrite filters which it now regards as an outdated unreliable material with large losses that does not fare well with all applications (amplifier and CD players) and impacts the sound in negative ways.
|
 |
GigaWatt’s modern nano-crystal alloy is devoid of these flaws. This amorphous cobalt/iron alloy is manufactured under rapid cooling during which it forms into a very thin ribbon whose micro-crystalline structure sports grains of typically 10 nanometers to show less than a few dozen thousand atoms where comparable 7-8 micrometer ferrite grains are made up of billions of atoms.
The magnetic softness of a nano-crystal ferromagnetic increases with the reduction of its crystalline size to change the physical properties of the material. The nanometric size creates unique magnetic properties of large permeability, minimal loss, a small coercion intensity value and almost zero magnetostriction to allow for a miniaturization of the magnetic circuit. The only flaw associated with this alloy is its high cost. This nano-crystal alloy is also used in the filters of GigaWatt’s PC-4 and PC-3 SE conditioners. |
opinia @ highfidelity.pl
|
|
|
 |
