The whole Ansuz lot replaced my daily tools shortly after its arrival and was left alone for several weeks to allow for the accommodation phase to complete which meant no critical comparisons. Then the Corona pandemic lock-down made quite the dent in my schedule and effectively kept me away from the off-site listening room. To finally start somewhere after a month of enforced domesticity, a LessLoss C-MARC replaced the Mainz A2 cord on my DAC which I know to be very susceptible to tweaks, especially those related to power. The clear shift that followed was somewhat expected but made me smile nonetheless.
In October 2019 I'd left the Aalborg facility with several clear takeaways. The importance of noise rejection was one. The Danish team couldn't stress enough how crucial and foundational this aspect is to pretty much anything they tackle. It's one thing to hear its effect on the silence in an unknown environment, quite another to replicate, witness and experience it in one's own playground. This particularly haunting background darkness was the common ground between C-MARC and Mainz A2 and the reason for my smile. Each cord removed excess grain from the musical backdrop and made outlines less artificial, more relaxed and tangible. Each decreased shoutiness on sub-par repertoire, boosted textural complexity, softened the treble and made the overall sound weightier. Each tightened bass and reduced in-room wobble. Each made music more natural and flowing; less digital, processed and frosty. Each extracted tiny dust particles suspended in the air and neither demanded anything for its thorough cleaning action. Both were very potent noise killers and I couldn't tell which one scored more highly on this count. But despite their universally silent likeness, they were still different.
The more cost-effective LessLoss shows a connected component's flavor unaltered with no second guesses. It's why I've kept using two of these ever since their arrival. Now Ansuz pushed the envelope even more which I credited to their heftier price. All things considered, the leading disparity between Mainz A2 and C-MARC narrowed down to audibility delta. The Ansuz footprint was more present and further distinctions emerged after several more swaps. The Lithuanian cords staged smaller, the Danes were spatially mightier and more direct. Their images were closer and taller without falling into the overblown trap. It's safe to say that my application just before the DAC was to quite an extent comparable to adding about an inch to the W11 SE+'s woofer diameter, stiffening its surround and using an amp with higher damping factor. These changes made the A2 more visceral and energetic, especially with rocking music at high SPL. Although agile, the Ansuz was no spicier than it should have been. Inherently very silent, on demand it delivered gentle female vocals neither chiseled nor dry but pleasantly round, explicit and soft. Calm celli or acoustic guitar plucks were pleasantly long, vibrant, soft and sensual. Overexposure, treble fatigue, juvenile zeal and even hints of textural dryness were off the table. This versatility and lack of obvious weaknesses still separates very good products from first class specimens. The A2 shaped up to be first class.
Although both C-MARC and Mainz A2 shared the same back bone, the LessLoss was more grounded, calm and somewhat distant, the Ansuz sunnier, bigger, quicker and more open. My usual repertoire to map eagerness contains tracks by Acid, Luca Stricagnoli, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Battles and more. With such fare the Danish power cords behaved as though they moved more air, slammed harder and delivered quicker bass jabs to secure extra points on propulsion, immediacy and momentum. These qualities naturally enhanced the excitement of already snappy invigorating tracks. To make it perfectly clear, I'm far from labeling the C-MARC cord dull, slow or unclear. It's anything but. Still, the A2 unlocked the view on a realm beyond my daily cords. It incorporated all of the C-MARC's key features then added adrenaline and directness.
