Nearfield central. Wanna hear it all with minimal effort? Nearfield needn't mean desktop. With cubits of space behind and to the sides of these Cobra monitors, you just know from looking at a photo that here they'll soundstage like maloiks. This inverted orientation obviously exposes a system's backside. Hence the small screen. For a look-see at the business end…

… here's the unvarnished truth. With six passive radiators per side good for ~25Hz, it's clear that the sub wasn't active. It augments my sound|kaos Vox3a alternates.

Screen back on, here's the full-frontal view. It's a very simple system: FiiO R7 as SD-card coax-out transport ⇒ COS D1 DAC/pre ⇒ Kinki EX-M7 stereo amp all on a Furutech passive power distributor, with an iFi PSU on the transport in lieu of its internal SMPS.

Full-figured and muscular. Dynamically greased and dimensionally generous. My ears call that the foursquare sonic gospel of Grzegorz at his own brand. It's most fully encoded in his speakers. Needing no help on incarnation factor, wallop or LF mastery, I pair them with wide-bandwidth lit-up amplifiers. Those contribute low-Ω current flow, damping and ultra-low noise floor. Their absence of HF limits gets the most from Mundorf's airy dipole AMT. The Vermillion cables enhance the speakers' tuning. They push in the same direction, albeit to the narrower margin that's typical for their product type. In combination it's a bottom-up sound with a superb treble compliments of the pleated tweeters. Without standing forward, they prevent actual darkness and its bassiness shadow whose very term suggests something elephantine and disproportionate. Just so, a lower centre of gravity, colour saturation and willingness to whomp and welly all play centre stage. It makes the various Virtual values very physical. That sum total lives in a very different part of town than electrostats and ribbons. Instead think dynamic drivers of bodacious cone surface. Whatever visions that triggers in your mind… it's the direction of where Grzegorz's ideal sound lives. If your system currently goes to 5, a set of Vermillion power cords naturally won't push you to 11. That'd be magical thinking. For so big a change you must first change your speakers; and perhaps add a sub or two. But if those get you to 10, a Vermillion loom should certainly drive you all the way home. That's because these cords were designed by ear to follow the same code. If we had a clear sonic ideal then were happy to spend half a year listening to hundreds of cable and connector samples, we could do exactly the same thing. We could wrangle up our very own set of cables to push our system closer to our ideal sound. If we're too lazy, we do the next best thing. We audition ready-made cables to find our right set. It's where reviews like this one can help us populate a short list of candidates. Back to Grzegorz's taste, with Cube he and Marek majored on speed, resolution and point-source dimensionality. With Qualio they bolted on more body and bass whilst retaining as much of the Cube ethos as possible. With Virtual where Grzegorz is on his own, things get still chunkier and carry more mass. Three connected brands, three connected flavours. To this we add that he loves to listen loud; and adores bass down to 20Hz. If that suggests current demands, we appreciate why he opted for 7AWG.

5 x 2.5mm² = gauge 7 or 12.5mm² of conductor mass.