Gold not pyrite. Once in this life I've used pure gold interconnects. Their gestalt reminded me of amps whose entire voltage gain generates passively by step-up transformer. The sound was exceedingly relaxed; nearly limpid. All internal tension had fallen away. It nearly felt like animated suspension. I still remember how clearly this impressed itself on my ear/brain at the time; how for my tastes then it bled out too much air from the tyre of musical tension. The presentation had lost essential muscle tone which even during sleep maintains a base level of presence. With Vermillion interconnects, gold accounts for just one percent; even less in the hybrid speaker cable. I naturally wondered what if any of my long-ago gold impression would resurface. As it happened, versus my copper Furutech + silver Zu domestic loom, Vermillion XLR + Flame augmented what I associate as silver virtues—lucidity, transparency, directness, airiness, speed, taut bass, high separation—with a table spoon of diffusive/elastic softness. Given my long-ago gold experience, I naturally correlated that effect with Mundorf's micro dosing of gold. In kitchen terms I flashed on coating starch-rinsed arborio rice in a tablespoon of ghee before adding broth and various veg to bubble away on my Sage cooker's risotto setting. Without getting greasy like a classic risotto's parmesan/butter emulsion, it still changes the mouth feel of the rice kernels hence their texture. If that culinary flash didn't translate, perhaps Grzegorz's DSD512 resampling does? It parallels this 'gold' action. We could even call it subtle sweetening or temporal stretching. For me it stayed clear of dancing on the edge with fiery material. It undercut silver's potential to get splashy, brittle or dry as we prime the pump whilst, on say intense Flamenco, gipsy singers strain their high registers, guitar strings flare in flashy runs and dancers execute machine-gun heel attacks on resonant floor boards.

Six degrees of separation is a theory that everyone alive connects to anyone else in the world through friends, family or acquaintances via no more than five intermediaries. This notion is from the 1929 short story Chains by Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy. Against our planet's present estimated population of 8.2 billion, six is a very small number of connections to link up everyone to everyone else. But DNA research insists that all of us really trace back to one original couple. If we go far back enough in time, even our bodily interconnectedness is very intimate. This little detour into small numbers for big effects illustrates how in our Vermillion story too, a very small infusion of precious gold appears to have obvious pull. Back to my expectations entering this gig, most proved out. The unforeseen part was this subtle loosening or relaxing. Unfettered speed and pleasantness, incisiveness without recoil, impact without fatigue coexisted even at high SPL. Between sonic rawness and pleasantness, I rather err on the raw side if mellowness undermines music's charge and energy. I definitely dislike dark thick sound. I much prefer a bright-all-over presentation if it's not top-heavy in the treble but lit up across the full bandwidth. The Vermillion loom had those qualities plus a very practical let-go action which removed the idea of erring on my preferred side. Of course all of that was in the context of the chunky Viper monitors. For the bigger picture I had to take these temps on different speakers, too. Greg had unexpectedly included a 6m XLR as his personal mechanical assembly challenge. That lead could service both my main and upstairs systems plus the same speaker cables I'd already used on the desktop. Those locking WBT bananas were a real treat to use by the way. 

But first, more office gossip. Take L'Antidote by French/Lebanese pianist Rami Khalifé, Iranian percussionist Bijan Chemirani and Albanian cellist Redi Hasa for modern Middle-Eastern chamber music. Vermillion really peeled out the startle factor of the tombak's ripping edge cracks, its dazzling finger tattoos and the snaps/claps of assorted noise makers in a Persian hand drummer's arsenal. For more of a club vibe, stream up Mercan Dede's remix of the track "Na Na Na" with its Indian-style vocal percussion. It's a real mosh fest of transient electricity that generates endless rhythmic sparks. With the Polish cables in play, that peppery perspicacity popped. The gold effect didn't dilute it. Likewise for the glassy pucker of Jimmy Rosenberg's Manouche guitar and the slight nasality and occasional stridency of Stian Carstensen's blitzing accordion of Rose Room. If these were donut-spinning quad bikes, we'd see and smell acrid rubber tracks on our tarmac. That's how hell for leather these gents pull virtuoso privilege and burn down the house with twenty lightning-blessed fingers. It's not always pretty but certainly impossible technique. Try out the classic smoocher "Bei mir bist Du schön" to see what their spirited makeover means. My point isn't to promote senseless speed but to use challenging fare and observe whether anything frays at the seams.

I'm thrilled to report that Vermillion nailed racetrack stunts with bravado. Gold's minor viscosity injection didn't dumb anything down. No secret wish for new spark plugs. My inner immediacy idiot was tickled pink. How about this year's single "Ah bu sarkilarin gözü kör olsun" by my clarinet hero Hüsnü Senlendirici? Mindlessy redlined on the dynamic compression meter—not a good thing with massed Turkish strings—the recording quality is clearly questionable. But if this became a serious decider, much of our favourite tunes would end up on the reject pile, down the drain, deep sixed not mooned. My Vermillion micro loom shaved off just enough etch to make this harmless if only occasional fun rather than annoying faff. For something the exact opposite, give the title track of Haugtussa by Lynni Treekrem a spin. Vermillion showcased vast stage depth and super-locked image placement for that popular space-travelling attraction whereby our attention can go illuminated walkabout inside a many-layered playback performance. In my book these were classic silver virtues without the fattening fuzz of typical copper. To be sure, copper action could just be what your doctor ordered for your system or ear needs.

Having delayed the inevitable enough, it was time to relocate the red links into my upstairs system. But I did allow myself a final indulgence, a round of my all-time-favourite 'ambient/Berlin' album. That's 1985's Transfer Station Blue with Michael and Kevin Shrieve plus Klaus Schulze for a spacey affair of percussion, synths and electric guitar. Once again this loom excelled at percussive precision and power to maximize microdynamic flicker peaks. Whilst I packed up the leads, I appreciated the absence of all self-referential branding. If you bought these, you know exactly who from and what they are. There's no need for a bling aluminium barrel engraved with Virtual Hifi and Vermillion that's called a vibration damper to explain itself but merely adds weight, puffery and price. This Vermillion posse dresses simple but nice.

The "High-End Sound without High-End Nonsense" motto engraved on the backs of the Viper doesn't stop at the 3D-printed speakers. It also implies that Vermillion routes and dresses easily without directionality markers.