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The advent of Franck Tchang's Tango speakers in our new Swiss residence coincided with a repeat installation of our Cyprus inventory of acoustic resonators, noise filters and phase inverters by the maestro himself. It settled the conclusion of this review in a more obvious way than expected. That and the appearance of Shigeki-San's YDA-01 Yamamoto converter. But first things first. Upper harmonics are exceedingly subtle, hence fragile. To appreciate this, disconnect the mid/woofer on a biwirable speaker with a conventional 2kHz 4th-order tweeter high-pass. The bit of fizz that remains of your music will come as a shock if you've never done it before. But what seems so pathetically little becomes huge if you now flip the connections and only run the mid/woofer. Everything becomes hooded and dull. The spark of life has been killed. A major difference between music that feels canned vs real is a palpable transmission of energy which relates to the very high frequencies. It's ultra fine yet very potent. Only finesse captures the real.

To hear fully extended harmonics requires a very low noise floor in the signal path and room; and very low coloration and distortion in the treble. Because only harmonics can generate the oft-cited truth of timbre -- without harmonics, all instruments and voices would sound the same, i.e. be interchangeable sine waves -- the unspoilt presence of fully liberated overtones during playback is vital. The 'R' version of the Tango includes a copper, gold and Platinum resonator lined up in front of the narrow oval opening above the terminals on the spine. Their 'carrier wave' action transforms the silk dome tweeter into a treble unit par excellence, particularly in a fully resonatored quiet environment.

By comparison to the Liveline interconnects, all my other cables, from the Zu Audio Varial through the Crystal Cable Ultra to the Stealth Indra, caused from very to less overt blurring or dulling in the uppermost band. Granted, to perceive that as cause rather than just effect clearly required, at least in my case, a transducer of the Tango's caliber. Nonetheless, the effect exists. In such a context, it is silly easy to hear. It sounds as though the other cables suffer HF phase shift by comparison. I italicized 'sounds' because any reasonable person would assume that the other cables could not possibly suffer audible phase shift when tested on a scope. Still, there are the sonic results and a reviewer's sometimes difficult task to describe what is heard. Just like time-coherent speakers do better at preserving the transient integrity between fundamentals and harmonics -- portions of the tone are less or not at all skewed in time -- the Liveline cables are superior to what I assume must be their less time-coherent competitors.


We're back at transmission speed then. It's a cable's ability to preserve the vertical 'time line' of all the frequency parts that make up individual tones. The effect goes beyond truth of timbre. It's well-known that a well-implemented -- i.e. crossed in at the right frequency and slope with proper amplitude -- super tweeter purifies the sound by making it lighter, sweeter, airier and more precise. 'More' (or more accurate) treble information produces results that are opposite from anticipated. Things don't get sharper and edgier. They become sweeter, breathier, easier, clearer and more elegant.


At the same time, the sense of charge or musical energy enhances. One no longer needs to crank up the volume to get the desired contact high. The illusion that musicians have teleported into one's living room comes off with less effort. That's exactly the Liveline effect. It's why the name of this cable is so crafty. But something about it is weird. Oriented in the wrong direction, things will dull just like under wrong polarity. But wrong direction here is far more audible than "flipping phase" on a digital source. What is the wrong direction depends on the component. My Esoteric/APL Hifi UX1/NWO 3.0GO wanted prescribed directionality, i.e. black to red. My ModWright LS/PS 36.5 wanted the reverse. It was entirely unexpected to hear the audibility of directionality to such an extent. Or to be able to reverse it at will at any time, no settling-in time or imagination required.

But the weirdness doesn't stop there. The Liveline is a phenomenal digital interconnect. Yup, it outperforms my prior Stealth reference. This shouldn't be. It's not the sacrosanct 75 ohms. It hasn't got a super-spec'd connector 'optimized' for digital transmissions. Why it would work so well in this application is a mystery. I only stumbled upon it after Marja & Henk asked me to corroborate their parallel experiments in Rotterdam. At the time, I didn't have an outboard DAC handy. I have evolved (devolved, revolved?) to one-box players again. Then Yamamoto's review loaner changed that. Its RCA-only digital input coupled to the Esoteric's RCA digital output didn't require a BNC converter so the Liveline interconnect hooked up without a hitch. So I did as my Dutch friends suggested. And once again our six ears agreed.


What's more, the Liveline technology doesn't stop there. During his whole-house tuning visit from Paris, Franck had also brought along the very first sample of the matching power cord. Stiffer than the interconnect and rather more complex in metallurgical coding (the sequence of inserts is entirely different), the effects of just one cord in my all Crystal Cable Ultra/Reference AC loom were not subtle. Still, the nature of the improvement was the same as the interconnects'. For lack of a better term, I once again call it phase shift. The Acoustic System cord introduced less time rotation smearing to better 'line up' transients and harmonics.


In conclusion, Franck Tchang's sequential metal technology for cables might confound the text books and stimulate derision because of it. That's for the proper engineers to sort out. What should bug them is that this unusual solution performs just as claimed. The Liveline action is similar to the dust-brush action of archeologists. It strips away obscurations that covered the buried treasure. It's not about adding this or that. It's about not doing some of the things other cables do to the signal to make it bloated, indistinct, dull, slow and less free by comparison. So don't expect audiophile tricks which would have to work by addition. Consider how this cable evolved from a guitar player comparing his instrument to playback. This cable isn't a fixer which magically augments or 'fills in' weaknesses or holes in your system. It is a revealer of what's going on, exactly what an audio developer needs to hear what his inventions are doing.
In a market segment that seems deliberately desensitized to price, the Liveline's cost-to-performance ratio is exceptional. Those who would complain that the cable still isn't cheap -- it isn't -- might have to duplicate Marja & Henk' visit to Franck's atelier in Paris where they observed him putting together a cable. It's apparently a real bitch as the Americans would say, such in fact that my Dutch collaborators feel confident that nobody in their right mind will bother to reverse-engineer Franck's recipe. "You'd have to be nuts or a masochist" is the gist of their reaction.
Made by hand by one man, the Acoustic System Liveline is the most affordable entry into the world of Franck Tchang who, as a practicing musician, focuses on timbre and timing which connect via realistic harmonics. No creator can prevent his personality from pooling into what is created. If your ideas on musicality, musical persuasiveness and musical attraction revolve
Tango 'R' resonator array
around these same ideals, the Liveline cables -- a speaker cable is forthcoming -- must be investigated. And to be clear, for the full effect, you will want a system that does minimum damage in the time domain and has excellent high-frequency resolution.


The bottom line
I'm not usually inclined to award cables. What performs for me might not for you is the widely acknowledged rationale. Today I feel different. With the parallel investigations of our Dutchies plus assorted reader feedback already corroborating our findings further, I'm quite confident. What we have here is something new; exciting; cost-effective; repeatable and thus, predictable. Those who use cables as tone controls will look elsewhere. Those after a pipe 'n' slippers comfort sound, too. The Liveline effect is about releasing the upper harmonics and reinstating higher timing fidelity. For toe-tapping beatniks, lovers of stringed instruments and appreciators of fine -- not fat! -- tone, this cable seems tailor-made. What's more, acknowledgement is due for a new conductor invention. While reliant on expensive metals like gold and Platinum, it uses them smartly in ultra-short segments. Their precise sequence and directionality capture the desired contributions without costly solid runs over the entire length.


No matter how I contemplate this Liveline phenomenon, I come up with terms like clever, unique, brilliant, effective, desirable and fairly priced. In particular, clever. Franck Tchang has found a way to adapt his resonator technology based on 5 specific alloys to cable design. That translation from one medium to another is a real leap. It required a unique perspective on things; doggone persistence while experimenting in a vacuum; and a rare ability to think out of the box. In short, an award is in order with which to applaud and formally recognize all of the above. Think of it like a veteran's Oscar who never got one. When he finally does, it encapsulates all of the prior oeuvre. Per se, it needn't even coincide with his very best movie. Likewise, the Liveline isn't inherently award-worthier than the resonators or Tango loudspeakers. But at this time based on the amount of his products we've looked into, a Franck Tchang award is due. This is the one then that shall do, bestowed as it were by Marja, Henk and yours truly ..
Franck Tchang's e-mail