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The Magnums threw open an enormous window on the soundstage that was wonderfully dimensional yet also tantalizingly palpable and full bodied. There was meat on the sonic bones as opposed to the phasey distant thin backdrop that some audiophile cables create. Rather than projecting images in the space between the speakers, the Magnums delivered exceptional left-to-right and front-to-back continuousness. Images were no longer stuck between the speakers or behind the plane of the speakers. Voices and instruments blossomed fully into my room with terrifically tactile reach-out-and-touch presence. Think juicy and spicy as opposed to dry and bland.


I loved how these cables handled upper-band energy. I did not hear any undue emphasis, exaggerated leading edge or sibilance and while this may seem contradictory, music playback did not sound rolled off or soft either. I simply heard a more realistic presentation of higher octave information than previously. Bass was deeper and weightier than over the Shotguns—which were darn impressive in their own right—with excellent articulation and sense of flow.


The Magnums displayed a precision that removed the fuzziness and sense of artifice normally associated with playback. I heard great clarity and detail minus any hype, tension or injection of extra excitement. Playing large-scale orchestral works, the Magnums exhibited great control during demanding passages while tracking climaxes and dynamic shifts with unprecedented ease. I could consistently sense the weight and power of an orchestra just as easily as I could hear the fine delicate lines in a Chopin prelude or how quiet those all-important pauses and spaces between notes were.


As with the Shotguns but to a greater extent, timbre fidelity was excellent, the mids were rich and complex and the way the Magnums revealed the myriad of musical textures on recordings was akin to peeling back the layers of an onion - and a rather large one at that. I can’t recall hearing the various sections of a recorded orchestra and its acoustic so precisely recreated. The Magnum cables had this weird way with revealing massive amounts of detail and nuance without sounding at all unnatural or analytical.


Pitch definition, rhythm and musical flow were superb. Listening to a fully in-the-pocket rhythm section like Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts was sheer joy and got my hips shaking. The Magnums also made my system sound larger, more dramatic and exciting without adding any fatigue or excessive sibilance. I attribute the latter to time distortion i.e. overtones arriving a split second before fundamentals which is something I notice primarily with non time-coherent (but not necessarily all such) speakers. I never thought that cabling could be responsible for at least a portion of this.


In many respects, the recently reviewed Teo Audio Liquid Cables sonically resembled the Magnums with their smooth grain-free presentation and relaxed way of tracking dynamics. However, the Liquid Cables could not deliver the sheer tactile presence and rich sonic textural tapestry the MIT cables so effortlessly wove. As much as I was impressed with the Liquid Cables, the Magnums delivered more musical mojo.


The Magnums’ way with the music was fleshier, more expressive with greater ambient texture and visceral impact than what I recall from the previously Wireworld Silver Eclipse which—if aural memory serves—was leaner in turn, a tad more lit up and perhaps less forgiving of bright recordings.


Along with the Magnum M1.3 cables, I was sent a Magnum Digital cable and a trio of Magnum AC-1 power cables. The AC-1 power cables feature a trio of 11-gague Teflon (TFE) insulated OCC (Ohno Continuous Cast) stranded copper conductor bundles precision-twisted for noise rejection in a double shielded foil and braid configuration. Terminations are Marinco wall and IEC plugs.


The network box placed midway on the cable contains a version of MIT’s Z Series Power Conditioning circuit "including parallel AC noise sinks to trap and dissipate direct-coupled AC noise". According to patent details, these boxes contain a number of "parallel circuits, each of which comprise a capacitor, an inductor and a resistor in series with a second resistor coupled in parallel with the inductor". The purpose of this is to attenuate line noise above the 50/60 Hz mains frequency. Think of the AC-1 as a high-quality power cable with built-in line conditioner. As with their signal cables, the networks run parallel to the signal flow and therefore can’t impede current flow.

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