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The more time I spent with the Ocellia Reference cables, the more a strong family sound surfaced. This obviously isn't unusual within analog or digital cable families of the same brand but rather harder to achieve across analog and digital catalogues though not unheard of. What kept surprising me was the degree of similarity achieved by Samuel Furon throughout his Reference line regardless of category. This second part of the review focuses on his speaker and USB cables but due to this family resemblance there won't be a lot of new ground to cover. That's a good thing considering how impressed I was with the cables I'd auditioned thus far.


Ocellia's speaker cables offer a much better view of the solid silver/paper/rubber construction that's common to all cables of this brand. They come with naked wires on each end but can be ordered with any type of connector you desire. In my case the Yamamoto A08s amplifier favors banana plugs while the Zu Essence speakers with their Cardas block terminals are partial to spades. I thus received a set of Oyaide's top-line bananas and spades to screw on to the stock bare wire. Those are massive connectors as far as connectors go. They are made of solid brass plated with silver-layered Platinum and arrive in jewel-like boxes. I confess I never saw spades or bananas of this caliber before.


One characteristic of Ocellia's speaker cables that will initially puzzle is the presence of a third 'ground' wire in addition to the hot and cold signal legs common to all speaker wires. The MDI theory calls for draining static charges from speaker drivers to improve the naturalness of sound reproduction. All Ocellia speakers—Tannoy does the same on certain models —therefore have a third connector on the back which is internally connected to the PHY transducer. The third wire in the speaker cable now makes sense. It connects to this drain terminal on the speaker end and to the ground on the amplifier side.


If your speakers are not so equipped you have two options. Ignore this third wire; or connect a wire of your own to a metallic part of the transducer in your speaker, build your own static drain and assess what difference it makes. The back of the Zu Essence driver is very hard to reach without removing the driver itself. I thus was not able to test the benefit of removing static charges but since Samuel Furon's assessment of his cables had proven spot on thus far, I'd trust him when he claims that it adds another level of naturalness to the midrange. Not that his cables need any help in that regard. I am thus not sure what more natural might actually sound like. It's something I intend to follow up on next time I am in Montreal and can listen to an all-Ocellia system.


I first auditioned the speaker cables with the Rethm Trishna I had in for review. The Ocellias replaced the Genesis Absolute Fidelity cables that serve as my reference. I initially didn't hear much difference (not a bad thing considering the Ocellia costs half). The key differentiator again was that midrange fluidity I described for the other Ocellia cables but this time the difference was far more subtle than it had been with the interconnects. Voices and strings sounded slightly more real but otherwise differences were impossible to identify or describe consistently.


Once the Rethms departed however and the Zu Essence took up their usual place, things became more obvious. Not that the Rethms weren't transparent enough—quite the contrary in fact—but one of the traits of the Ocellia speaker cables is to balance out and control the generous bass of the matching interconnects. The Rethms rely on active bass that's tight and agile without any cable assistance. I thus did not notice much of a difference. Once the passive Zus returned I was able to discern better control and speed in the lower octaves. This reminded me of what I'd experienced at the TAVES show in Toronto last fall. There a Zu system had demonstrated exquisite qualities except for a slightly ripe bass. Coming from the Rethms I'd lived with for four months, it was obvious that the Essence in my setup suffered the same minor issue and that the Ocellia cable nicely rebalanced things. I had not necessarily noticed this sooner because I run either ASI Liveline speaker cables— they have an even stronger leaning-out ability albeit without Ocellia's enticing midrange and treble—or Liveline interconnects (and sometimes both). In either case, the mission of bass control and balance belonged with the ASI cables, which they did very well but without the tonal naturalness that spans the Ocellia line.