If you’re sitting in front of your system right now, I’d like you to consider how you choose your components. Is it sound quality alone? Is a component’s appearance important? How well one component matches with another? Of course, sound quality is of vital importance—a system that doesn’t sound good is an abject failure, no matter how good it looks. But how do you weight appearance, performance, and opulence on your personal balance sheet?
With my own system, I’ve always placed significant emphasis on appearance. I take pride in polishing and dusting, on the arrangement of accessories, on the dressing and routing of cables. I keep a can of Tirox Speed Wax polish and a microfiber cloth on hand at all times. I want this thing sitting at the front of my room, like the furniture it is, to look as good as it sounds. And it sounds great, that’s for sure.
If it’s okay with you, I’d like to put the concept of sound quality aside for a minute. High-end audio cables are luxury goods, like watches, sports cars, and purses. When you buy a set of cables for your audio system, you’re attending to one of two things: needs or wants. (Or more likely, a combination of the two.) For most people of modest means, the needs end of the number line obviously comes first. A speaker cable, for instance, has to perform its function—it has to be of sufficient gauge to accommodate the signal, and its inductance and capacitance must be within reasonable tolerances. The insulation also needs to be rugged enough to survive household usage. Beyond those humble specifications, you’ll have to juggle priorities.
Let’s put on our fantasy cap for a moment. Assume you not only have more money than God, but you also have little patience for frugality. You’ve just built out your garage to accommodate more cars—the Lamborghini and Bentley are in there, along with your vintage Aston and Corvette, and you’ve just ordered a new Porsche 911 T. It’s time to take the Bentley out for a spin, but as you walk by its bay, you note that the tires on the Aventador are looking a touch worn. Maybe a scuff on the sidewall makes you shake your head in disapproval. Pointing this out to the in-house mechanic, you instruct him to get the car fitted with new skins.
Now, where is the help gonna source those new tires? Would he take the car to Discount Tires and have them mount up a set of Toyo all-seasons? Hardly. He’ll call up the dealership and have a set of the original-equipment Pirelli Prestige tires fitted, which will likely cost five times more.
Would you notice any difference next time you took the Lambo out for a canyon-carving run? Probably not. At their limit, on the track, an experienced driver could likely differentiate between the Pirellis and the Toyos, but for day-to-day usage, not so much.
But you’d know that those budget tires aren’t appropriate for this half-million-dollar car. Unacceptable.
Now that you’re in the spirit of this thought experiment, imagine you’re researching your stereo for the house in the Hamptons that the builders damn-well better have ready for the summer season. You’ve spent a whole bunch of time scrolling through reviews on SoundStage! Ultra, and you’re ready with some ideas.
Those Estelon Extreme speakers at Florida International Audio Expo 2025 look great, and Thorpe really seemed to like them. Same with the Vitus amps that also knocked his socks off. That’ll be the meat of the system. Now it’s just sources and cables. Sources can wait ’til later—maybe you’ll fly the jet to Munich for High End 2025 to get an idea of which turntable feels best to your hand.
With cables, we meet a supporting role that’s somewhat analogous to tires. Most people—me included—would head on over to Costco for tires and buy whatever fits and whatever’s on sale. But you! You’ve never shopped a sale in your life, and you’re not about to start. The cables you choose for your million-dollar system need to be appropriate to the scale, the quality, the status of this big rig. You want the best. The system will be set up on either side of a two-story-high fireplace that’s encased in huge slabs of white Carrara marble, and placed on flooring hand-sawed from the last tree of its species.
I’ve taken this analogy to an extreme to make a point. A stereo system is a want from start to finish. Nobody needs a stereo. But once you’ve decided that you want to listen to music on something other than your phone, unless money is not an object, you need to decide on a budget.
SoundStage! Ultra’s mission statement for the most part disregards budget considerations. We’re all about pushing the limits of what’s possible in audio, and that sort of performance doesn’t come cheap. Value is important to me, though, so while I do understand the price-no-object concept, it’s not easy for me to put myself into that frame of mind. I’m working on it, though.
A month ago, I received a complete set of Siltech’s Royal Single Crown cables, and, as you can tell from the accompanying review of the speaker cables, I’m quite smitten. I asked for a complete set of cables so that I could begin with the speaker cables and review them in isolation, with a follow-up evaluation of how a swap-over to an all-Siltech setup changed my system.
I think it’s expedient that I point out that the Royal Single Crown line of cables is not Siltech’s top offering. Within the Royal Crown line, there are Single and Double Crown versions, a separate Triple Crown line, and—at the top—the new Master Crown series. An ascent up the Siltech line, from one Crown to the next comes with an increase in conductor gauge, additional focus on dielectric materials, and a closer focus on cosmetics. And of course, the price increases in like manner. That system in the Hamptons? I’m sure you’ll agree that only the Master Crown cables would suffice.
The Royal Single Crown lineup is the entry point for Siltech’s high-end technologies. It’s here, in this line, where Siltech’s S10 Monocrystal Silver, Hexagon geometry, and DuPont Kapton, Teflon, and air dielectrics intersect. As you ascend further in the Royal Crown lineup, Siltech employs thicker-gauge conductors and more expensive connectors, but the Royal Single Crown cables seem like the appropriate series for my system—which is not installed in a room with a huge fireplace and an exotic-wood floor.
While the shipment of Siltech cables didn’t arrive on a pallet, as did many of my recent review products, the box was bigger than I’d anticipated. As befits a luxury product such as this, the packaging is impressive. Each Royal Single Crown cable came packaged in its own large, sturdy box, complete with an inner book-leaved cover.
The first box I opened contained a power cord, which helped explain why the box was so large. The connectors are physically massive, and very heavy, machined as they are from solid aluminum. Both ends were covered by their own little mufflers—fabric coverings with drawstrings at both ends to protect the finish in transit. I’d first encountered these sleeves on the Crystal Cable Art Series Monet speaker cables that I reviewed back in September 2023. As Crystal Cable and Siltech are both part of International Audio Holding, it makes sense that some ideas cross-pollinate. While these slipcovers aren’t really necessary—please refer back to my earlier comment regarding wants versus needs—they’re extremely nice, given that cables often interact with the floor and other components. The slipcovers protect the hard, beautifully anodized parts of the cables from inadvertent contact with other hard surfaces.
Taking inventory of the shipment, I’ve received three power cables, two sets of XLR-tipped interconnects, a phono cable, and the aforementioned speaker cables. As of today, I’ve only listened to the Royal Single Crown speaker cables, but in short order I’ll be inserting the other cables in my system, one at a time. Next up is the phono cable, which will run between my VPI Prime Signature turntable and EMM Labs DS-EQ1 phono preamplifier—you’ll get to read about this in an upcoming edition of my For the Record column. I’ll be running the interconnects between the DS-EQ1 and (currently) the Simaudio Moon Evolution 740P preamp, then off to the Hegel Music Systems H30A amplifier.
The three power cables will jazz up the DS-EQ1, 740P, and H30A, although I’m very keen to try one on the VPI’s motor. I’ve got lots of work ahead of me—and as an added bonus from all these rearrangements, I’m going to take the opportunity to clean up the dust bunnies that have accumulated behind my rack.
. . . Jason Thorpe
jasont@soundstagenetwork.com
