Review: Sulek Audio RCA IC

Listening: With speakers

Sulek presented himself in several configurations...

Sulek presented himself in several configurations…

   With speakers, I could hear yet another difference. Namely, that Sulek Audio interconnect has inertia. That’s why one has to be careful with judgments about it, and the earlier, quicker comparisons turned out to be biased by methodological error. Because once it is plugged into the system, it plays calmly, most of all with full sound, and only after several minutes it starts to speed up. So its kind of like a train that accelerates gradually, but once its gains full speed, the fun begins. And it needs rather longer distances to achieve its full potential, like between Paris and Lyon.

Sulek played just like the phono stage from Audion with amplifier and speakers from Avantgarde, both for logistic and quality reasons. The large tubes are unbeatable, and together with the amp they preset a level that vast majority of audiophiles dream about before going to sleep. Again, I won’t delve into the attributes of the speakers and amp, I will talk about that in the review devoted to them, but about Sulek I’ve got to say that although at first it seemed to play calm, to the full, with beautiful depth, it quickly twisted to become extreme realism. At the beginning the brightness was softened, the dynamics manifested itself smoothly, you could feel a warm breeze, satisfying fullness and overall flow, with no trace of attack. Like music for a stroll, playing with dignity, like a grand river. Faster, more active notes appeared here and there only for a moment, with a ring or louder trumpet, but in general the atmosphere resembled a defilade rather than a race. Very enjoyable, even spectacular, based on overall power. But after several minutes it became clear that it can be much better. The pitch rose up and achieved ultra realistic level, everything gained speed, vigor, brightness and emotion. It exploded with sound, as if you opened the door to a jazz club and was overwhelmed with raging instruments. Everything was bustling with life and the scale of dynamics and quality of the sound itself was attacking with great force. Sulek, you bastard! So you can do such tricks? – I thought listening to that, amazed by the change.

...and it was anything worse than an American colleague...

…and it was anything worse than an American colleague…

Karol was totally right in his report from Paris, saying that this speakers and amp combo were the trade winner. I really regret that I cannot go into details right now, but I will get to it. Now I can only mention that it was truly super realistic, with whistling trebles rivalling with the powerful roar from active speakers. To be frank, I was surprised that with the interconnect from Sulek Audio it would play that good. I was counting rather just for the style audible in the first few minutes. For power, but suppressed, dignified and calm. And here I got pure realism, like an actual musician squeezed from the tube, and it all became different. But so much better! It was no longer an accompaniment in the background, but a true concert. Live and unplugged, with no processing. So, Sulek Audio RCA IC definitely can do. You just have to let it play uninterrupted, without switching it with competition for comparison all the time, then it climbs to a higher level. On this level it can combine the top quality culture and control over articulation with liveliness and dynamics. But the most important thing about Sulek is that it is capable of emitting sounds through its whole width. It doesn’t narrow or flatten anything – just the contrary – it deepens and widens. The result is trebles in their natural expansion and bass free of rumbling and limitations. And with it, human voices in their natural, completely unprocessed form, directly in front of the listener. Not only realistic and direct, but realistic and direct at the same time. Because being realistic and direct is not the same thing. Somebody’s voice can sound realistic, but from a distance and accompanied by reverb, and then it lacks directness. It can also be direct, because it sounds like it was close and acoustically unprocessed, but it has lowered or raised pitch, and then it doesn’t belong to the real person, which makes it unrealistic. It can also be unrealistic for many different reasons, for instance because of insufficient space, debased articulation, too much hissing, artificial softness or too much boost. The list of flaws is long, and each of them means deviation from the truth. Of course the truth is always in a sense arbitrary, because Truth is a big word and an extremely complicated philosophical problem, to which thousands of years of contemplation has been devoted. But now we don’t have to deal with it to such an extent. The truth of the microphone and concert is enough.

...he was different. Culturally much different. Keep up great work!

…he was different. Culturally much different. Keep up great work!

And this truth – the truth of satisfying the expectations of trained musical specialists – the interconnect from Sulek Audio can recreate really well. In addition, it possesses exceptional power of synergy, as it is well matched more often than not. To be honest, I haven’t heard it ill match anything, quite the contrary, it often matches equipment perfectly. So no wonder my friend who brought me the interconnect soon afterwards sold his own cable worth more than twenty thousands and left Sulek for himself. Good for him, I recommended that myself. The contrastive advantage of the Polish interconnect leaves no doubt.   

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