WESTMINSTERLAB CABLES REVIEW

It’s been a while since I’ve dug deeper into the cable micro-universe, especially evaluating the cable loom. This usually takes more evaluation time as it gets very sublime and time-consuming. Not only to take and conclude the listening notes but to conduct a subjective summary.  

Most importantly, it was recharging to discuss everything audio related far beyond the usual chit-chat norms. Leung possesses such an impressive acquaintance about our beloved industry and products, that even seasoned industry experts would envy (or should have)…

The review will reveal more, but WestminsterLab cables and REI amps (upcoming review) are among a few products that made an unexpected impact on yours truly in 2019!

As you can read below, the WestminsterLab team put a lot of effort into designing their cables and they’ve had heavily experimented with various materials and unique techniques. Here is the breakdown of the WestminsterLab’s way…

ENGINEERING THE CONNECTIONS

The goal is to provide the purest and cleanest signals and power for the audio system. WestminsterLab first starts from the basic, stranded conductors and solid conductors. Their testing results have clearly shown that solid conductors can provide a good basis for what they’re trying to achieve.

SOLID CORE CONDUCTION

The advantage of the stranded construction may be the flexibility of the cable and also the reduction of cost due to easier extrusion technology. On the other hand, the problem of stranded conductors is that its structure generates Straying Electric Current which occurs within the stranded conductors. When a current flows through one conductor, it may transfer into another conductor repeatedly rather than fluently flowing from start to end. Creating turbulence within the electron flow in the cable causes the incidental sound, reduction in smoothness and audible distortion.

HYBRID MATERIAL

The conductor material is one of the most important components in a cable. WestminsterLab researched and tested different materials, including but not only, very high purity copper, silver, gold, silver-gold alloy, but precious metals also plated copper and silver.

Higher frequencies tend to flow on the outer perimeter of the conductor rather than the core of the material, and the change in the material throughout the cross-section of the conductor varies the speed of the electrons moving through the conductor, resulting in an uneven frequency transition, uneven texture, and distorted imagery and soundstage. All WestminsterLab cables are made with a uniformed conductor.

In the market, single crystal copper and silver are available and the crystal is continuous and unbroken with no grain boundaries that, electrons don’t need to or “jump” less from one crystal to another. Currents can flow more smoothly and so as the signals. But one downside is that whatever its used – usual copper, silver or that with a single crystal, their material sound signatures are heavy and dense. It is where the common terms – “copper sound” and “silver sound” come from.

BESPOKE CONDUCTORS

To achieve all these, WestminsterLab has developed its own formulated conductors with a unique temperature treatment. The result is a new type of conductor, which excels in not only in scientific mechanical properties but also in extensive listening tests. And WestminsterLab has named it the Autria Alloy.

The Autria Alloy undergoes extensive heat and cryo treatment after the extrusion process. The result is a conductive material that is free from material sound signatures, free from grain boundaries and uniformed material properties across the cross-section of the conductor.

HAND TOUCHES

To achieve less distortion at high frequencies, WestminsterLab hand-polish each conductor to achieve a gloss mirror finish. However, as long as the conductor is exposed to the air, the surface will oxidize and it degrades the mechanical as well as the audio performance over time. That’s the reason why WestminsterLab protects the surface of each conductor with a special epoxy-based coating. To finish off, each conductor is then carefully inserted into a PTFE tube by hand to further improve the dielectric properties of the conductors.

STRUCTURES

It is well known that a simple twist of a pair or pairs of wires can reduce crosstalk – RFI and EMI. According to Alexander Graham Bell, “The several circuits are composed each of two wires a direct and a return wire, forming a metallic circuit. Inductive disturbance in the telephone and in other electrical instruments connected with a metallic circuit when the latter is placed in the neighborhood of other electrical circuits, arising from the unequal inductive effect of the latter upon the two wires, for it is obvious that if the direct and return wire were affected equally, the current generated in one would neutralize and destroy what created in the other. The disturbance can be avoided by placing the two wires in the same inductive relation to the disturbing currents, or, other conditions being the same, by placing them at an equal distance from the said circuits.”

It does not mean that it must be better to twist the pair. Twisting a pair brings demerits like higher capacitance and inductance to the cables, and by twisting, a longer conductor is needed to maintain the effective length of the whole cable, increasing the whole resistance. So we decide to go for a deep test about twisting or not.

The untwisted pair easily picks up noise around the environment which causes a noisy background and distorted signals. Then the WestminsterLab has tested the twisted pair that produced a cleaner and darker background. The reason is, without twisting, a magnetic field generated by the current flowing in the signal conductor causes an unwanted current to flow in the paired conductor. After twisted, the crosstalk between wires is canceled when an interfering signal is applied equally to both sides of a twisted-pair wire. Therefore, an induced magnetic field or current will be minimized.

VARI-TWIST

Having concluded that a twisted structure is a way to go, the next question related to how much or at what angle should the pair be twisted. The angle must be enough to reduce interference yet a big angle will generate a bigger capacitance. As the higher the capacitance, the speed of the electron will be reduced and so as the overall bandwidth of the cable.

These two factors needed to be balanced. WestminsterLab tests have shown that a single angle seemed to hardly balance these two, as a single angle gives a particular resonance to a particular frequency range. This may be good for a single frequency signal like digital. But it may not be good for multi-frequency analog signals in which your music is. The ideal case is a cable twisted at a variable angle.

This very unconventional technology is called Vari-Twist. Vari-Twist, as how it names, the signal pair are twisted to WestminsterLab formulated varying angle throughout the whole cable. The relationships between the signal pairs keep changing to minimize the resonance with particular frequency yet interference and magnetic field are still minimized. And this is one of the reasons all WesminsterLab cables in different lengths have their bespoke structure, all calibrated to perfect flawlessly across the audio band.

Vari-Twist is truly unique to WestminsterLab and it is the only cable you can buy on the market which features this unique approach to cable design and technology. It is certainly a very labor-intensive process, but WestminsterLab doesn’t cut corners.

SHIELDING

In the market, the common solutions are foil shielding and braided shielding. Some go for tube shielding to shield conductors by a metal tube, achieving 100% shielding. 

Materials used are common tin, aluminum, copper, silver-plated copper, and nickel-plated copper. But in WestminsterLab tests, as long as the metal was being used, rather than rejecting, interferences were being absorbed and fed back to the system, although most of them are considered as “grounded”. These radio-wave changes to electricity and magnetic field and affects the whole system, harming the background darkness, sound staging, and dynamics. This finding is the same as in the mono amplifier.

Moreover, as long as there is a current flowing through the conductors, the flowing current generates a magnetic field that is absorbed by the metal shielding and feedback to the system, resulting in dull, contracting and tight sound.

In the final conclusion, WestminsterLab had adopted carbon fiber sleeve for shielding, which will not be affected by any magnetic field and rejects interferences without absorption in nature. When used in conjunction with Vari-Twist Technology, it brings the already state of the art cable to a whole new level.

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