I’m not sure what exactly “Zigization” special copper modification is, as it’s a design secret, but Ziggy Cheetah has shown its ability to transfer the raw, needed music’s energy with a sense of lighting speed, surprising easiness and without disrupting the domains of timbre tone and color. Very promising indeed! Stay tuned for more in due time. Below is the short white paper about the Ziggy cables…
Zygmunt Jerzyński writes: “It is only the Truth that matters. Truth and Emotions, as contained in and conveyed by the music. Ok, ok, … but what has this to do with a power supply cables?”
I understand “Truth: as resembled, reflected in verbatim, in a similarity approaching the “real thing”, such as, for example, that a guitar sounds like … a guitar. Or that a percussion sounds like … a percussion. Not to mention a Steinway, drums, violins, cellos, guitars, or a myriad of other instruments, treated both as singularities, as small ensembles, or as a crowd of sound sources reeking total havoc and extreme decibels on your sound scene. Not to mention the atmosphere of the venue, the acoustics of a concert hall, a small jazz club, or other.
The other half of the picture is represented by “emotions”. It well may be that you shall be listening to a truly analytical system, one which conveys a lot of “Truth” regarding what is happening on the sound scene, in terms of details, finesse, imaging and all, but there is only but one thing that is missing. The prodigal “tear in your eye” that flows while you listen to the performance. The tear is missing.
On the other hand, One may find himself sitting and crying in front of some less-than-perfect music system, listening to not-so-analytically precise performance and watching a slightly out-of-focus sound scene, but the action and the atmosphere of the event is ripping your heart apart, tears are a flowing in the bucket-loads, and you start to wonder: What is going on?
Having said the former, one could argue that the two aforementioned, truth and emotions, have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. Not to mention having ANYTHING to do with PS cables.
My name is Ziggy. I am a simply a humble Do-It-Yourself Audiophile and I love my music. Music that I listen to within and throughout the fumes of the tin and solder that emanate from the soldering iron. Yes, I am a fiddler. Not in the sense of a Fiddler on the Roof. A Fiddler in the Basement, rather. Or on the kitchen table. I fiddle with electronic circuits, which I love to build. Actually, to be more precise, I fiddle with anything and all that has to do with the reproduction of music. I love music. And I love listening to it. Small caveat – often on devices of my own make and/or design. Be it amplifiers, DAC’s, loudspeakers, and other.
My system is constantly evolving. I strive to build it and extend it in a manner that allows coming closer to the truth and to the emotions as hidden within the music. Waiting to be revealed, recognized, explored, appreciated. And yes, power supply cables indeed are (to the contrary what some might think) an important element within a system configuration, treated as a whole.
When you come to think about it, an audio amplifier is nothing more than a “modulated power supply source”. One which provides energy, power, in a precisely modulated manner, into your loudspeakers. If you take on the view, that an amplifier is NOT an “amplifier”, but rather a “modulated power source”, then obviously, you start to think about the bottlenecks that exist whilst trying to deliver the power and energy to the final destination. And guess what! On the route to its destination, the power needs to tackle a path which happens to lead from your wall outlet, wall socket, do the device itself. The power supply cable that leads to the device.
To put this into the nontechnical layman’s perspective, … try imagining a top-notch sports car, say, Italian make, with its fuel lead made of a tube 1 mm in diameter. And now, press the gas to the very floor. Good luck.
Having built his own audio system, each DIY’-er comes at some point comes to the stage where he looks at … cables. Yes. Cables. The links. The signal cables, the speaker cables. And … incredibly – last and seemingly least – the power cables.
A cable is a cable. That is what I told myself not more than some 5 years ago. Boy, was I wrong!
After fiddling a bit with power supply cables, which I tested and made for the sake of powering the components of my very own system, I suddenly realized that indeed, they DO make a difference. But what’s more, some friends, who borrowed each consecutive development version of such Ziggy Cable, seemed to notice it too. Started demanding that I deliver such cables. Make them. Enhance them. Take into consideration this or that. Whatever. Various needs, ideas, resolve certain issues and problems.
Basically, the role of the power supply cable is to deliver unconstrained, clean energy to the device.
In essence, during the last few years, my curiosity was directed towards developing a cable that would convey both the truth, as well as the emotions, that are hidden within the music that I so love to listen to.
A multitude of cables came to be. Some of them successful, some of them not so successful. Two steps forward, one step back. But each and every time, the learning curve gained speed. People started asking.
Currently, There are two main lines of my audio power supply cable creations.
The fat ones: Ziggy Cheetah, Ziggy Cheetah Ultra, and most recently, the Ziggy Quantum Zeno.
These cables are destined to be used with true “power hogs”. The cables are constructed based on fairly flexible conductors, using sheer 25 mm2 (as in twenty five mm square) of copper, which are used for the Live and Neutral lines, respectively. The copper is specially treated and modified by means of a process which I call “Zigization”. The process modifies the structure of the copper and is a result of over two years of research and experiments, now comprising my added value know-how.
The Quantum Zeno – is a cable which stems from the earlier Ziggy Cheetah Ultra. Same architecture. Same initial materials. But this time, an additional process is used. Let’s call it “Quantumization”, a process striving to achieve, within the macro domain, an effect similar to the Quantum Zeno phenomenon as typical in quantum physics. Not to divulge too much of the secret, but keeping the wording simple, the process strives to achieve a cable which is capable of an even more natural, organic, closer-to-reality sound. It introduces a “velvety” texture to the sound. Sort of more realistic. For my (biased?) ears, at least.
All current creations now undergo these two aforementioned processes.
That includes the Ziggy Inception X5 series, which is the second branch, or concept, and represents a slightly alternative approach. Why “Inception”? The name refers back to the point of creation of the analog sound. To the source. The whole concept originates from a while back when one audiophile asked me about a special dedicated cable, one with an exceptionally nice resolution of detail, one that specifically is destined to supply power to his audio signal source. The “X5” stands for a five-way braid. Historically, the first concept cable was conceived as an “X3”, a three-way braid, stemming from the fact that you basically have three wires of clean OFC copper to deal with: the L (Live), the N (Neutral) and the PE (Protective Earth). Indeed, originally, it was an “Inception X3” – a cable that was destined to provide clean power to the point of “creation”, or “inception” of the analog sound: to signal sources.
The cable turned out to be interesting, but due to a limited cross-section of the wires – not quite authoritative when put in the context of powering huge killer power amplifiers. Especially those capable of producing very authoritative bass. Therefore, the number of lines was increased to 5, allowing to double the overall cross section as used for the transmission of energy. The Inception X5 is composed of 5 x 6mm2 specially treated OFC copper, allowing for a total of 12 mm2 of the conductor to be used to deliver un-compromised energy to even the most power demanding devices.
Mind you, as the creator of the cables, I do not want talk about how these Ziggy cables sound. That I leave the editor’s office, which is more experienced in listening tests and comparisons that I am. Besides, as the creator of the constructs, I might be biased in my opinions.
My general view is that the Quantum Zeno cables are especially apt when supplying power to energy-hungry devices, such as power amplifiers. Within my system, I use a special version of the Inception X5 concept to power my DAC and CD transport. But then again, this is not, by any means, a configuration recommendation of any sort. All systems differ, and each setup may behave differently, rendering optimal listening results within some varying configuration.
And yes, there are variations. In a sense, the constructs that I make are somewhat build to order. Some audiophiles prefer the tube-like, warm, organic sound that is associated with gold plated power plugs. Others may prefer the more analytical, cool sound that is associated with rhodium plated connectors. A multitude of options and test scenarios emerge, in terms of make and type of plugs. Plugs are simply an add-on. Indeed, a differentiating add-on. But my cables are NOT about plugs. So, one simply needs to sit down and listen. Listen and find the right configuration.
I hope that the chief editor of www.monoandstereo.com finds some time to play around with the constructs that I delivered for tests, will give them a go and will tell us what he thinks of all this. Just for the sake of my own designer’s curiosity. Indeed, I am just a humble DIY guy, who makes these constructs in a small apartment, on my kitchen table. No factory. No infrastructure. Just a table. I hope that these Ziggy cables are at least acceptable when facing comparisons to some of the big time alternatives that are available “out there”.