6Moons Reviews Slinkylinks

Writing for Srajan Ebaen’s online audio high-end magazine 6Moons, Frederic Beudot identifies why enthusiasts have found Slinkylinks the purist’s reference standard. An excerpt:

When describing the Slinkylinks signature sound — or as I am more and more inclined to say, its lack thereof — the focus has to be put on the midrange. To put it plain and simple, it is the most natural I have ever heard. Period. The Zus are great in that register but the Slinkylinks just seem to remove a few veils that were obscuring the music until their arrival. The result on discs with a tremendous vocal presence like Leonard Cohen’s Ten New Songs [Columbia 501202-2] is a feeling of closeness and intimacy with the singer that I had never experienced. In “Here it is” the chorus voices are both clearly delineated while at times blending with Cohen’s own in a fashion reminiscent of what one would expect in a small and intimate concert room. The signature sound of these cables is not what it does to the music but what it does to the listener – a very close encounter with the recording event, a level of detail and lack of distortion that just translate into an admirably true to life listening experience. Leonard Cohen’s deep voice came through unfiltered and each lip parting could be heard very clearly and so was a slight vibrato deep in his chest that I did not know was even there.

Because of this level of micro-detail reproduction, soundstaging also was of the highest quality, with a lot of ambient cues, well positioned and stable (the SQ12 CD player among all its qualities is a soundstaging giant and makes it easy to detect small differences in cables and if anything, the Slinkylinks helped refine and solidify this already outstanding trait).

There’s much more at the link.