The Eddie power cable is made in memory of Eddie Chan. His spirit in high end audio had inspired many new comrades to join the AE community As of now, we still talked about him from time to time. He was a big fan of Dalby Audio Design. He wished Lee Dalby would make more affordable cables for the broader market. I had a serious thought about it. But at the same time, I and Lee Dalby do not want to rubber stamp just another cable. That is not our way. And it took over a year for Lee to meet the requirement of lower price point without compromising the sonic prestige.
What exactly is the requirement? I had some serious conversations with Eddie Chan concerning the quality of high frequency in a power cable design. People who know Eddie well must know that his music selection is quite wide. There are female vocals whose voice is very powerful and open in the delivery of upper register. The voice is on the cold side of the spectrum. For example, Sissel from Norway, Diana Krall and K.D. Lang from Canada and Mika Nakashima 中島美加 in Japan. Their voice is resolutely powerful and crisply clear in diction. If we use these groups as reference, many cables fail to satisfy our demand as most designs concentrate solely on the smoothness of high frequency energy at the expense of power and energy. This in turn indirectly restricts the selection of music. As a result, the foremost criteria of Eddie power cable must expound high frequency energy in a controlled manner.
Obviously, we need a cable with balance tonality over a wide range. We don’t want the mid range to be bloated. We want agility when vocalism calls for energy and attack. We don’t want the high to be hyped in a glistening manner. It is about even control of energy. Most cable don’t have adequate energy in the high frequency and the very low frequency area. As a result, it is not easy to differentiate soprano from mezzo soprano. And the playback of Pavarotti usually lacks the power in high C.
We aim to deliver adequate high frequency energy without crowding out the mid and the low. Given the stringent requirements with a tight budget, it took countless iterations for me to test in different locations with different systems. I finally VET the design after 18 iterations over a period of 12 moths. Lee told me he could only supply 88 after counting all the special materials because suppliers of special parts suddenly raised price tremendously.
Lee told me that he has been making loss on every Eddie power cable made. And I do know that he has not factored in time cost too. We went through so much to honour the spirit of Eddie. Then Lee told me one day, “Chris, let’s forget the losses and carry on. The meaning of the project makes it special for me”.
And many AE comrades have been using Eddie since last week.
For those who are familiar with Dalby power cables, the latest flagship is Kyuko (曲), followed by Jundo (純度), Ode Grande (頌), Meda (預言). All these names are seemingly related to harmony, purity, poetic which lead to a false impression that the brand is more inclined towards tonality, timidity. In fact, all these cable models are much more balanced outperforming their predecessors like U1000, U1500 by a noticeably wide margin.
The Eddie Limited Edition (ELE) was recently introduced not falling into the normal production categories. For those who have visited AE Facebook today would have a better understanding of the background on the rationale behind. This is a cable with extreme reasonableness on performance and unreasonableness on pricing! Again the message in Facebook also explained that Lee Dalby is making a deficit in every single Eddie power cable he makes. The spirit of honouring the wish of our passed comrade, Eddie, is impeccable!
I plugged my ‘001 of 88’ in the JMF 3.7 Universal Player since May when I first received it.
Track 15, Theme from Schindler’s List in Mutter LIve, the hovering of the passion is constructed by respacing the timeliness of the chords in her own way different from many other violinists including the original player Perlman. Such ‘respacing’ details cannot be audible unless the background is extremely dark and noise is floored to the lowest level. The sorrow and hopelessness ascends along her performance till the final section of the track resulting in a breathlessly heavy feel.
Another piece is Fujiyama by Ondekoza. Track 5 (三国) Mikuni has a 15 second Japanese flute solo performance intertwined with lot of percussions and drums. A rich and complex piece of music with quite a contrasting transcription of different musical intruments. The ELE handles this very well with a very good control on both treble and bass compartments. The bass attack of the drum just storms through the lyrical extension of the flute without any ambiguity and muddling.
Suite Espanola by Albania needs no further introduction. The Spanish orchestral piece is rich in tonality, coloured and dance like. When using the ELE, images are focused with sharpened transients making the presentation very joyful and jumpy. Soundstage widened and deepened housing appropriately the different groups of instruments without clouding the spatial resolution. The eight pieces of music representing 8 different places in Spain completed with strands of colours and bouncy dynamics. I felt the 40min just gone much faster!
The third movement, the Wrath of the Yellow River in Yundi Red Piano SACD, is flooded with overwhelming waves of harmonics and melodic keystrokes by Li Yundi revealing the grandeur of the Yellow River and the roaring speed of the water flow followed by the 4th movement on Defend the Yellow River. ELE exhibited a tremendous control in speed and dynamics thus providing the exact spontaneity between the piano and the rest of the orchestra bringing climax after climax in the 4th movement. I really feel like navigating through this rough and roaring yellow river totally captivated by the rhythms of the performance!
Many of the people in HK enjoyed the comedy movie Kung Fu Hustle produced by Stephen Chow. He actually composed a short piece of introductory music for his movie and collected in the same titled CD. Tracks 1 & 2 would undoubtedly remind those who watched the movie on the orderly marching out of the gangsters called ‘The Axe Gang’. The momentum of the marching was rightly captured in the music and with ELE, the gradually growing sound pressure developed from far deep end to the front has a transcription really threatens my nerve like surrounded by a group of gangsters.
In summary, Dalby has overly achieved the design objectives outlined by PT with flying colours. My salute to LeeDalby who really makes Eddie’s dream comes true!
To me, this Eddie Limited Edition (ELE) performs the best on my Air One preamp.
The most obvious characters of this cables in my observation are: - the air and extension of sound stage - the richness in full range energy level especially bass energy - the wider high low extension
ELE expanded the depth and width of my sound stage, with clearer contours developed further into the back wall. The air surrounding each note makes the whole atmosphere very lively and exciting.
When I listened to Beethoven 1st Piano Concerto by Giulini and Michelangeli, the piano obviously stands out with the whole piano body clearly rendered, with the orchestra spreading across the stage further behind. It is easy for us to render the horizontal image of a piano, but it is the first time that I can visualize the depth of the piano.
The energy level of this cable is huge, especially bass. This is very important especially for piano playbacks. The harmonics of trebles can easily go round my ears and fill up the whole listening room, making the performance more lively and real. The left hand of Michelangeli delivers powerful bass interlocking with the high notes to give me continuous excitement that I must put down my book and listen with full attention. I never had this feeling in this recording before when I was using Ode on preamp (Ode renders very beautiful treble but cannot match with the bass created by ELE). The ability to generate more energy allows ELE to create enough dynamics and also drama of a performance: the quiet passages more quiet and the powerful passages more powerful. This higher level of bass energy is very similar to adding a Xiang Xu subwoofer to the system: it forms a foundation to create a more 3D soundstage and enrich the colors of all frequencies.
The wider high low extensions of this cable can easily be audible that I could hear more treble and bass clearly, which makes the whole picture of performance extend further vertically, with enough resolution to render a fuller picture of the performance.
This cable reminds me of the characters of Eddie's system. I was surprised that his small Chopin can produce that level of bass (more bass than my Beethoven at that time, but not now!) and open sound stage, and yet with high musicality. I think Dalby did a great job on ELE as he really could catch the spirit of our good friend, though Chris said he didn't tell Dalby anything about Eddie's system.
Using this cable is not just a joy, but a good remembrance of our good friend, and his spirit in reaching audio ecstasy. You need some time to burn in or else it would sound a bit grainy on vocals, but once it is burned in, it stays and sings.
I am so lucky to have the 8th of 88 Eddie power cable from Dalby, i have to say it’s not that good in the beginning, this PC really needs to run in till at least 50 hours to reveal its true potential. this cable has good energy and very balanced sound, it’s not a type of cable just give you colours, but it gives you appropriate energy when it’s needed. I have the ode power edition, meda and Eddie for now, and I’m very satisfied with the result. Comparing to the entry level Meda, Eddie gives you more energy, and better bass support and neutral sound, it’s good to put in the very front end or the place you need a better bass support and neutral sound. Meda has a better musical approach comparing with Eddie and it gives you a very good texture in vocal which is the mid frequency, I think it’s a great pairing with Eddie(ELE) as well to archive both musical and energetic combination. i auditioned both meda and ELE before buying ELE, I think both cables are affordable and has its own value. Currently, I plug this ELE to the server end and meda to the LPS of my usb card, this creates a wide sound stage with the most attractive vocal sound I have ever archived in my system.
Every Dalby’s product has its own character and tone colour, of course the higher price one has higher quality in aspects like micro details , texture, quietness etc. But I have to say even the entry level Meda and Limited edition Eddie have its own attractiveness, it’s all about mix and match. I think it’s best to audition the ELE and Meda so you can get the idea how good both power cables perform and which suits your system better..
I completely agree with you Fred. I tried to use ELE to replace Meda on JMF transport, but it is a bit too powerful in my system, so I now use Meda on JMF Transport and ELE on Air One Preamp, my system now has both the elegance and power!
I got Dalby Eddie Limited PC which is number 8 out of 88 units around a week (30 hours) connecting Weiss DAC for Tidal's songs and some songs are stored in Fidata's NAS. Compared to my existing Viard PC that Eddie PC is truly more tonal-balanced with more energy on both L-M-H frequeny. I like this PC which is just good enough on musical if someone does frequently listening Tidal like me. I listened Jacky Cheung's Private Corner Mini Concert, Jacky's vocal became more solid with a nice mix of instruments from live band which is very precise and firmed in terms of energy and details. Expected Eddie PC will be tranformed better and better after fully burned-in.
Mr LeeDalby, Chris and Marvel, much thanks to bring Eddie PC to us.
Hello guys, so good to see many discussions. Had any of you experience the flagship Kyoku Power Cable and ground cable can do? Delivery of Dalby has been very slow this year. I am happy to see Lee Dalby has delivered this Eddie with good spirits behind.
Just auditioned ELE connecting Vertere SG-1 phono with Vertere record player and tonearm to listening “Diamonds and Rust in the Burllring” vinyl, before that ELE was connected to Weiss DAC with same songs in SSD in audio graded NAS, I found the special signature sound (very shiny and energetic with a lot of solid details if connecting with DAC) from ELE is down-graded in a very good level, this comes out other kinds of analog tone on my system which is very enjoyable.
Yesterday I took the ground cable to Roman's mega system to get a taste on how it would function under Cessaro Beethoven which is unforgivingly revealing and transparent especially under the fine tuning recently by Stirling.
Before connecting the Kyoku ground wire, Roman warmed us up with a round of music on his JMF 3.7 transport and Wadax Atlantis DAC. I am stunned by the widening of the soundstage way beyond my last visit ! The energy of the music pierce thru and resonate with my own body creating an intimate engagement with the music which I have never experienced before in Roman's system.
We took turn to connect the Kyoku ground to the Atlantis DAC and the Takumi MC1 phono when we listened to CD and vinyl respectively. Mind you that Roman has been using several Dalby Ode Grande ground wires and Tripoint special ground wires. Adding the Kyoku into the commando has heightened the transparency to the extent that we all felt the tonality has been scaled to much granularity creating a bigger contrast on dynamics. Energy of propagation is laser focused thus creating a stronger register when it reaches to our ears as though the sound volume has been tuned half a notch up.
As I mentioned in my Facebook report, the contribution of this ground cable is so significant that it really marked a new era in our battle with the ground noise! To those believers of ground noise mitigation, you need to invest on powerful ground wires such as this one to maximise the return in investing in a powerful ground box!
Comments
The Eddie Limited Edition (ELE) was recently introduced not falling into the normal production categories. For those who have visited AE Facebook today would have a better understanding of the background on the rationale behind. This is a cable with extreme reasonableness on performance and unreasonableness on pricing! Again the message in Facebook also explained that Lee Dalby is making a deficit in every single Eddie power cable he makes. The spirit of honouring the wish of our passed comrade, Eddie, is impeccable!
I plugged my ‘001 of 88’ in the JMF 3.7 Universal Player since May when I first received it.
Track 15, Theme from Schindler’s List in Mutter LIve, the hovering of the passion is constructed by respacing the timeliness of the chords in her own way different from many other violinists including the original player Perlman. Such ‘respacing’ details cannot be audible unless the background is extremely dark and noise is floored to the lowest level. The sorrow and hopelessness ascends along her performance till the final section of the track resulting in a breathlessly heavy feel.
Another piece is Fujiyama by Ondekoza. Track 5 (三国) Mikuni has a 15 second Japanese flute solo performance intertwined with lot of percussions and drums. A rich and complex piece of music with quite a contrasting transcription of different musical intruments. The ELE handles this very well with a very good control on both treble and bass compartments. The bass attack of the drum just storms through the lyrical extension of the flute without any ambiguity and muddling.
Suite Espanola by Albania needs no further introduction. The Spanish orchestral piece is rich in tonality, coloured and dance like. When using the ELE, images are focused with sharpened transients making the presentation very joyful and jumpy. Soundstage widened and deepened housing appropriately the different groups of instruments without clouding the spatial resolution. The eight pieces of music representing 8 different places in Spain completed with strands of colours and bouncy dynamics. I felt the 40min just gone much faster!
The third movement, the Wrath of the Yellow River in Yundi Red Piano SACD, is flooded with overwhelming waves of harmonics and melodic keystrokes by Li Yundi revealing the grandeur of the Yellow River and the roaring speed of the water flow followed by the 4th movement on Defend the Yellow River. ELE exhibited a tremendous control in speed and dynamics thus providing the exact spontaneity between the piano and the rest of the orchestra bringing climax after climax in the 4th movement. I really feel like navigating through this rough and roaring yellow river totally captivated by the rhythms of the performance!
Many of the people in HK enjoyed the comedy movie Kung Fu Hustle produced by Stephen Chow. He actually composed a short piece of introductory music for his movie and collected in the same titled CD. Tracks 1 & 2 would undoubtedly remind those who watched the movie on the orderly marching out of the gangsters called ‘The Axe Gang’. The momentum of the marching was rightly captured in the music and with ELE, the gradually growing sound pressure developed from far deep end to the front has a transcription really threatens my nerve like surrounded by a group of gangsters.
In summary, Dalby has overly achieved the design objectives outlined by PT with flying colours. My salute to LeeDalby who really makes Eddie’s dream comes true!
Marvel
The most obvious characters of this cables in my observation are:
- the air and extension of sound stage
- the richness in full range energy level especially bass energy
- the wider high low extension
ELE expanded the depth and width of my sound stage, with clearer contours developed further into the back wall. The air surrounding each note makes the whole atmosphere very lively and exciting.
When I listened to Beethoven 1st Piano Concerto by Giulini and Michelangeli, the piano obviously stands out with the whole piano body clearly rendered, with the orchestra spreading across the stage further behind. It is easy for us to render the horizontal image of a piano, but it is the first time that I can visualize the depth of the piano.
The energy level of this cable is huge, especially bass. This is very important especially for piano playbacks. The harmonics of trebles can easily go round my ears and fill up the whole listening room, making the performance more lively and real. The left hand of Michelangeli delivers powerful bass interlocking with the high notes to give me continuous excitement that I must put down my book and listen with full attention. I never had this feeling in this recording before when I was using Ode on preamp (Ode renders very beautiful treble but cannot match with the bass created by ELE). The ability to generate more energy allows ELE to create enough dynamics and also drama of a performance: the quiet passages more quiet and the powerful passages more powerful. This higher level of bass energy is very similar to adding a Xiang Xu subwoofer to the system: it forms a foundation to create a more 3D soundstage and enrich the colors of all frequencies.
The wider high low extensions of this cable can easily be audible that I could hear more treble and bass clearly, which makes the whole picture of performance extend further vertically, with enough resolution to render a fuller picture of the performance.
This cable reminds me of the characters of Eddie's system. I was surprised that his small Chopin can produce that level of bass (more bass than my Beethoven at that time, but not now!) and open sound stage, and yet with high musicality. I think Dalby did a great job on ELE as he really could catch the spirit of our good friend, though Chris said he didn't tell Dalby anything about Eddie's system.
Using this cable is not just a joy, but a good remembrance of our good friend, and his spirit in reaching audio ecstasy. You need some time to burn in or else it would sound a bit grainy on vocals, but once it is burned in, it stays and sings.
this cable has good energy and very balanced sound, it’s not a type of cable just give you colours, but it gives you appropriate energy when it’s needed.
I have the ode power edition, meda and Eddie for now, and I’m very satisfied with the result.
Comparing to the entry level Meda, Eddie gives you more energy, and better bass support and neutral sound, it’s good to put in the very front end or the place you need a better bass support and neutral sound.
Meda has a better musical approach comparing with Eddie and it gives you a very good texture in vocal which is the mid frequency, I think it’s a great pairing with Eddie(ELE) as well to archive both musical and energetic combination.
i auditioned both meda and ELE before buying ELE, I think both cables are affordable and has its own value.
Currently, I plug this ELE to the server end and meda to the LPS of my usb card, this creates a wide sound stage with the most attractive vocal sound I have ever archived in my system.
Every Dalby’s product has its own character and tone colour, of course the higher price one has higher quality in aspects like micro details , texture, quietness etc. But I have to say even the entry level Meda and Limited edition Eddie have its own attractiveness, it’s all about mix and match. I think it’s best to audition the ELE and Meda so you can get the idea how good both power cables perform and which suits your system better.
絶對同意，煲咗兩星後，聲音比起初自然，與價錢相約嘅dalby Meda power cord 相比，Meda 比較柔情一點，高頻亦相對柔順，但能量、爆發力同分析力，Eddie 都在Meda 之上，我將Meda 放transport，Eddie 放DAC，平衡度相當好，Eddie 能夠補償咗Meda 中低能量嘅不足，非常滿意
I got Dalby Eddie Limited PC which is number 8 out of 88 units around a week (30 hours) connecting Weiss DAC for Tidal's songs and some songs are stored in Fidata's NAS. Compared to my existing Viard PC that Eddie PC is truly more tonal-balanced with more energy on both L-M-H frequeny. I like this PC which is just good enough on musical if someone does frequently listening Tidal like me. I listened Jacky Cheung's Private Corner Mini Concert, Jacky's vocal became more solid with a nice mix of instruments from live band which is very precise and firmed in terms of energy and details. Expected Eddie PC will be tranformed better and better after fully burned-in.
Learner.
ELE跟Meda在不同系統或器材的配合會有不同的效果 所以也要看口味和需求
https://www.facebook.com/260116924097830/posts/2233237236785779/
Yesterday I took the ground cable to Roman's mega system to get a taste on how it would function under Cessaro Beethoven which is unforgivingly revealing and transparent especially under the fine tuning recently by Stirling.
Before connecting the Kyoku ground wire, Roman warmed us up with a round of music on his JMF 3.7 transport and Wadax Atlantis DAC. I am stunned by the widening of the soundstage way beyond my last visit ! The energy of the music pierce thru and resonate with my own body creating an intimate engagement with the music which I have never experienced before in Roman's system.
We took turn to connect the Kyoku ground to the Atlantis DAC and the Takumi MC1 phono when we listened to CD and vinyl respectively. Mind you that Roman has been using several Dalby Ode Grande ground wires and Tripoint special ground wires. Adding the Kyoku into the commando has heightened the transparency to the extent that we all felt the tonality has been scaled to much granularity creating a bigger contrast on dynamics. Energy of propagation is laser focused thus creating a stronger register when it reaches to our ears as though the sound volume has been tuned half a notch up.
As I mentioned in my Facebook report, the contribution of this ground cable is so significant that it really marked a new era in our battle with the ground noise! To those believers of ground noise mitigation, you need to invest on powerful ground wires such as this one to maximise the return in investing in a powerful ground box!
Roman, Dynamic, please share your views on Kyoku.
Marvel