KLE Bartime RCA Plugs
I have been a long time user of Townshend Isolda DCT300 IC’s and Isolda Speakers Cables, feeling like the well know reviewer Jason Kennedy from the-ear-net, that they are about as good as it gets. But curiosity got the better of me. After successfully trying the very good Katoen IC from Elijah Audio, I still wasn’t completely satisfied.
Thankfully I stumbled onto KLEI (Keith Louis Eichmann Innovations). Most of us have heard of KL (Keith Louis Eichmann) and his famous Bullet plugs. He also took a foray into cable making and has recently formed a new venture called KLEInnovations(KLEI). Now I must admit that I am not technically savvy enough to understand the reasoning and science behind his newest KLEI Harmony RCA Plugs and KLEI Essence®gZero Cables, but I am grateful that I have good enough ears to hear what they can do to your system.
Cable skeptics can stop reading now but may I suggest you let your ears do the thinking for a while.
The cables arrived and upon opening the package I found some rather light weight, unassuming cables. Both IC and SC are hardly the eye-candy that so many crazily priced cables come packaged in and presented as. Yes they are well made but hardly woo you with their appearance. The pictures on the website hardly do justice to how unsubstantial they look, but then of course looks can be deceiving. And that’s just the way it turned out.
The Sound
I will only inform you on the sound of the cables together, linking my Ayon CD5s to my Vitus RI-100 integrated connected to Magico S1s.
After allowing the cables to settle in and playing them for 20 hours without listening (KLEI had previously burned in the cables for me, which is not something KLEI usually provide) I gave them my first serious listen.
- The level of resolution and transparency was sensational, especially so as this new level of resolution and transparency did not come with any etch or brightness.
- Now I have never thought of cables (being passive devices) having distortion, yet what I was hearing sounded as if a whole level of distortion was removed and I was gazing into a perfectly clear and clean window into the music.
- Bass is substantial, but more importantly imbued with notes, shape and texture.
- The top end is clean as a whistle, open and free.
- The midrange pure and beguiling.
- Human voices sounding so real, and instruments have natural and true timbre.
- They have helped create an even greater three dimensional space, opening a larger, wider and deeper soundstage than before, in which instruments are clearly delineated in their own acoustic space, yet not in a simple two dimensional cardboard cut-out way, but much more three dimensional, with genuine body and air.
- And despite being able to spotlight each individual instrument, yet the music flows as a whole.
Conclusion
How do you sum these up? You could say neutral, but that is a much misused word and can often mean bland and lifeless. This is not so at all with the KLEIs. I would sum them up as truthful, a beautiful open conduit for the music to flow from and through ones equipment.
Well done KL, in some ways you are a veritable genius to provide cables of this quality and the price asked.
Which brings me to the really good news. The combined price of these cables is substantially less than my previous favourites, the Townshends. Better still they are substantially less pricey than nearly all the esoteric cables out there. In fact, they are a bargain.
Of course I haven’t heard every cable and cable combination in my system. I have however had Townshend, Stereovox, ASI Liveline, Cardas, Grover Huffman, Siltech, Analysis Plus, Anti-Cables, others I can’t remember that well, as well as a combination of home-made cables in my systems over the years, and I can’t ever remember a cable loom leaving such a profound and positive impression on me as have these KLEIs.
Well done!
Please note that I have no commercial interest in KLEI.
Detlev Vosgerau
