But that’s just wrong!

I work for NuForce. I am reporting on a NuForce product. (Again.) If you are able to proceed with your disdain in abeyance, I’ll share a confidence. I told my boss, Jason Lim, that were I to find the Magic Cube unremarkable, I’d refrain from writing about it. Call it ethics out of left field. Or outer space.

Just so you know: reviewers to whom editors issue assignments are likelier to turn thumbs down on occasion, as I did when I covered music for Fanfare, a print bi-monthly. Reviewers who evaluate items of their own choosing are less likely to pan them. And so it goes here, where negative reviews are as rare as snow leopards.

Whatever, life’s too short for cheap scotch and shitty audio. In this listener’s opinion, in the realm of tweaks, the Cube is as at least as potent a contributor to sweet-spot happiness as Acoustic Revive’s RR-77 Schumann Resonance Generator, about which I’ve rhapsodized at every opportunity.

Weird science on the march!

So then, without parroting the entirety of Frank Alles’s report (here), I will repeat at least that the Cube’s innards, otherwise known as the Smith Cell, address distortions amplifier / speaker cable / speaker interactions create. Who knew? Bob Smith, the Smith Cell’s eponym, invokes Spintronics, which, in a different setting, I’d have taken for an adman’s coinage. Vacuum cleaners come to mind. In the event, the term’s on the level. Wikipedia identifies Spintronics as a bona fide aspect of quantum mechanics, and my eyes are crossing.

(Audio is not without its cloak-and-dagger aspect. In the matter of keep-your-damned-nose-out-of-my-secrets, by encapsulating his crossovers like insects in amber, Dave Wilson thwarts copycats. Bob Smith and Jason Lim also play their cards close to the vest. The Magic Cube is similarly sealed. I tried to open one. Couldn’t.)

Is anybody listening?

Before we get down to meat and potatoes, a nod to miscommunication. In pursuit of uniformity, I requested NuForce speaker cables: two sets, the first pair to run from my NuForce Reference 9 V3SE mono amps to the Cubes’ inputs, the shorter pair from the Cubes’ outputs to my Wilson Sasha W/P pair. FedEx delivered a flyweight carton containing a pair of skimpy jumpers for bridging the divide ’twixt Wilsons and Cubes. For the present, my Acoustic Revive cables remain in place, with said skimpy jumpers completing the linkage.

Delighted as I was by how my system performed, I lamented for lamentation’s sake. Bob Smith comforted. He contends that the Cubes can make even lamp cord, which, heftwise, the jumpers resemble, sound better than high-end speaker cable. Given what I’ve been hearing, I won’t argue the point, and I understand that the NuForce cables I asked for are (maybe) en route. Meanwhile, avanti!

Problem, corrected

When I first installed the Cubes I kept one set of the AudioQuest Ground Controls I recently covered at the Wilsons’ negative binding posts – and heard a problem. Matters improved markedly when I removed that GC pair. For whatever reason, Ground Controls and Magic Cubes shouldn’t share terminals. The Ground Controls at the NuForce Reference 9V3SE mono amps and Aurum Acoustics Integris CDP remain, doing their ameliorative thing.

A sweeter sweet spot

Gypsy Folk Songs from Hungary, performed by Kalyi Jag (Black Fire), is a 1990 analog original I’ve enjoyed for years (Hungariton HCD 18199). This is the disc that impelled me to remove the Wilsons’ Ground Controls. Once the Cubes operated on their own, my concentration swiftly engaged –– pretty close to a slap in the head. I heard straightaway a heightened sense of dimension, texture and location. My first thought: it’s as if a weight were lifted. Bob Smith contends that the Cubes require little, if any, burn-in time. Seems to be the case so far. And those skimpy jumpers are still in play.

Half a loaf

Requested cables arrived, after a fashion. A pair of NuForce speaker cables correctly terminated for the Cube-to-Wilson linkup replaces the skimpies. Am I hearing a difference? Perhaps. I’m playing, as I write, the second disc of the Opus 50 set of Tacet’s Haydn string quartet series, with the remarkably fine Auryn String Quartet and am especially aware of a better textured cello and sweeter first violin.

A brief return to the dark side

My Acoustic Revive speaker cables are terminated in spades. While waiting for the amps-to-Cubes NuForce cables to show up at the kitchen door, I removed the Cubes and ran my Acoustic Revive cables directly to the speakers. With a Linn CD-compatible SACD demo disc as my basis for comparison, I spent most of my time with a nicely recorded movement from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (violin, clarinet, cello and piano – a work the French composer wrote in a German POW camp). No contest. What I heard closely mimicked the Kalyi Jag CD. With the Cubes removed, the image lost depth and a sense of lifelike space and texture. For one example among several, where the clarinet in the Messiaen stands fleshed out via the Cubes, with them out of the mix, it melds with a deflated, less dimensional, less engaging spread.

It was at about this juncture in my listening and fussing that I emailed Bob Smith, requesting a little background. Here’s his response. I admire the candor: “I used to be a hard-nose, cables-make-no-difference type until I heard what a disparity an IC can create when it’s reversed. I had to understand what was going on. I experimented and actually heard differences in metals too, mostly with respect to my speaker designs. I started digging into everything I could find. (For a detailed exegesis, see here)

“Trying to think of what might affect phonon modulation, I checked out several products that had been creating a buzz among audiophiles and failed to detect an audible difference. I recalled another bit of buzz about applying magnets to cables and concluded that forcing speaker currents through magnets has its downside. De-magnetize the magnet and what you have is a slug of ferrous material with all of its concomitant hysteresis and saturation effects producing distortion. Not an option.
“But what if there were a way to get the magnetic field to interact with metal without forcing the current through it directly? Normally, if you so much as run a wire alongside a piece of steel, the current’s magnetic field will induce a magnetic field in the steel. That’s how transformers work, except that they use multiple turns of wire coiled around a steel core to enhance the effect.
“And then I came up with what I thought might be a solution, the particulars of which will have to remain with me. The Smith Cell induces a magnetic field into the conductor, and yet the conductor’s current flow –– two different things – does not induce a magnetic field into the magnet. Metal phonons and conducting electrons line up with the field of the magnet – in other words, spin polarize – whereas the electrons’ motion through the conductor and the subsequent magnetic field it produces do not interact. And there’s the key: they do not interact.
“My eureka moment looked great on paper, but I still had my doubts. Since nothing in the Smith Cell’s construction is capable of inflicting harm, I built one and listened. The thing actually worked!
“I called Jason Lim. No way could I produce Smith Cells in numbers capable of taking off. A pair of prototypes later, Jason offered me a job. So here I am and there they are. I guess guys like you will be writing the rest of the story. Can you imagine? I honestly didn’t think the Smith Cell would do anything at all, no less actually work. But it does, and I couldn’t be more pleased.”

In times past, he’d be a candidate for an auto da fe!

Bob Smith’s NuForce connection traces back to the S-9 and S-1 speakers. Thus his contacting Jason first. Under Smith’s own Aether Audio aegis, Bob produces the Black Box, the Magic Cube’s price-no-object equivalent, a pair at a time, according to demand. (Frank Alles mentions this in his Magic Cube evaluation.) I may have a Black Box pair to write about when Bob gets around to it. Meanwhile, I’m impressed all to hell by what two Magic Cubes accomplish. I think this guy may just be a genius.


The NuForce suite is complete. Wish I could say as much for myself

It’s been a busy couple of days.

The NuForce speaker cables having replaced my Acoustic Revives, the imp within inspired me to replace my power cords and interconnects with Nordost Vishnu and Brahma power cords, four and one respectively, and the Valhalla balanced interconnects I’ve had on hand for several years. Whenever I return the Valhallas to the system I’m impressed anew by their transparency and resolution.

So then, peripherals include two BlackNoise line filters, Modelo 2500 and Modelo Extreme (Systems & Magic imports from Italy NuForce distributes in the US); AudioPrism Ground Controls in the amps and CDP (see my Ground Control comments); Acoustic Revive RR-77 Schumann Resonance Generator atop a tall book tower, and an Acoustic Revive RD-3 Disc Demagnetizer and RIO-5 II Negative Ion Generator on a small cabinet flanking the couch.

Normally, when I put fresh cables in the system I’m obliged to sit out a period in which they sound a wee bit thick and congested. I have the impression that the Magic Cubes make a lengthy – and inevitably irritating – cable burn-in unnecessary. The NuForce speaker cables sounded optimal from the outset. (The Nordost power cords and interconnects have had enough prior use to make burn-in necessary.) In Bob Smith’s opinion, apart from a cable’s insulation, which may or may not require some maturation, the Magic Cube precludes a need for metal burn-in. And I do believe that to be the case, at least in my limited experience.

But this too has to be said. As impressed as I am by the Magic Cubes, I’m obliged to mention that when I turned off the RR-77, I noticed a loss of dimension and liveliness. The same goes for the Ground Controls. Something went missing. These tweaks would appear to work in concert. With everything doing its part, I’m especially taken with the sonic image’s dimensionality, vigor and harmonic detail.

Finally, what difference would I notice if I removed the Cubes-to-speakers NuForce cables and replaced them with the skimpy jumpers I groused about earlier? With Stravinsky’s Scherzo à la russe, performed by the (conductorless) Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon 289 453 458-2, as my test track, skimpy jumpers now in place, I detected a small degree of coarseness. They’ve been banished to the attic.

Plug-in filters

   

The consumer has a choice of three optional plug-in filter pairs: the MC-SCTL for low-output-impedance tube amps, the MC-SCHT for high-output-impedance tube amps, and the MC-SCSS for low-output-impedance solid-state amps. The MC-SCSS filters NuForce sent me to check out and which I’m using at present seem not to make a significant difference. Here, the company’s 30-day-return policy makes especially good sense.

Conclusion

Wow.

***
NuForce
382 South Abbott Avenue
Milpitas, CA 95035
www.nuforce.com
salesteam@nuforce.com
Online Store: directsales@nuforce.com
Phone 408 890 6840
Fax 408 262 6877

Magic Cube, $249 each
Optional plug-in filters, $49.95 each
30-day trial period
Warranty, 3 years