The Web that binds us
It never ceases to amaze me how much the internet has made our world smaller. Through networks such as Tweeter, Facebook and LinkedIn, I have been able to connect with professional colleagues, high-school sweethearts and probably every former boss I’ve ever had.

But it has also brought me deeper into the world of high-end audio. These days, I probably have more interaction with audiophiles, designers, and manufacturers of high-end components who are based outside of the U.S. than at any time during the twenty-plus years that I’ve been involved in this hobby. Usually these connections come from my browsing websites for reports on shows like the Festival Son & Image in Montreal and the High End show in Munich. I’m always looking for an exciting new company who has a unique product to bring to the audiophile marketplace.

But in February of this year I received an email from someone named Lennarth and the subject of the email simply read, “HI FI.” The email consisted of nothing more than a hyperlink that said, www.Entreq.com. Now usually when I receive such emails the results are me having to take my PC into the Best Buy “Geek Squad” to have a bunch of viruses removed from my hard drive. Instead, this link to me to the website of a Swedish cable company that actually was called Entreq. Initially, I just took a quick look at the Entreq website and just decided, “Great, just what the world needs, another cable company.” But a few weeks later I received another email from Lennarth, but this time the subject line read, “Natural Materials in New Swedish High-End Cables.” Again, the message only consisted of a link to the Entreq website, but this time I wanted to know more about the “natural materials” that these cables were using.

Per-Olof Friberg

I’ve come to know a few cable designers over the years and they usually get into the business because they feel as though they can bring something different to the audiophile marketplace. For some it’s cryogenic cable treatment, for others it’s using a different wire twisting geometry, and for others it’s things like combining pure silver and 99.999999% oxygen-free, continuous cast copper. Per-Olof Friberg, the man behind the Entreq cables took a somewhat different path. “I’m a farmer,” Friberg told me through an email. “I was born on a farm and have always worked on one.” Friberg’s interest in music and electronics began when he was a boy. He bought his first stereo in April of 1973. “I’ll never forget it,” said Friberg. “It was a Philips cassette deck with 5w amp and speakers rated at 15w. I worked for over a year and saved my money to buy it and thought I was the luckiest boy in the world.”

Over the years, many other electronics have visited Friberg’s home and his interest in improving the quality of his system’s sound grew. He began manufacturing system tweeks called “Vibbeaters” and “Apparatus Feet,” which I will go more into later, but eventually, he rather hesitantly got into designing cables. “I swore I would never work on cables because so many already exist,” said Friberg. “I thought only a fool could try to reach the market with another cable. But I had some ideas that I couldn’t get out of my mind. It wasn’t that I thought everyone else built them wrong, I felt they missed some important things.” So Friberg began testing some of his ideas and well, here we are.

    

Friberg’s ideas had mostly to do with the use of natural materials. On his speaker cables and interconnects, he uses copper wire and proprietary connectors made of 18K gold and fine silver. All Entreq cables are wrapped in a natural-colored cotton fabric. This desire to use natural materials with excellent mechanical properties led to another interesting design choice. “We use beechwood that has been stored for more than 45 years,” says Friberg. “We discovered that not even the Teflon that we initially used was free of creep currents and static electricity, so the choice fell on wood.” The beechwood was originally used to build Friberg’s parent’s house and later was stored and eventually used as the housing for the Entreq cable connectors.

 

Entreq makes five lines of cables ranging from the entry-level Basic, to the cost-no-object Supreme. In the Supreme, Friberg removed the plastic parts typically used in ordinary cable connectors and replaced them with flax. That’s right, flax. “Flax is a natural material with amazing properties,” says Friberg. The Discover 09, Konstantin 09, and Challenger 09, round out the Entreq designs. This is a review of the Konstantin 09 cables.