Based on their pricing and their uniqueness, a few days ago, I bought a pair of Fideliums to trial. They’re competition were Nordost Tyr II’s and Iconoclast (by Belden) -- an OFE wire pair and a SPTPC wire pair. Along with the Fidelium’s, these 3 were unowned audition pairs. My previous Synergistic Research “Absolute Reference” cables developed a short, so I was in need of speaker cables.
Long story short, the Fidelium's are keepers, by comparison, the other’s aren’t. There were NO readily apparent, significantly obvious differences between the cables frequency response wise. Perhaps with more extended A/B testing, I might have had an all-around frequency winner, but I didn’t care, because I heard sounds coming from a blackness the others didn’t possess! That was the 1st. positive that immediately stuck me. The 2nd positive was an overall smoothness that was immediately apparent. Perhaps that was attributed to how the note's leading & trailing edges were handled, or to a lack of distortion, I’m not sure exactly why, nor do I care, because it was out of the norm, appreciated and immediately preferred over the other cables. Both of these attributes were niceties with the price of $1,195 (8-ft pair) being even nicer, when compared to the ~$5k Nordost and ~$2 & 2.5k Iconoclast. As such, I too am looking forward to a potential Jeffrey Smith Interconnect.
My pocketbook will be opened, because my hat is tipped to Mr. Smith. It’s nice to see an inventively designed product that performs well above its price point and there is no inclusion of magic boxes (fore & aft, &/or plugged into the mains etc.), mysterious fluid fillings, magnetic this or that, quantum tunneling, cryogenic treatments etc. Of course the same could be said for the other cables I trialed, especially the Iconoclast's whose design philosophy is well publicized and widely discussed.
By the way: My front-end is a dCS Rossini DAC; amplification is Atma-sphere MA-1 OTL monoblocks and SoundLab Majestic 845 full-range Electrostatic speakers.
