Hello, What' Best Gang,
This is my very first time writing on this forum, and I wanted to just share my thoughts on the Lanedri Spectra series Infinity (Sablon Prince) AC cord. I originally told Anas Lanedri that I wanted to hold off on my comments until my review but gave it a second thought since he was so gracious enough to send me the Spectra Infinity to audition. I'm awaiting the Ultimatum speaker cables, which are scheduled to arrive next week. Truth is, I wanted to write on both but guess I should, at the very least, share some of my experiences here. I've learned very quickly to stay off forums (like these) due to the number of armchair skeptics circulating on forums who tell others what they're hearing without ever hearing the product or even knowing what it is. Hence my hesitation. Since joining this forum, I see there's not too much of that going on here, so I'm going to share my experiences.
I can guess there must be about 200-plus hours now on the Lanedri Infinity AC cord. Having the QSA Gold series fuses in my space has lifted my system to heights I did not think attainable without possibly changing a major component. I've written about this at length with respect to my reviews of the QSA products, namely their Red, Red/Black, and Silver series fuses. There must be nearly a dozen contributors on The Stereo Times who use QSA exclusively in their systems, albeit the lower-priced products, which also have great bang for the buck!
I continually doubted the performance of every fuse that is produced by QSA since the Violet was their top-of-the-line. I am proud to report that I have been proven wrong for three years straight with each new product. The Gold series QSA fuses, now the new reference, are hard to fathom in terms of asking price, but I'll be damned if they don't lift the system's overall musicality to unheard-of levels. The word that continues to come to mind for me is DENSITY. Instruments sound more authentically rich and palpable in a far more 3-dimensional hemisphere. The term richer usually is accompanied by a richer or thicker low-end, but the Gold series QSA tightens the low-end, speeds up transient snap, gives it far more punch and power, and produces far greater pRAT. It took the usual 300 hours before the system started sounding its best, but when it did...all I can say is, WTF is going on here? The jump from Silver to Gold is huge, huge, huge.
Of course, the price is prohibitively expensive, but I'll never be able to say it isn't worth it.
Personally, for me, there's nothing like having a system you chose carefully over many years. That you love and admire, and it somehow improves dramatically beyond anything you could have imagined just by tweaking it out with QSA products. The face of my system looks unchanged, yet it sounds dramatically different.
I spoke briefly with Anas Lanedri many months ago before he decided to partner with QSA. Knowing what I know about the QSA performance, I'll say it was a very calculated and ingenious move, especially since I have in my possession the Lanedri Spectra Infinity AC cord.
On first blush, I wasn't too taken by it its initial performance, although a much quieter AC cord than any other I had heard in my upstairs rig (Behold BPA768 electronics, Sunny Supreme horn loudspeakers, Laufer Teknik 32-core Memory Player, Hemingway speaker cables; Bella Sound, M101 and NanoFlo AC cords). Plugged into a heavily modified (QSA Silver) Puritan model 1512 AC conditioner, the Spectra Infinity seemed to take a lot of the dimensionality, air, and delicacy away. In a word, way too restricted. This only meant one thing: Burn-in. So, I left the system on for the next 72 hours, and I noticed some sonic restrictions lift whenever I came up to peek my head in the room, but it still did not sound as good as it did prior to its arrival. The only meant the burn-in was going to get long and ugly (much like when I first installed the QSA Gold duplex). Fast forward to 200-plus hours later, and I write this with my head spinning. Not just because it sounds so utterly delightful but because of the dreaded length of time it takes to really strut its stuff.
Once again, like the Gold fuses, the sense of DENSITY is improved upon greatly, but this time, it also brings along SCALE. Dynamics go higher and lower with naturalness and zero exaggeration (horns perhaps lend to this too). Separation is quite enhanced and something I never thought could - or even thought needed improvement. If you love classic jazz from the 60s as much as I do, then you can only imagine how appreciative I am about the improved discernment of musicians to the left and right of the soundstage.
The ability to comprehend complex passages is never more realized than through the Spectra Infinity. There's an unmistakable increase in the overall muscularity of the music, and yet it is delivered without being devoid of delicacy. My system is totally solid-state and digital in its makeup, yet it doesn't sound like a solid-state system driven by a digitally-based music server. That is the greatest virtue one can offer if you ask me. I have an Audio Note system (amp and speakers) in my downstairs rig, and it is tube-based and sounds absolutely heavenly. But it's only 20 watts, and I just need much more than that to feel bathed in the music in the manner that suits this listener. Hence why I have two rigs.
I was never able to achieve that harmonic truth of timbre with my upstairs rig, although I was making great strides since investing in QSA products over the past three years. With the Spectra Infinity series AC cord now inhouse, I feel, for the first time, that I have a solid-state system that not just mimics the harmonic richness, spatial continuity, and tonal authenticity of my downstairs rig but does it without any of its shortcomings (soft bass and only decent bass control). Sacrilege as it may be to compare the two, I've always used Audio Note (UK) and Audio Consulting of Switzerland, just to name two, as a reference for harmonic truthfulness and top-shelf artistic engagement in their respective craft. How absurd is it to say that can be achieved with carefully chosen solid-state gear and a digital front-end when infused with a QSA|Lanedri collaboration? Needless to say, the Lanedri Spectra Infinity AC cord was purchased and now resides in my upstair rig wearing the crown of my new reference AC power cord!
Clement Perry
www.whatsbestforum.com
www.qsa-lanedri.com
