MIT Oracle V1.3 HR Speaker Interface And Oracle Matrix 50 Proline XLR Review

Conclusion

If there is one thing I want you to come away with after reading this article, it is how the majority of us are negligent in our cable needs.

To put this into perspective, I think it takes a good deal of confidence for any company to introduce a cable that costs over $10,000 and yet is just a simple set of conductors with varying choices of dielectric or winding geometry. There is only so much that a wire with no circuitry augmentation can do, and oftentimes it’s the pricing of some of these products that are turning even the most ardent audiophiles away. In retrospect, if we were to grade the performance potential of these cables by price, then I’m sure some of the $10k+ varieties will be on most everyone’s list of “must haves”. But once we step into the elite category, the rate of diminishing return kicks in overdrive. The point is, very few of us have the finance and the concrete need to spend the handsome sum, and even MIT has plenty of sub-$10,000 network designs that will blow your mind. I auditioned the $14,999 Oracle HD 100 and V1.2 speaker interface before the V1.3 HR, and each ascension in model yielded improved performance; but I could be perfectly happy with the Oracle HD 100 for what it offered. However, I suggest that you don’t try the Oracle V1.3 HR in your system until you are financially prepared. The Oracle V1.3 HR are the catalyst in reference system building, more than any other interface I’ve ever auditioned.

Year after year and decade after decade, we are presented incremental advancements in alleged cable technologies by the audio industry. Configuration geometry, insulation material and metallurgical formulae are the three main themes tackled by major cable manufacturers constantly. Once in a while, we marvel at the beauty of the newly patented packaging and itch to be able to showcase them to our friends. For the Dagogo reader with large, disposable income looking to invest colossally on speaker cables in a system of exceeding excellence, the MIT Oracle V1.3HR is the most assuring choice in my opinion.

For readers already entrenched with cables of other makes costing over $20,000, I believe the strong performance of the Oracle V1.3 HR will surprise even them. It is expensive and performs as such. I think the perfect candidate for the speaker interface is the audiophile who loves his expensive speakers, feels the need to upgrade but already replaced his former electronics with the best he could find. To this reader, I say step back, try out the Oracle V1.3 HR, for it may just make your speakers sound like new, like you’ve never heard it before in your life. A $20,000 cable without the network now seems too expensive and too simplistic to me.

The Oracle V1.3 HR could be the answer to audiophiles looking for an unprecedented breakthrough in performance, but it is most definitely a conduit to more musical encounters. I predominantly prefer orchestral and piano works in my reviews for the demand they put on systems, and on heavy rotations are consistently select discs from the remastered Deutsche Grammophon digital recordings from the eighties, audiophile-grade RCA Victor piano recordings within the past decade, Telarcs, the now-defunct Nimbus and even a few Philips, Decca London and RCA Living Stereos. Because of the MIT, the listenable discs have increased. The shocking discovery is that despite all the years in reviewing, the cables in my system has remained the weakest link; and once remedied, the dry and flat-sounding discs took on a sparkle and dynamics that made them considerably more listenable. So more listening, less writing. Just kidding.

From customers in the U.S. and afar, to companies like Magico and Spectral that uses MIT Cables as their reference system, it seems more people put their trust in this company’s top products than any other cable manufacturer. While this review is about the most expensive model being offered in MIT’s online channel, let’s not dismiss the many affordable models in its catalog as well. For even the lower-priced cables are the beneficiaries of the development and revenue generated by sales of their big brothers, such as the $6,249-per-pair Oracle Matrix 50 Proline, which was able to increase the level of realism of music in my system nonetheless. I believe that for a sub-$10,000 system and the level of resolution inherent at the price point, even the Magnum M3.3 balanced interconnect at $2,299 with eighteen articulation poles is untouchable.

Illustrating further, in 2007 and 2010 respectively, Dagogo Senior Reviewers Doug Schroeder and Ed Momkus investigated MIT’s more affordable AVt MA and MA-X range of MIT cables and found definitive results. In his 2007 AVt MA Review, Doug remarked on the AVt MA interconnect, which has six poles of articulation and now priced at $899, that, “No matter which pre/amp/integrated I used them on, the ultimate performance took place when the interconnect was set to the destination component’s input impedance.” Note that even the technological level offered by the AVt MA was at the top of the company’s offering once. I am looking forward to MIT continuing its decades-old practice of exploring newer technologies in its top offerings while incorporating the older ones in a slim-down package at affordable prices.

Elite products are necessary in every industry for the sake of industrial advancement, but there is a real lack of companies producing affordable and yet high-performance products in the audio industry. MIT flourishes because it was at the right time at the right place in the beginning, having spearheaded the cable industry in the 80s and was able to grow with newer, better products in all performance and price points without forgetting its early-year customers.

The first and foremost advice I give to readers consistently is to try components in your system before slamming and dismissing it in forums. You may have read about the glory of a CD player or the failings of a speaker system, but each one of us, reviewers included, all formulate our opinion in the context of our own system. All of us must try products in our own system to understand their sonic characteristics, and to see if they are compatible with our preference. In the case of the Oracle V1.3 HR, be sure that your digital front-end or analog source is of the highest caliber, for it makes the most difference in determining the caliber of the entire system, as well as potential compatibility with the MIT.

Audiophiles tend to avoid addressing the most overlooked element in our audio system: cabling. While many of us do consider investing in cables with the same zeal as we do with, say, a digital player or amplifier, we often hesitate at the last moment and cut the original budget down to a much smaller amount. Let’s not even get into the frequency with which we change our equipment. Yet, there is little doubt what inferior cable choices would do to an otherwise high-end audio system.

That said, my auditioning of the MIT Oracle V1.3HR speaker interface and Oracle Matrix 50 Proline XLR highlighted the performance envelope-pushing nature of the cables. It is a given that such products demanded accompaniment of top electronics, as lesser source and amplification equipment would produce comparatively limited amount of information for these exquisite cables to work on, not to mention exposure of the lesser electronics in their compromised sound. Still, for the purpose of this review, budget components were experimented with the MIT cables, and I was surprised by how much more listenable those system sounded, even when a mere sub-$2,000 digital front-end was used. In this regard, I found the MIT network cables to possess a most prominent trait of being considerably more forgiving and yet persistently musical than non-network designs of other makes, even when confronted by severely outclassed electronics. Conversely, if one were to consider use of the likes of the MIT Oracle series of cable systems, one should not persist at using far inferior products and should instead allot more of the funds towards a more competent source and amplification system, even at the prospect of cutting investments in the MITs for a less ambitious model in the product line.

The Oracle V1.3HR is so definitive in its performance level that I can’t imagine how much further Bruce can push the envelope. Still, it would be just like when we first heard exceptional digital playback and couldn’t imagine how it could be bettered, I’m sure Bruce and his team will unravel a new dimension in sound we have yet to experience and understand. Should any one of you encounter cable systems of other make costing even more than the MIT Oracle V1.3HR, I would very much appreciate it if you would give me a holler, for I can’t imagine a wire, however exotic in its metallurgical makeup, geometric configuration and packaging, could sound better than the high-tech MIT without its network technology.

The MIT Oracle V1.3HR is my reference speaker cable system.

Epilogue

The following response from Gavin Fish, formerly of MIT, offered an idea of the depth and extent of the work of Bruce Brisson: “If you’ll remember, there was no high end cable industry before Bruce licensed his technology to Monster Cable. Licensing of that technology to Monster brought the first purposefully built audio cable, Interlink Reference. That PATENTED cable, was the cable that started the high end cable industry because everyone could hear the difference. Along with Interlink Reference, Bruce also licensed such cables to Monster Cable as Powerline and Powerline 2, as well as Interlink 2 and Interlink 4. Those were the first cables that could easily be recognized as improving the sound of an audio system so drastically that they could command prices of several hundred dollars or more. Later, after Bruce had completed his consulting job with Monster and founded MIT Cables, his improved technologies were soon found in such products as MI-330 Shotgun and MH-750 Shotgun. Products such as those commanded thousands of dollars because the improvement was so significant.

In the early days of high end audio cables many people asked Bruce why some cables have more bass, or more highs than others? Bruce always responded by saying, “If you look at the bandwidth of an audio signal, there is a bandwidth of frequencies which one can optimize. One can move this articulation envelope up or down the frequency range, but one can’t optimize all frequencies with just cable.” Questions like, “Why can’t we optimize the audio signal passing through the cables throughout the entire audio bandwidth?” prompted MIT’s first attempt to solve this problem, which was called Multi Bandwidth Technology. This technology used multiple pathways within the cable itself to optimize both the high frequencies and the low frequencies. After continual and careful study, and after several years, Bruce made another breakthrough. We called this new breakthrough Multipole Technology, which creates multiple Poles of Articulation (instead of multiple pathways) to optimize the entire frequency span between 20Hz and 20kHz (and higher in our Reference Products).

At that time, the question became, “If I were to add additional optimization using Multipole Technology, where along the audio span would be the best place to put those ‘poles?’” After a lot of study as well as consulting with many very knowledgeable people (including audio engineers and musicians), he decided that he’d place those Articulation Poles at the octaves, which were frequencies that are pleasing, or consonant, to the ear. The application of this decision became known as MIT’s Oracle Technology! Oracle products were first released in the year 2000. Oracle Technology resulted in a much wider bandwidth.

Over the next six years, Bruce worked to improve on Oracle Technology by adding additional poles of articulation, optimizing the first seven harmonics of each octave. As a result of this work, timber was more correct, the soundstage rendering was larger, more lifelike, and more proportional. The images gained a renewed sense of three-dimensionality with each voice emanating from within the soundstage. This technology was called Maximum Articulation, or MA. It was released in 2006.

Bruce released his latest breakthrough, and the one I was speaking about specifically, called Fractional Articulation Technology in 2010. F.A.T. is a high resolution technology that optimizes the cable’s ability to store and release energy within each octave by focusing on the consonant intervals of each octave, which are notes of music that musicians use to form chords. The result is yet another increase in timbre, much greater density of textures, increased low level detail which is heard as very defined micro imaging within the soundstage. He’s truly created the world’s only high resolution audio interface.”