The Review System
I recently reviewed Sablon’s remarkable Panatela interconnects. When possible, I most often use the same cables throughout my system, so for this review I hooked up my whole system with Sablon cables: The phono cable from my AMG V12 turntable to my Auditorium 23 homage T1 SUT, a pair of the Panatela interconnects from the SUT to the Shindo Giscours, and another pair from the Giscours to the Wavac EC-300B. The Wavac was connected to the Teresonic Ingenium XR Silvers speakers via the Sablon Panatela speaker cables. I used a Gran Corona power cord for the amp, and the Shindo power cords on the Giscours because of Ken Shindo’s grounding scheme .
Description and listening impressions
Every set of Panatela cables are hand built and cryogenic treated starting with the bare wire. They don’t use solder joints because Sablon claims feels they degrade the sound. Both the interconnects and speaker cables use cryogenically treated silver-plated copper Xhadow connectors for terminations, which Sablon considers to be the best sounding terminations available. If you want more technical info go to website and read away.
With the Sablon cable throughout my system, I was quite pleased with the sound. It had a very transparent and clear sound without any of what I think of as a silver sound. In fact, on many albums I would describe the sound as full bodied, silky smooth, and with great musical flow. With other recordings it was quick and tight with great snap. The Sablon cables will not cover up bad sounding recordings, but neither will they shout out at you, “this sounds really bad.”
The sound of my system with the Sablon cables was very alive. When I say alive, I’m trying to convey a sound that is natural and very realistic, in opposition to a system that sounds like a great high end system, especially not what is often referred to as a musical sounding system.
The system reproduced layers, textures, colors, and the tonality of music in an exemplary manner. Vocals both male, female and rather quirky voices all sounded very natural. Occasionally, I thought the cables might tame the edginess of some voices ever so slightly. Truth is, this is a rather glorious thing on digital recordings and many would think a pretty good thing overall. The cables did nothing to hinder the coherent soundstage that I so enjoy about my system.
Conclusion and Comparisons
The Sablon cables replaced a full set of Shindo Silver cables and their power cords in my system. I also had on hand Teresonic gold and silver cables. In my review of the Panatela interconnects I compared these cables and said, “The Teresonic Clarison Silver EXP cables are probably the most neutral of all three cable I had on hand. They are very fast, very quick, with great bass impact. The Shindo cables fall in between the two in regard to tonality. The Shindo are definitely the most organic of the three, with the Panatela coming in a very close second. As the Panatela is the warmest of the three, I would certainly pick it for digital playback. Now, don’t get me wrong in this comparison – these three cables sound much more like each other than they do different.”
Nothing has changed my mind about this assertion. The big difference here is that you get equally good sound for significantly less money with the Sablon. If I had an all-Shindo system, I would use Shindo Interconnects, power cords, and the Sablon Panatela speaker cables. For any other system it would be hard to justify spending more for either of the other two cables. I’m not saying the Sablons are the best cables in the world. They are not, but they are the best I have heard for the money. I know these are not entry level cable prices, but they are near state-of-the-art cables for a reasonable cost. I honestly feel they are quite a bargain and cables that more people need to hear.
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