Review #143 – Magnus Power , Dedalus , XLR, Sub, and Supreme HDMI MKII Cables – Ricable

I’m not a cable freak.
It’s definitely my fault: it must be my ear that can’t detect the differences—sometimes so significant—that other audiophiles can perceive. My (personal) view is that, once a system has reached mid-to-high quality levels, improvements can only be minor refinements that are difficult to perceive individually; and to be truly appreciable, they must be complex, complicated, and often, unfortunately, expensive changes.
A good cable can certainly enhance the overall quality of a system, and the cable you choose must certainly be at least on par with the quality of the system it’s being used in. However, only if all the cables in the system are carefully selected to be of the same level—and perhaps from the same manufacturer and the same series—only then do I believe it’s possible to perceive the differences.
With this in mind, now that I’ve decided to undertake a fairly substantial upgrade of my system, I couldn’t help but consider whether or not to replace the cables I already had—cables that, on paper, would no longer be on par with the electronics and which had very different characteristics, the result of purchases spread out over time.
Once I’d decided to proceed, I began thinking about what to change and, above all, what to replace them with.
I already owned a couple of Ricable cables, chosen at the time to support an Italian manufacturer whose build quality I had come to appreciate: an INTERCONNECT cable INTERCONNECT the subwoofer ( Magnus series) and a power cable (also from the Magnus series) that had replaced a cable from another brand of comparable quality.
Too little to form a real opinion. I was missing the final test to make a decision. Or rather, I hadn’t yet carefully read what Ricable to offer me: one thing above all, the option to return the cables within 60 days!
That is, the chance to see if what Ricable was offering Ricable was truly what I was looking for.
At that point, I had to decide which direction to take within the Ricable lineup.
I believe I have built over time (unfortunately too long… a clear sign of my advancing age) a good system, certainly of high quality and substance but not of absolute excellence. Having established this, choosing the right cable was consequently not difficult: the Dedalus series immediately struck Dedalus as the most appropriate. Not Ricable absolute excellence, Ricable the most important part of its substance.

Having made so many changes to my system—all more or less at the same time—didn’t make it easy for me to assess the impact of each individual change. The cables were the final piece of the puzzle, and since I was coming off the fairly pronounced and obvious results of upgrading key components of the system (the preamp, the surround amplifier, and some speakers), I knew it wouldn’t be easy to evaluate them in isolation.
As I usually do in these cases, I chose to test only with jazz music (and a bit of electronic music) because these recordings are typically more meticulously produced, featuring prominent instrumental and orchestral parts, yet where solos and vocals also stand out—which makes it easier for me to detect any subtle changes. I obviously chose albums whose recording quality I was familiar with and which, precisely because of the numerous tests conducted during this phase of changes, I had listened to very carefully in recent days.
For the video portion, I chose a few action Blu-Rays where audio and visuals are truly essential elements of the content.
Finally, regarding the XLR cables, the tests were also conducted by directly comparing them with my previous cables.