Review #21 - Cable Speaker Invictus Speaker - Try a Ricable

Well.

The soundstage is extended, but it was already extended before (the GamuT M200s can do their job), both laterally and in depth. What immediately changes is the air; the sound is much more aerated. Not only that. The "tarantella" is much brighter than I remembered: the piccolo, the trumpets, the indeterminate percussion (the triangle, the tambourine, and even the maracas), all are markedly more present and crisper. Not brighter, brighter. As if they opened a window and a very pleasant breeze came in. This does not mean that the music is softer, mind you. Live music (especially when listened to from the conductor's lucky "armchair") is never soft, it is rather raw, material, sometimes even tiring. A clarinet played softly in its middle register is certainly cozy, as the English say, not, however, a muted trumpet. So are brass and percussion instruments that scream in your face with can-can frenzy. Strong emotion mixed with mild annoyance; that is the trait of live music that sometimes drives audiophiles to hole up in their very personal lair, slowly imagining that the sound coming out of their system is worthy of excellence-even if in no way responsive to truth.

The sound of the bow scratching the strings, the sound of the bassoon keys, the crackle of the brass in the sforzato, the drumstick striking the wooden slat of the marimba, the light coming out of a triangle strike. All "musical objects" that make the difference between the beautiful and the real. And that a Hi-Fi system, to be declared as such, dreams of reproducing. It happens many times that we audiophiles exalt only the "Hi" part, forgetting that "Fi" means fidelity, fidelity to what is being evoked, and which the listener is assumed to know, before hearing recreated. Forgive the outburst. Disc change: Between the Sheets by Fourplay. Track number two, Monterey.

The Invictus played for at least three hours every day. And the result can be heard. The airiness has by no means diminished; on the other hand, the cables have gained in roundness and smoothness, losing little by little that acerbic note we were talking about. The mid-bass frequencies gained in dimension, the bass became more present, but without losing compactness or balance. The Invictus are top-of-the-line cables from Ricable, the build quality is clearly at the highest level; it would be quite difficult to imagine negative reviews about them.

That said, the great strength of these cables lies in their extreme naturalness. Right now the first movement of Lukas Foss's Third Symphony is playing, a piece complicated in structure and orchestral timbre. Nevertheless, the music flows pleasantly, without fatigue. I already had this feeling a few months ago trying out some Ansuz C1s Speaker , a feeling I eventually had to part with - the wallet would have suffered from a really too massive lightening. Congratulations Ricable, a product that fits into a qualitatively high range while maintaining an affordable price definitely deserves; as they would say in "Stereophile" reviews... a "highly recommended"!