Entreq at Ber Street, 15th October: The Cable Stays Put
Anyone who has sat through a cable demonstration knows the interval. One cable comes out, somebody disappears behind the rack with a torch, there is a muttered apology about a stiff binding post, and a couple of minutes later the music starts again. By then you are comparing what you hear with what you think you remember, and memory for sound is a poor witness. A good many cable arguments are settled in that gap, usually in favour of whoever was already sure.
On 15th October the interval goes.
Airt Audio, who bring Entreq into the country, are spending the day at Ber Street, with three sessions at 11am, 1pm and 3pm. The subject is Entreq's new core point cables, the Primer Core and Delphius Core ranges, and the small part of them that makes a fair comparison possible.
The part you change sits on top
Each of the new cables comes with a Corepoint unit, one per channel on the speaker cables. Its plain cap can be swapped for a Max Post, sold separately: a little wooden-bodied post with a particular metal at its heart. The Max T, built around tungsten, is the one Entreq measure the rest of the range against. Swap the post and you change how the cable behaves, and you do it without disconnecting anything.
That is what Airt will be doing mid-session. Same track, same cable, a different post, and nothing unplugged in between. Whether a post on a cable ought to change anything is a question you are welcome to arrive with. For once you can answer it with your own ears, which beats anybody's adjectives (ours included).
The system around them
At the front sit Métronome's DSS 2 and DSC Mini, the French pair we wrote about earlier in the autumn. Cyrus 80 Series amplification drives a pair of Serhan Swift Mu2 MK2 loudspeakers.
Entreq grounding runs throughout, which matters more than it sounds. Entreq's own argument is that their cables do their best work once the reference underneath them is stable, so the system includes the Pluton ground box and a Protectus, a platform that sits under a component and deals with vibration and electrical noise at the same time. You will hear the cables the way Entreq intend them to be used.
Who should come, and who needn't
This is a day for people whose system is more or less where they want it, and who have started to wonder about the last stretch. If you are still choosing speakers, it is probably not where to begin.
If you want something to listen for, think of a record like Nick Drake's Pink Moon: almost entirely one voice and one guitar, with a great deal of room around both. Listen to the end of each phrase, how long a note hangs before it goes.
Airt ran Lowering the Noise Floor here in May, which took on the whole noise-floor question in a single afternoon. This is narrower: one family of cables and one idea, looked at properly.
Pick a slot
Sessions start at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on 15th October. To reserve a place, call 01603 627010, send a WhatsApp to 07554 687137, or drop us a line and tell us which slot suits. If you cannot make the day, the Entreq range is online. But a Max Post has to be heard going on and coming off, and that is rather the point of the fifteenth.
