NEXT LEVEL TECH NxLT ETHER

I challenged the NxLT ETHER with my resident Ansuz C2 interconnect (4k€ in 2021, now replaced in Ansuz´s line up by an upgraded C3 version at marginally higher price). The ETHER had a very similar level of control over the sound, and it was no less dynamic. The C2 provided fuller mid-bass, which brought vocalists forward and made them a bit more physical in the mix. However, I must admit that the ETHER did not attempt to beautify the sound, it was more honest, and therefore compatible with higher number of recordings. While the C2 was largely dependant on how bass was mixed/mastered on an album, the ETHER was not discriminating.

Alike in a direct comparison with Synergistic Research SRX (12.5k€), the NxLT offered remarkably solid bass in 70’s rock (Nazareth), with punchy kick drum and deeply growling electric bass. All instruments in the mix were perfectly outlined and separated from each other, the guitars were biting, the piano was sound, and I could hear into how the multitrack recording had been layered. Now, the NxLT ETHER is 3.1k€ (2.6k€ in the RCA version), so one can assume it is a killer of the killers. Well, not quite. There is one trade-off.

The separation as if went a little bit further than necessary in the ETHER. In the tranquil backdrop that I mentioned earlier, as if the subtlest sounds got drowned. These “subtlest sounds”, in the context of a high-resolution playback system, include ambient sounds, recording booth reverberation, or a fly circling around the microphone, who somehow had found its way into the beautiful acoustic guitar playing of Marco Carulli in Francisco Tárrega‘s Capricho Árabe for STS Digital and had become the part of it for ever. The result is that – although the individual performers in recordings are each vivid and perfectly outlined, the whole ensemble feels like a collection of individual players, rather than a group. As if the communication glue between the performers was missing and they played in isolation. Spatially, the less obvious ambient information also led to a sort of front-to-back compression, so the soundstage was less deep than I was used to. It will probably remain unnoticed in genres where such nuances do not exist by the very nature of recording techniques, like in electronic music, and pop. I would like to know how e.g. replacing the connectors with a different make would change how the ETHER performs. Isolating an issue and removing it usually asks for compromises elsewhere and – mostly – other trade-offs appear. Not many signal cables are complete in how they sound, tonally and spatially, and hence their price tags.