CRYSTAL CONNECT Van Gogh

MJ24.01.2024

Interconnects

Gabi Rynveld of Crystal is a professional concert pianist, and it is no secret that Crystal Connect’s cables have always pursued aesthetics and beauty, both in how they look and how they sound. For the visual art and music have a close connection, each cable in the Art collection is named after an artist who set new standards of artistic expression. Welcome to Van Gogh.

Function and form

98%

Ease of use

90%

Sound

100%

Appearance

The top-of-the-range Art series of the Crystal Connect (known previously as Crystal Cable) features three cable line-ups: Monet, Van Gogh and da Vinci. All are pure silver cables with Kapton insulation in PTFE (Teflon) tube. Crystal Connect shares the family table with Siltech, so not surprisingly their story on the conductor material builds on conductor metallurgy with ‘no microcracks present in the conductor structure’.

Only recently have audio manufacturers found that the ground leads of an interconnect cable are more important than positive leads. No matter how counter-intuitive it is, it works and all big names in high-end audio cable industry have jumped on it. Crystal Connect is not an exception: all Art series cables use the same type and number of positive wires (2 coaxial Infinite Silver for XLR, and 1 coaxial Infinite Silver for RCA) and the difference between any two models lies in the number of grounds. The Monet uses 1 for both RCA and XLR, the Van Gogh uses 2 for XLR and 3 for RCA, and the Da Vinci uses 4 for XLR and 5 for RCA.

Visually, the Crystal’s Art cables can be the most beautiful audio cables ever made. To describe them I am short of words, please scroll down for the pictures attached to the review. The craftsmanship is meticulous too. I compared the Van Gogh head-to-head with Synergistic Research SRX, Siltech Triple Crown, and Stage III Concept Ckahron, and should I choose just by appearance, there was nothing to decide about.

Bass management

Weight

Slam

Articulation

Now read carefully (reprinted from Arthive.com): In his letters, Van Gogh frequently talks about color. In particular, he explains unrealistic coloring of his painting, "Because instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily, in order to express myself forcibly”. […] Van Gogh is well known for his brushstokes of thickly laid-on paint. This technique is called Impasto. An artist lays a thick layer of paint on canvas, brushstrokes get more noticeable, adding a special texture to the painting. Vincent liked to use a thick, undiluted flat color with a brush or a palette knife. Sometimes he painted his colored swirls, smearing the paint on canvas with his finger. The works of Van Gogh have a relief, almost three-dimensional surface. They look different, depending on the light source.

These quotes actually very well describe the sound philosophy of the Van Gogh: it is flamboyant, dense in colours, liquid, and expansive.

Clarity & delicacy

Detail

Air

Transparency

John Rutter Requiem/Pie Jesu (played back from Celebrating 95 Years of Elac UHQCD sampler, InAkustik, remastered from the original Reference Recordings album featuring Turtle Creek Chorale) is quite illustrative for both strengths and weaknesses of the Van Gogh. The sound is enveloping and caressing, soft and pliable. The voices are beautifully 3D, the choir spread wall to wall and beyond. Instrumental colours are radiant and saturated, yet a bit beautified at the same time, as if the scene was perfumed and sprinkled with golden dust. The Van Gogh rounds the transients of cello and harp, so there is less ‘fingers/bow on the strings’ feeling and the perspective is more distant. The rounding and softening also suppresses the hall ambience and noises from the audience. An orchestral piece played in a large concert hall, which Dallas Meyerson Symphony Center undoubtedly is, will be heard by a visitor quite similar to how the Van Gogh renders it. However, the recording contains much deeper insights into the recorded material than the Van Gogh provides. It is not an assumption, it is a hard fact provable by swapping the Crystal Connect for any of the aforementioned competitors.

Tonal accuracy

Timbre

Dynamics

Temporal resolution

In Natalie Merchant’s Peppery Man, the Van Gogh gives the drums similar quality that once Ringo Starr described as ‘someone falling from the stairs’ when asked to describe his own style. The sounds have lower mids accents, there is less silence in between the notes, so when the music gets dense and busy it becomes too dense and busy.

The Crystal Connect Van Gogh shows its best in recordings like Can’t We Be Friends (Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong). The analogue warmth and liquidity make the voices sound velvety and deep, and the trumpet brass blazing. I had similarly hilarious experience with Hans Theesink and Terry Evans in Get to Keep Moving. The recording is superb yet sparse, and the voices was to die for through the Van Gogh, that accentuated their throatiness and the bluesy quality.

Spatial resolution

Holography

Soundstage width

Soundstage depth

Quite rightfully Crystal Connect says that these cables have been built to show off, not hide. They are wonderful pieces of jewellery, a kind of self-expression that speaks for the owner. Although the Van Gogh editorializes and makes sound richer than life, it is not less involving nor less entertaining, quite opposite. If you seek ‘truth’ then look elsewhere. If you seek beauty in music, then give the Van Gogh interconnects a listen.

Price as reviewed:340 000,- Kč

Recommended resellers

Dreamaudio, Bratislava, +421 907 838 806

Manufacturer's website: https://crystalcable.com

Associated components

Sources: Taiko Extreme, Ypsilon 1000SE DAC Silver Edition, QSA Switch, Kuzma Stabi R, 4Point Single tonearm, DS Audio Grand Master cartridge, DS Audio Equalizer
Amplifiers: Ypsilon PST 100MkII Silver Edition preamplifier, Ypsilon Hyperion mono amplifiers
Loudspeakers: YG Acoustics Sonja 2.3i
Interconnects and speaker cables: Siltech Triple Crown, Vyda Laboratories Orion, Vyda Laboratories Koral, Stage 3 Xphynx, Synergistic Research SRX, Stage III Concept Ckahron
Power conditioning: Pilium DCF, Torus Power AVR2 16 Elite Series, Stage 3, Siltech Ruby Mountain, DS Audio ION-001

Gallery

89%

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