The Story

I’ve found many things to like about Skogrand Cables over the last three years, mainly being their sound, no you shouldn’t expect The French Laundry when swapping out one great cable for another, but in listening to many Daedalus, ModWright, Vpi Industries systems before, with either WyWires or Skogrand cables of the past, I’ve come to know what to expect from the equipment trio when it comes to cable changes.

Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is the second time I’ve had the chance to hear Skogrand’s Vivaldi series of speaker cables and interconnects. The first time, I did not know I was listening to a cable that was under $6,000, much less under $1,000.

The Vivaldi series of speaker cables 2m ($750 USD as optioned) and interconnects 2m ($750 as optioned) used in the Daedalus, ModWright, Vpi room were developed with the idea of making the already heralded Skogrand sound, more accessible to a wider variety of components and markets. Hallmark design aspects from further up the chain are carried over to the Vivaldi line and it shows. The Vivaldi interconnect is the first Skogrand interconnect to contain both right and left channels into one single run of cable, eschewing the family signature of individual pairs of IC’s for greater channel separation. Obviously a cost cutting factor, but to my ears this design feature imparts few audible drawbacks. How does he do it?

Daedalus were showing off their brand new Apollo ($TBD) loudspeaker, a 3-way full range tower featuring a new Daedalus 10” woofer, that in my opinion outperforms their 8” woofer in just about every way imaginable.

ModWright’s familiar KWA 150SE ($8,995 USD) solid state power amp was in cahoots with their all tube Ambrose One ($11,995 USD) preamp,  PH 150 Reference ($7,900 USD) tube phono stage, and a ModWright modified Oppo UDP-205 Universal Player/DAC ($2,500 USD mod only)

VPI Industries brought their extraordinarily gorgeous Signature Prime Rosewood Edition with Soundsmith Hyperion cartridge.

Supporting all was a sexy pair of Stillpoints ESS 28-20-3 Grid Racks ($8,620 USD ea) provided by Tweek Geek 

Sources were split between Vinyl and SACD recordings offered 2L Records and the vertically spinning magic of R-to-R tape via a Technics RS-1500 Ruby Red ($9,750 USD) presented by J-Corder.